As mentioned in the first bit of MY post, I said I'd crosspost it if Maurice wished; he indicated he thought this merited public discussion, so here 'tis.
--------------------------------------------------------- Joseph B. Ottinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://enigmastation.com IT Consultant ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2002 06:33:47 -0500 (EST) From: Joseph Ottinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Maurice C. Parker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [OS-webwork] What a WebWork developer thinks. WAS: documentation Maurice, this is directly to you because I really want to be careful managing perception. If you think this would be appropriate for the list, I'll be glad to crosspost it. --------------------------------------------------------- Joseph B. Ottinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://enigmastation.com IT Consultant On Sun, 3 Nov 2002, Maurice C. Parker wrote: > On Sunday, November 3, 2002, at 09:28 PM, Francisco Hernandez wrote: > > > I found this in my bookmarks today, maybe you can use some of it or > > contact > > its author and collaborate? > > http://enigmastation.com/~joeo/webwork.html > > I'd never seen this doc before. I just wanted to comment on a sentence > in the "Editorial" section. I don't know why; I've certainly posted early versions of it to the lists. I *think* I even posted THAT url to the list, but I'm not sure; I went to SF to check the mail archives but they no longer apparently have a search feature. At any rate, the old version - http://enigmastation.com/~joeo/tut - certainly points to the new one. > <quote> > Their mentality is why this document needed to be written: their > attitude is that "if we build it, the people who want to use it can put > in the time to learn how to use it," ... > </quote> > > Joseph's assumption that we think people need to invest time in > learning WebWork is the exact opposite of true. One of the founding > principals of the project is that WebWork is supposed to be easy to > use. You shouldn't have to spend a lot of time either reading the > source code or reading boring documentation. The project is supposed > easy for the beginner to use and flexible enough for complicated > applications. Between you and I, I'm *very* aware of that; I'm also aware that my own learning curve with WW has been pretty easy once the initial hurdles were crossed. However, it's been pointed out on the lists and in conversation that beginners do NOT find it easy to use, that it violates Least Surprise all the time, and that critical things (simple things) aren't documented... and so the lists continue to discuss webwork 2.0. I'm exaggerating a bit, to be sure, but honestly: from an outsider's point of view, I'm afraid my comment was dead on. I certainly tried to start a documentation effort; I've gotten -0- support on it (despite being clearly not the expert, if you've read that document). The comments I've gotten on that document have been surprisingly positive, far more so than I expected. For some users, it was like a "raise your fist and yell" thing, judging by their email. One user asked why we couldn't fix WebWork. (I left most of those with a simple "Thank you for your comments," by the way.) > The fact that new users don't understand that this project is about > ease of use and simplicity is indicative of where we have gone wrong > recently. I think we have gotten off track and need to get back on. > For example, this is the reason you sometimes hear me tell people "no" > to new features. Anything that clutters up the framework, is something > that new users have to learn about. Take a look at the > webwork.properties file, and you will see where we could have done > better. There are so many configuration options that I wouldn't expect > an OpenSymphony developer to understand it all. Cleaning that thing up > is what I want for 2.0. Not more damned poweruser features. Sure - and I want to personally see all the Least Astonishment problems go away. That's why I, for instance, got off my butt and wrote some additional input tags - people expect the full gamut, not just the ones that whoever designed the UI tags thought deserved templates. > Let's try to focus on usability. Low defects, easy to use, and simple > to understand. In the future I would like people to get a better > impression of us than Joseph got. Whoa, slow there buddy: I think the WW team suffers from myopia, but I hardly have a poor impression of you guys! On the contrary, I'm incredibly impressed: if I wasn't, I wouldn't be using WW myself. I wrote a WW-alike maybe a year ago, and the ValueStack clears up SO many problems I had with chaining that it's not even funny; I've been kicking myself for not thinking of an analogue myself. That document was meant for a few things: one was to give an easier learning curve for newbies, maybe. Another was to goad, and maybe give what *I* thought was one angle to documenting things for newbies (another email I got about it was dead on: it makes a LOT of assumptions about the knowledge of the reader. If the reader understands MVC but doesn't grok webwork, they'll be fine; if the reader isn't really familiar with MVC, they're gonna be just as lost.) I'd be happy to remove the document some day. I really hope there's no need for it: I want to see webwork's features fleshed out, and its installation cleaned up. But that's just me. :) ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: ApacheCon, November 18-21 in Las Vegas (supported by COMDEX), the only Apache event to be fully supported by the ASF. http://www.apachecon.com _______________________________________________ Opensymphony-webwork mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/opensymphony-webwork
