On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 10:39 PM, Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas < offray.l...@mutabit.com> wrote:
> The more I use Pharo, the less I use web documentation. > That is a familiar path, but still an obstacle for people to get over in trying Pharo - i.e. its a barrier of entry. I've previously referred to this article by JoelOnSoftware, but to pull out a key part... "Think of these barriers as an obstacle course that people have to run before you can count them as your customers. If you start out with a field of 1000 runners, about half of them will trip on the tires; half of the survivors won’t be strong enough to jump the wall; half of those survivors will fall off the rope ladder into the mud, and so on, until only 1 or 2 people actually overcome all the hurdles. With 8 or 9 barriers, everybody will have one non-negotiable deal killer. This calculus means that eliminating barriers to switching is the most important thing you have to do if you want to take over an existing market, because eliminating just one barrier will likely double your sales. Eliminate two barriers, and you’ll double your sales again." For example, Stef mentioned that the Pharo web docs were dropped because were't used much. But perhaps their value is not for regular use by the community, but more for outsiders evaluating Pharo, or newcomers transitioning from their old workflow to a Pharo one. In that case their value eliminating one barrier of entry is much greater than measured from the number of page hits. btw, What I like about Richards's articles is that... most of our community's articles are for people already using Pharo, even if only a newcomer of a few days working through an introductory tutorial. Richard's articles target outsiders and one of the side benefits for *me* is that it pulls in critical outside perspectives to remind me of the barriers-of-entry stopping people using Pharo. Take for instance the common angst people have against working in an Image in Smalltalk. There are some legitimate concerns with ending up in a state you can't recreate, which we are addressing this with the bootstrapping projects. But I think we might publicize this better to outsiders. For example... Mr Smith knows nothing about Smalltalk and takes an interest in Pharo. Smith discusses with colleague Jones who presents a poor opinion of the Smalltalk Image approach. So Smith never tries Pharo! Alternatively, if Smith has already read in an FAQ about this common argument and how we address it by our bootstrap process, he can inform Jones', and maybe now we've got two curious newcomers. cheers -ben
