You have a big problem. The hardest thing is not learning new stuff but estimating the learning curve for others. Personally it took me about 2 weeks to grasp the concepts and getting up to speed. Why two weeks, because people are banging on my door waiting for me when I have finished the product. So I have to. When I try to learn something just to learn something it takes months.
What you can do is take a few ( max 4 ) people and ask them to build a struts application within 4 weeks max. Changing you should do in small steps. And watch their progress. Next you can add another 4 to that small team and let them start building the first part. See how it's going and you can make a more relaible estimate. Tell your boss that you can only estimate by trying in small. If he agree at this point you have already 8 people who have used the framework. And since your program isn't only about struts, but also on java and more start with those who know java. Then those who know C++.
And those who only know VB there is some bad news. For me it took about two years of studing the java architecture and language before I was comfortable in programming java. And I had only MS Access and some VB experience
Hope it's helpfull
Johan
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Well, the question was somewhat, but not entirely hypothetical. The 50 is probably more like 30. The problem is really another "my framework is better than yours" debate and we're pushing to use a Struts-based framework going forward instead of a home-grown. One of my tasks is to quantify how long it will take developers to get up to speed on Struts to estimate the cost of moving over.I learned Java, JSP/Servlets, and Struts pretty much all at the same time, and it clicked easily for me. But I learn new things easily and am not intimidated by new things. Others seem to have had varying levels of difficulty picking it up. The team that I worked on back then had little trouble with it.-----Original Message-----
From: Haseltine, Celeste [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 10:04 AM
To: 'Struts Users Mailing List'
Subject: RE: Struts Productivity Survey
Greg,
Wow, I don't envy your assignment. There is one thing that I have learned
over the years as both a developer and project manager, people learn at
different rates, and pick up new skills very differently.
In the case of the people who only know C++, the transition to Java will not
be difficult. If they have had no exposure to HTML and web development,
then the transition to JSP's will take them a little longer. I've know some
really good low level C++ programmers who just cannot get the hang of HTML,
much less the tag library underlying struts. These guys are better suited
for the server side and EJB side of development.
As for the VB programmer, your job is going to much more difficult. Many of
the VB programmers I have meet over the past 2 years have had no exposure or
training in Object Oriented Programming (OO). Many have moved to VB from
mainframe jobs that they started back in the 70's and 80's. For those on
your staff who have had exposure to C++ in college, the move to Java will
probably be easier than for those on your staff you have come from a
mainframe background.
As to Struts, JSP's and the tag libraries. You are looking at training
these people in ALL three of these concepts/technology. I would strongly
suggest that you start out your training class in JSP's using the Model 1
concept the first few days, and then introduce Struts and the JSP tag
libraries for the duration of the training course.
In all, my experience in training people in a combination of on the job and
classes has been as follows:
For those with heavy C++ experience, moving to Java/JSP/Servlets/HMTL took
about month before these people were productive.
For those with some exposure to C++ and OO, but no work experience, it took
about 2 months for these people to be productive.
For those with no exposure to C++ and OO (mainframe background), it took
anywhere from 4 months to 9 months before these people were really useful
and productive in the work environment. A lot depended on the attitude of
the person, and their willingness to learn new programming skills AND new
programming/software concepts, particularly OO. If you can get over the
hurdle of the OO concepts, then you are 2/3 of the way there.
If you add struts and HTML to the equation, I would add an extra 2 to 4
weeks, before the staff is really productive and useful in the work
environment.
Keep in mind again that people learn at different rates, and that they learn
in different ways. The approach you take to exposing and training these
people may not work for the entire group, and you may need to take extra
time and try different approaches with some in the group.
Good luck, this is one assignment that I don't envy you on.
Celeste
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 9:40 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Struts Productivity Survey
Ok, so let me pose it a different way. Put yourself in this position:
You're a consultant or an architect who has been tasked with building a
Struts application with 100 screens. You're actually migrating an
application which was originally written as a fat client app in VB and the
server was written in C++.
You have about 50 developers who know VB and C++ pretty well. Some of them
know Java/JSP/Servlets very well. Some of them know it very little. None
of them know Struts.
Your job is to estimate the cost of getting these folks up to speed on
Struts. You already have the application design. THere's going to be a
thin business layer called by the Action classes that will use EJB session
beans to provide application functionality. Fairly simple. You have to
train these people to use Struts, create actions and pages, and write the
web-tier business layer. Somebody else is doing the EJB stuff.
How do you estimate that cost?
How long do you think it will take for these various developers to write
their first business function?
How long to do the next one, etc?
-----Original Message----- From: Andreas Mack [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 12:34 AM To: Struts Users Mailing List Subject: Re: Struts Productivity Survey On Fri, 2003-01-10 at 07:57, Rick Reumann wrote:easier. I think it's really going be difficult to get anaccurate feelfor how long it takes people to get 'up to speed' withstruts since Ithink it's much easier now for new developers to learnstruts simply dueI agree 100%. I looked at Struts for the first time in April 2001 mainlyto the books and better documentation available.
for the forms stuff, really wanting to use it. I've readthe UserGuideand said "What is he talking about!?" Half a year later, with a real
project at hand it went much faster, using the /example stuff. Back
then there were no DynaForms, no Tiles, no Nested, all thestuff thatmakes things much easier now. The pages that are now the Taglib API--
Reference were the best resources back then.
Greets,
Andreas.
--
Andreas Mack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
mediales. GmbH
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