David,
I agree with all your points about the way the wiki looks/behaves.
And I am approaching it from the POV of somebody who has been doing
WO development for coming up on 10 years now (yikes! I'm getting old)
and am just hungry for the new information (project Wonder stuff,
etc.). So it might not work for newbies. There is a scary amount of
info there. It's hard trying to weigh that against all the benefits
of the wiki (everybody can post there, it's searchable, etc) and
figure out the overall best approach. As long as there is good cross-
linking, I suppose everybody wins. Thanks for the input.
Mark
On Jun 14, 2007, at 12:29 PM, David LeBer wrote:
On 14-Jun-07, at 8:57 AM, Steven Mark McCraw wrote:
My understanding is that the webobjects wiki book (http://
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:WebObjects) is trying to become
the central point of documentation for WebObjects that people post
to. There's already a ton of info there, but we all know it could
use a ton more. At WOWODC, when the experts panel was asked what
could be done to help with project wonder, this is what they came
back with immediately: We need people writing documentation, and
this is the place to put it. Even if it's bad, there are so many
people watching it that bad info will get edited out quickly.
I think there's a danger in having TOO many informational sites.
If everybody decides to wing it because they get on a high at a
developer's conference regarding being able to document stuff to
widen the movement, I think we will end up with dozens of blogs,
half finished tutorials, etc. There's a reason there isn't much
documentation on Wonder and WebObjects: writing good
documentation is HARD and time consuming, and not a very glamorous
task. So if you have 10 spare hours to write a decent article on
a very specific issue, I think everybody would be better served if
that went to the wikibook. That way, everybody can always point
to one resource as definitive.
I don't mean to be preachy about it or rain on anybody's parade
that is putting up yet another site about WebObjects. What I just
wrote might sound snappy or mean, but I don't mean it that way.
I'm just trying to advocate a central repository for everything so
people don't have to go here and there to get various pieces of
the overall puzzle. Maybe if you start a site, you could also
make sure that all of the contents of that site are also posted in
the wiki book in the sensible place? Thoughts?
I hear you Steven, so let me be clear my intention is not to
replicate or duplicate any of the contents in the wikibook. I agree
that it should contain the sum of the real-world knowledge
possessed by the community but it does have some failings when it
comes to presenting and attractive front to new developers - and
they are my focus.
1. It is butt ugly - not that that matters as far as the content is
concerned, but compare that with the Rails landing page and we are
at a serious disadvantage as far as the perception of new developers.
2. It doesn't support images or other rich media (if I'm wrong let
me know). The tutorials I am thinking about are high on visual
appeal. My philosophy is: If it looks easy, people will think it
*is* easy and if it looks cool, people will think it *is* cool.
3. It can be intimidating to new developers to WO. Pointing a new
developer at the wikibook is like pointing someone at Niagara Falls
for a glass of water (I just made that up, you can use it if you
want :-).
So:
1. A news site that gathers details from the disparate sources and
puts them in one place. ie: "ERSlenium.framework just added to
Project WONDER" and "WebObjects Wikibook enhanced with new
ERSelenium.framwork getting started guide" and "WWDC WebObjects
Birds of a Feather - flashback to the summer of love!" etc.
2. A tutorial site that offers task-oriented tutorial snippets.
WIth a focus on being well designed, attractive, inviting, and
above all easily digestible. Obviously each will contain links to
the more detailed documentation contained elsewhere.
Ultimately my focus is to entice new developers to the platform,
and realistically the only way to do that is with sites that
compete with the other frameworks vying for this mind share (ie:
Rails, Django, TurboGears, etc).
--
;david
--
David LeBer
Codeferous Software
'co-def-er-ous' adj. Literally 'code-bearing'
site: http://codeferous.com
blog: http://davidleber.net
profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidleber
--
Toronto Area Cocoa / WebObjects developers group:
http://tacow.org
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