I think we understand the concepts clearly. They're not hard once you clear away the misconceptions and mis-assumptions. Of course it's part of the barrier, but I don't think it's the main barrier.
Maybe we should start with a list of common misconceptions, and work bottom up to the best way to prevent them. Evan On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 1:55 PM, Evan Weaver<[email protected]> wrote: >> For the terminology to be considered a barrier to entry, I think you >> need to demonstrate obviously superior terminology. > > I agree with that and am happy to accept that our proposal is not good > enough. We'll work on another. > > Evan > > On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Eric Evans<[email protected]> wrote: >> On Wed, 2009-08-12 at 15:05 -0700, Ryan King wrote: >>> I would like to reiterate, one of our main motivations behind renaming >>> the data model is to make it easier for people to get up to speed with >>> Cassandra. >> >> This has been repeated several times during this thread. I hope it's not >> meant to imply that those opposed do not care about our users, or about >> making Cassandra easier to understand. >> >>> Evan and I both had problems understanding the data model and we've >>> seen the same struggles over and over as we try and explain the data >>> model to other engineers here at twitter. So, after developing this >>> proposal for a new naming scheme, we tested it with more engineers, to >>> see if it was, in fact, easier to explain. We didn't do a rigorous >>> study, but without a doubt it was clearer and easier to understand. >>> And these are all people who've read the BigTable and Dynamo papers, >>> most of whom have CS (bachelors' or masters') degrees and are >>> generally smart. >> >> Yeah, that's anecdotal. I could counter with anecdotal evidence to the >> contrary but I don't think it would be very helpful or productive. >> >> I honestly feel like you guys are confounding the concepts, and the >> terminology used to describe them. Granted, the right choice of >> terminology could certainly make it easier to convey how things work, >> but there is a sort of minimum overhead here. In other words, you can >> call things whatever you want, it's not going to change how they >> actually work. At least some portion of the difficulty people have in >> conceptualizing Cassandra, are in fact the concepts themselves. >> >> [ ... ] >> >>> > So having thought it through I think I would have to say I think the >>> > current names, if not perfect, are underrated. Even if making the >>> > change were free, and it's obviously not, I would prefer the existing >>> > terminology. >>> >>> I think, overall, the naming is a significant barrier to entry for new >>> cassandra users. This proposal will certainly be expensive, both in >>> terms of the work (which we at twitter are willing to do) and the >>> disruption. However, we're still early in Cassandra's life and this >>> may be our only chance to improve this situation. >> >> For the terminology to be considered a barrier to entry, I think you >> need to demonstrate obviously superior terminology. >> >> -- >> Eric Evans >> [email protected] >> >> > > > > -- > Evan Weaver > -- Evan Weaver
