Matt, I have the feeling some of it boils down to perception. Not all, but some of it. MG was released with Joe's Quickstart guide - which is very easy to follow. And very newbie-friendly. All those little comments in there along the lines of "Hey, don't panic! It's easier than it looks!" contribute to that perception.
More importantly, Joe's release and website are specifically designed for newbies, which is "right", because newbies are the ones using it. Mach-ii was released in a different way. It was the first OO framework for CF, so the fact that it broke new ground made it look more difficult. No quickstart guide. You could sign up for a training with Hal and Ben. I'm REALLY SURE it's well worth it but any way you slice it, earning the money or getting your boss to pay for it or trying to find enough developers in your area to join you so you could invite Hal and Ben out to your area, and taking the time out for travel and the course IS harder than reading through Joe's quickstart guide and starting to experiment. So that's more than perception. Mach-II is simply harder here. The other way is to tough it out and study the source code of the framework, search thru the list archives and ask a series of somewhat embarrassing newbie questions on the list, which nobody likes to ask. I hate appearing as clueless as i am. You gotta want it to take that route. So as i see it, the most critical point for the learner is in the very beginning. Make it _super easy_ for beginners, and once they get over the initial hump and are to the point where they have intermediate level questions for the list and are learning easily from experience, they can continue from there. Sean's comments about the differences in the way it works are true. But i don't think they make Mach-II that much harder to learn. It's just that it's not been set up from the beginning with the goals and needs of the learner first and foremost in mind. So it's difficult to learn. Not that anyone _should_ put the needs and goals of the learner first. But if you put yourself in the shoes of a learner, it's easy to see why and how it's difficult. And it could be made a lot easier to learn. Lots easier than MG is today. For instance, someone could set up a series of simple online courses and charge for them. You or Peter, Phil all come to mind. And people would pay for them. And it wouldn't necessarily take you more time than the quickstart did. All you'd need is Camtasia or even SnagIt would do. Record a series of videos. It's fast, lots faster and more effective than writing something up. Talk people through a series of lessons. Show them how it's done on screen. Everything they need to know. Show them what you use to edit XML in one lesson and how to do it easily, in case they don't know. How to specifically edit the config file in the next - all the details about it. Another lesson on Listeners. Explain how filters work, when to use filters, what you use them for. Same for plugins. Etc. Whatever you know about Mach-II, record yourself talking about it and show it onscreen at the same time. Then it would real easy to learn Mach II. Make it rich and detailed. No need to dumb it down. Beginners can and will listen to it several times until they get it. Charge for it. We'll pay. We'll pay because it's a lot faster for us to learn that way than by spending days and days reading through the archives. Your time dedicated to teaching is worth a lot. I think nearly everyone would buy the course, even those already using Mach-II, if they were good. Everyone would learn something. Make it rich and detailed so everyone could learn something. Learn Mach-II - $49 A complete, video tutorial that'll teach you to build Mach II applications. Learn from the best. Buy it here. Now, just to cover this angle cuz i know it's there, I'm SURE that in-person training from Hal and Ben is a VERY worthwhile investment. But i'm also sure that it's worth a lot more to the person who comes into their training at an intermediate level, not as a beginner. As i see it, making the framework very easy to learn by providing online courses for a reasonable cost would be a big help to them in promoting their workshops. Why? Because one, they would be free to teach higher level stuff and have a lot more people to market it to. But more importantly, because we all know that our time spent with them is much more worthwhile if we come knowing the basics. It just isn't right to learn addition and subtraction from a calculus professor. "Let me learn that on my own and then i'll go to the class." we say to ourselves. "I don't want to be embarrassed." Which makes the basics hard to learn for most people, doesn't it? The fact that there's no easy entry for beginners is a barrier. Now just to make it clear, there's no emotional charge to this post, not all all. I think you guys have done a very fine job, i'm very grateful for it all because it's made me a much better programmer. And i know that each minute you take to help others or improve the framework costs you money, because they aren't billable minutes. This argument has been put forward many times, very justifiably, why the people behind the framework can't spend more time helping others learn. But ... I'd like to break the association down completely and instead state that: "Easy to learn" NEQ "Free for us and costly to you" You could make it very easy to learn with an online audio-visual course that would be fast for you to make (We don't care a bit if it's professionally edited) You could get a very decent return on your investment of time, much better than you get with programming. AND it would help Hal and Ben fill their very worthwhile workshops because they'd have a lot more people interested in learning the advanced level stuff they are good at conveying. AND it would save us all a huge amount of time that we can use more productively. Anyone of us doing the math will easily see that it makes a lot more financial sense to pay $49 or $69 or $149 for a complete online audio visual tutorial than struggle for weeks on our own. In a few hours of billable time, we've made it back. An absolute bargin. AND our time becomes more valuable - we have a new skill. I see an absolute win - win here. I'm talking the time to write all this out because i'd love to see a bunch of audio visual courses online for all this stuff avalanching down on us to learn in the CF world. We all _need_ help learning. And believe me, i'd be more than delighted to pay someone to make it easy for me. With all the pressure to learn more and more, there's a huge market out there to tap into. Even if you only sell 200 or 300 copies of the course (a modest estimate when you think that mach-ii might well be around for many years to come. An article mentioning it in CFDJ should do the trick in a week or 2), that's nothing to sneeze at for 10 - 20 hours of work. AND ... you might not realize it but you'll save yourself that much time within a month or two by answering all the questions you answer on the list - in the tutorial. So you're going to use that time anyway, even just reading the posts to the Mach-II list. I hope that came across as well-intentioned as i mean it to be. :) Nando >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Behalf Of Matt Woodward >Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 11:28 PM >To: [email protected] >Subject: Re: [CFCDev] State of Coldfusion UI Development > > >On 1/12/06, Tim Van Der Hulst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Had a bit of a steep learning curve and also seemed a bit >verbose to write. Dunno, I only read the docs and followed the >mailing lists. There seemed to be quite a few newbies who stumbled >with it so I decided it was one framework I didn't want to invest >my time in. I wonder if it's still used much or whether most folks >opted to move to ModelGlue. > >Um, yeah, there's still a lot of folks using Mach-II. :-) > >It isn't a matter of "moving on" from one thing to another; if one >framework fits the way you think better, then by all means use it. >The sense of the steepness of the learning curve is completely >individual. What makes sense right away to one person might take some >effort on the part of another person in order to understand it. > >Conceptually (in my mind anyway) Mach-II and Model-Glue are really >quite similar, so I actually would be very curious to hear why some >folks thing MG is simpler to pick up than M2. Is it a documentation >issue? Sample application availability issue? Or is there something >people see in the framework itself that actually does create a higher >barrier of entry? I'm asking because I hear this comment every so >often and I'd be curious to hear why specifically some people find MG >easier to grasp than M2. Not trying to start a big hairy debate here; >I'm honestly interested in what people see as the differences from a >learning standpoint. > >Thanks, >Matt >-- >Matt Woodward >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://www.mattwoodward.com > > >---------------------------------------------------------- >You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to >[email protected] with the words 'unsubscribe cfcdev' as the >subject of the email. > >CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by >CFXHosting (www.cfxhosting.com). > >An archive of the CFCDev list is available at >www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected] with the words 'unsubscribe cfcdev' as the subject of the email. CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by CFXHosting (www.cfxhosting.com). 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