Unfortunately, unless the person filing the > request/ticket makes it clear that their request isn't something they > can personally fulfill, it's hard to tell the difference between a > person being lazy (i.e. wishing for a pony) and a person asking for > assistance (i.e. a designer asking for a smart if tag).
I get that. At the same time, it's important to recognize that Django's always been built around this ideas that designers and front- end folks ought to be able to do their job (templates/html/css/etc.) without having to know or understand Python. That was a core tenant when Adrian and company built the thing in 2005, and I believe it still is. It's also the way Django's biggest market (journalism) works more often than not. What this says to me is that designers and front-end developers *are* part of Django's target audience. So the concept that, "sorry, Django's a Python framework, so if you don't know Python, it's not for you" doesn't really apply, here (though I have definitely heard it said). So we expect designers and front-end coders to use Django (or at least parts of it). If they're using it on a day-to-day basis, they're bound to have frustrations, ideas, suggestions, and thoughts about how it could work better for them. You can blow it off as a "pony" or "being lazy", but to them, it's just something that would make their life easier that they don't have the know-how to implement themselves. > I think "patches welcome" does presuppose that anyone with the proper > time and attention could fill their own needs, and that's generally > been a correct assumption. Open source is built on sharing code, and > sometimes it's hard to judge whether an idea is good or not without > seeing an implementation. That makes sense, but the problem is that if designers needs aren't considered because they can't provide an implementation, and no one else is willing to provide one for them, then the needs never get addressed, which leads to a feeling of being ignored. It's a catch 22. In a bit of irony, I don't know what the answer is, but I certainly am capable of recognizing that this is a problem. I'd also make a case that designers are really great at helping design the APIs they'll use, and maybe they ought to be asked about the syntax for your template tag or the output of your form field widget. I think designers can make a lot of useful contributions that don't involve writing code OR providing graphic design comps and mockups. I hope developers will realize we're here and willing to contribute in whatever way our design eye can be useful, and not just think of us as people who make the admin pretty. > I guess I'd just ask that when you feel coders are being unfair just > call it when you see it. Start with the assumption that we mean well > and maybe don't see where you're coming from, like Russ with the > contest idea. :-) Makes sense. I definitely believe thats where you guys are coming from, now. > All that said, developers everywhere have some amount of > not-invented-here syndrome, and they have ideas, too. Often, they'll > work on their ideas rather than look for someone else's. Since we're > all volunteer, it's not appropriate to tell people what they should or > shouldn't work on. So I think designers proposing ideas (but not > providing code) are inherently at a disadvantage. That makes perfect sense, and I completely agree that we can't tell people what they should or shouldn't work on. Designers probably ARE at a disadvantage, but maybe if we have Wilson keeping track of the needs of designers, he can help advocate to you developers for the ones which are most-requested and most-useful. And there definitely are a group of us designers that know and understand the entire Django stack pretty well, and are at least able to communicate with a developer and speak the same language. I do as much back-end work as front-end in Django these days, and I'm excited to find an opportunity to actually provide implementations for some of the designers needs. I'm sure I'm not the only one. > I imagine that there's enough overlap between designers who can code a > bit and developers who can design a bit to get together and make > progress. We just have to try it and see how it goes. Agreed. Hopefully this whole discussion has brought to light some of the issues standing in the way of progress on design in Django and designer's Django needs. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to django-develop...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en.
