Hello Robert,
> Some of my following words might be interpreted that I'm standing on Zend The > Company's side, but that's not the case. No worries, I guess most people on this mailing list know that. > Zend The Company is allocating a lot of money as it is. AFAIK, they have 3 > people working full-time on ZF (1.x and 2.x!) - Enrico, Matthew and Ralph. > You can't blame Zend for trying to make some money out of it. Well, I don't. > I'm earning my bread with ZF's help for 3-4 years now. Also, they are not the > only ones making money out of it - there's a bunch of books you can buy to > help you learn (maybe for ZF2 not *yet*, but ZF1 had a bunch). Heck, the most > I learned about ZF1 was when I read Keith Pope's (aka muteor) book. I don't intend to make this a discussion concerning the fact that Zend is making money with giving classes, certifications or by selling software or hosting or whatever, I'm fine with that. Also, a similar discussion has already come up at least once on this mailing list, if I remember correctly. But: The problem with these books is their time to market. When some of them appear, they are already outdated. Some that I have read concerning ZF1 were just shameless plugs of the documentation that was available online and didn't tell more. Nonetheless, there probably are great books for ZF1 out there, the problem is, most of them are not needed anymore: either you are proficient with ZF1 now, then you'll maintain existing projects or will attempt to make the switch to ZF2. If you are a beginner, you are probably best off starting with ZF2 right away (unless you find things to difficult). And: I can't wait until books for ZF2 are out, and I can hardly understand why I should, given all the knowledge is there. I feel a decent end user documentation should be part of the product, even if the product is free. After all, it has been released as stable, and with the release the framework website has been relaunched. Why can't resources be allocated to make a decent end user documentation available at the same time? I do understand that a full-time staff of 3 people may be a bit short with resources, but some people must have been aware of this fact! Again: The knowledge must be there, why can't it be given to the community? How long would it take to create one by the components' maintainers and developers? Is it because: * http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/284/529/e65.gif I don't think that it is too far fetched to say that providing a documentation will enhance adoption of ZF2 by the PHP community . . . ! Probably shouldn't take > I personally read the docs up on readthedocs.org, or compile it on my own. > Much clearer that way. Granted, the ZF website layout is ... Interesting at > times. But hey, I think that's on Github now too, so suggestions are, I > believe, welcome there, too. Interesting, yeah - pretty much! > No one's expecting from any one to be 100% in the code, on line, knowing > everything (well, maybe apart from Matthew, Ralph and Enrico ;) ). I, > personally, did my best to contribute to the docs when Matthew asked for > help. I hope it was worth it at least a tiny little bit. And after that, I > fell off the face of the Earth once again - life, work and beers got in the > way. Yes, it's difficult to keep up, yes, we'd all love a magic bucket of > knowledge to get poured in our brains, but that's just not how it works. > Damn, even after 4 years with ZF1 I *still* have bits and pieces that are > nothing but pure black magic for me. Life gets in the way all the time, sure. And that's the problem - unless one doesn't have a life besides coding. > As for contributing, sending PRs and fixing bugs and docs is not the *only* > way to contribute. There are easier ways to do it - you read that one chapter > on View Helpers and think "Damn, I wish this would explain in a better way > how to write custom view helpers." Just go over to the Github > zf2-documentation repo and open a ticket with what's your issue with it. > Might not be fixed in 5 minutes, but sooner or later, someone *will* fix it. Is that how it should work? > I won't recommend to buy it or not to buy it, as I have no idea about it's > contents or quality. If it has the same quality as the online documentation, it definitely isn't. But who can tell? > I need to ask you this - do you know ZF 1.x? Why am I asking this? Because > when I started learning ZF1 (1.4 I think it was back then), I felt completely > lost with it. I gave up saying something like "Who needs this? This is just a > mess." I felt lost. Around 1.6 I had another stab at it. Felt lost once > again. Slowly, I ploughed through it. 1.7, 1.8... and the rest is history. :) I've been working with ZF1 on a daily basis since August 2008, and I have to admit, that in the beginning I felt lost, indeed. But the documentation - even if a number of aspects wasn't and still isn't covered there - helped a lot. I think I know ZF1 quite well, at least I should. > Then ZF2 alphas, betas, RCs came out. Then stable. I was lost, once again. > Frustrated with that (and some other things as well), I wanted to quickly > port my ZF1 based blog to ZF2. And then I remembered how I felt when I > learned ZF1 and that eventually I *did* learn it. And I'm confident that the > same will happen with ZF2. I'm a fairly smart guy, I can learn it. Granted, > it will take time, but it's my own time I invest, into my own knowledge. It has to happen . . . ! > The gist of this little trip down memory lane, is that, in my opinion, don't > expect to get the hang of it fast (where fast being days or weeks). Don't > rage quit after a day or two just because some stiff prick called Robert > didn't get to updating that piece of documentation. The ZF2 community and > it's knowledge is still fresh, new. Yes, we'd all wish it would be at the > level where ZF1 is at (it's what, 6-7 years old now?), but we (we, the > community), still have to learn, together, to teach and to be taught, how to > use the new MVC, the voodoo that is the EventManager, the Service locators, > managers and what-have-yous. So, shall I bother the mailing list with every tiny little question - just as some people do? Why don't answers to some questions that have appeared go directly into the documentation? > What I want to say with all this is - have patience, don't get frustrated, > and You *will* get there. Honest! If not, beer's on me ;) I'm quite frustrated at the moment, but I don't think a beer will help! Plus, I want to get there as quickly as possible. Thanks, though, Robert. Best regards, Andreas
