I second everything Fidel mentioned, but I have a slightly different
view on why people are hesitant to try Leo:
Leo represents a completely new paradigm for editing, programming, and
interacting with data. Well, not completely new, but for many the
surface level seems extremely foreign.
Leo is primarily a tool aimed at python, at the moment, as Leo is
written in it, and it's internal scripting support only works with
python (and most likely won't work with much else any time soon... but
that gives me another idea). However, the paradigm it exposes to the
user is far more like Lisp (homoiconicity via the Node and Tree
structure) and Smalltalk (.leo files save *most* of your programming
environment's state, including data). This is a huge cognitive leap for
people only accustomed to more imperative languages like Python... Leo
asks a lot of its users up front, but offers great returns on investment.
But, to bring it home, I think that Fidel's points are very apropos.
Leo's initial user experience needs to be much more newbie-friendly. I
unfortunately don't see a way to reduce Leo's learning curve from weeks
(certainly took me month or two to get in the swing of things) to hours,
but Information Cities certainly could help.
-->Jake
On 9/24/2013 5:51 AM, Fidel N wrote:
IMO the biggest problem is that it takes too much time to learn Leo.
When I say Learn Leo, I don't mean Learn or understand the code, I
mean learn what you can do with it.
My true feeling is that Leo is like an infinite ground, where amazing
things can be built. Some of Leo users are already doing incredible
things with it.
But when you are new to Leo, you first have to learn the physics of
this new world (Leo Code), and then develop your own engineering
(Useful outlines structures) for building your "information cities".
I consider myself being in the "develop engineering" phase, and I have
been leaving bread crumbs all the way.
I plan to do great things with those bread crumbs, and Im close to
release that (around one month hopefully!) but thats another topic.
Possibly, experienced leo users dont share this view since they
learned Leo physics and engineering long time ago, but those look like
a big wall when starting with Leo.
So Leo files with samples would be like delivering this infinite
ground with some pre-built "information cities" so people can begin
using them right away.
Ideally, those leo files should guide the user on how to build new
structures, and in the end, be able to lead him to generate new
structures.
My (again, personal) feeling is that the current policy right now is:
Let him read the code to understand how it works. So only the users
willing to go through the (1) Learn the physics then (2) develop your
own way to develop "information cities" can actually use leo and use
its potential.
Since most of the internet users are the ones who need the cities
already built for them to use software, thats the chunk we are loosing.
On the other hand, coming to why programmers (who have the skills to
go through Leo learning process) dont come and use it, its the same story:
Before coming into Leo, what I was doing was actually search for an
IDE that I liked. I went through several, and in the ones I "liked"
the most, it would take you around two hours learning for having a
folder with your scripts and being able to edit them.
With Leo, you first have to study and understand what are directives,
how do they work, how everything interacts in the tree, etc. It takes
more than two hours. I would say that it can be measured in weeks or
months until you really know what you are doing.
And here is where the "information cities" come again.
If Leo were provided with an interactive Leo file, which would guide
you into:
- Importing your scripts to Leo
- Clearly create folders and move/manage your files there
- Suggest directives for those files.
- Etc.
That Leo file would save the new user many many hours and he would
instantly start using leo, so we would help him skip the first wall
and begin to get interested.
So then again, this is why I still see that Leo default workbook
should be dispatched with a Leo cheatsheet
<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuJMXJ1q6FRUdEdtVDVVRnZMYnBacGlZNmt5SkhETGc#gid=0>
open by default, so new users begin to play with it as soon as they
open Leo.
On Tuesday, September 24, 2013 11:08:08 AM UTC+2, Edward K. Ream wrote:
Imo, the answer is simple: resistance to change. Programmers have
a lot invested in their tools. To be worth serious consideration,
Leo must offer something much better. Furthermore, most
programmers likely see moving to Leo as risky. Using Emacs or vim
will seem like a much safer choice.
That's why @shadow, @auto and (eventually) compatibility mode are
so important. They offer ways for programmers to migrate to Leo
gradually, without affecting their programming team.
Edward
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