It wasn't my first post on the list, but I will grant you that I am
not a longtime participant -- which is kind of the point. The
message in question was the perspective of someone who hasn't had a
lot of experience with RIFE yet, which means someone who hasn't
spent lots of time asking questions on the mailing list. By the
time you've gotten all your questions answered on the list, you no
longer have the perspective of a new user.
Very good point Steve, it's indeed difficult as an experienced user
or contributor to understand the hurdles and stumbling blocks that a
newcomer experiences. Your comments and suggestions are valuable.
Sadly, they're as easily fixable as tending to a small bug that can
quickly be resolved. However, making everyone in the RIFE community
aware of this really increases the probability that someone will bite
the bullet and kick the documentation into a better shape.
If all the mailing list ever hears is reports from long-time users
about how wonderful everything is and specific questions that
aren't covered in the documentation, there will be no way to know
what the overall experience is like for a new user. I wrote what I
wrote not because I want to upset people or bash RIFE, but because
I actually *like* RIFE and I want it to be successful. If I didn't
care about it at all, I wouldn't have bothered. Was I frustrated at
the time, and therefore not as diplomatic as I might have been?
Yeah, probably. But the fact remains that there is value in an
outsider's evaluation of RIFE's strengths (very clean and
internally consistent conceptual model, fabulous template system,
and helpful user community, to name three) and its shortcomings.
Once again, though, I apologize if I've offended anyone. That is
not the intent at all.
You haven't offended me in any case ... I know out of experience (I
went through a very similar scenario as an initial OpenLaszlo
criticizer who become an advocate) that when you take the trouble to
write out such a detailed blog entry, you're actually motivated into
the problems to be fixed and the technology to improve, otherwise you
wouldn't have bothered at all and just moved on.
Take care,
Geert
--
Geert Bevin
Uwyn "Use what you need" - http://uwyn.com
RIFE Java application framework - http://rifers.org
Music and words - http://gbevin.com
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