Hi Jeff,
I read with interest your comments on the above. I think Rick Reumann has
done a great example recently of a 'walkthrough' which I presume you'll have
seen:
>> Struttin' with Struts:
>>
>> http://www.reumann.net/do/struts/main
I agree entirely with your comments - I'm still learning some bits of struts
myself. What I've found really useful in the past has been Microsoft's
Knowledge Base articles which you may/may not have used on
msdn.microsoft.com. Of late they seem to have become less relevant as it has
been much easier to just view the source with struts and related products -
what a great idea: Open Source Software.
I've found Vic's basebeans classes really useful also in understanding other
complete approaches to building a struts application and I really like Vic's
basebeans approach - it has some excellent merits in terms of performance
and certainly speed of development.
We have *loads* of 'Knowledge Base' articles we have prepared mainly on
(Debian) Linux, Tomcat, Struts (& tiles, etc.) and quite a few other
(largely unrelated) topics. Most of these are actually on paper at the
moment, though. I'm putting together a similar example to Vic (Cekvenich)'s
basicPortal but more for the content rather than the approach (the code for
this is mainly Vic's). This can be hosted somewhere - on of our servers
initially - but with public access in case anybody else is interested.
Here is an extract from a previous mail I sent out on 8th November 2002:
>> Sorry to perpetuate something that could be construed to be OT... but I'd
>> like to chip-in with my 2p worth if that's OK. As relatively very new
users
>> to Struts we have found getting up-to-speed with Struts more difficult
than
>> we originally envisaged - probably due to being used to being spoon-fed
over
>> the years and not used-to really grown-up technologies like Struts, i.e.
we
>> have considered MVC before but it was easier just to "get the job done" -
MS
>> VB/ASP/.NET makes it very easy to get a solution up-and-running but we
have
>> always found we pay for this in maintenance times later!
>>
>> Having now committed to going "Struts" 1.1 - what we find we're missing
are
>> simple, complete and specifically targeted HowTo's or a Knowledge Base of
>> worked examples on specific topics. Yes, javadoc is very useful - source
>> (yippee!) is even more useful, user guide is detailed but has - clearly
>> every possible option and it is not always clear which options we need in
>> the (usually) simple solution that we're attempting to find.
>>
>> OK, google search is useful, apache.struts newsgroup even more useful and
>> other great articles such as IBM Developer Works and other sites, e.g.
>> Cedric's articles on tiles. However - well written it is not always clear
to
>> which version they refer and these complete articles are more like mini
>> books and obviously take a significant amount to maintain and can
sometimes
>> quickly get out-of-date and cause a great deal of confusion to novices
such
>> as we consider ourselves to be. This list has been extremely useful - the
>> replies, to be honest are staggering in their excellent quality. I always
>> feel a bit (honoured and at the same time) distressed that authors (just
>> speaking from limited personal experience) Cedric and Craig (obviously
and
>> others) have read and taken time to post a response - these people must
be
>> extremely busy just developing the core product to be answering questions
>> that must seem fundamental. OK, I'm sure they don't mind but there must
be a
>> better way...
>>
>> We've started compiling internally, for our own use - our own KB
articles -
>> to be honest this is just a simple tile template (cheers, Cedric) with
areas
>> such as "Sensible Title", "Summary", "Product" (struts, tomcat, jikes,
>> debian), "Version(s)" covered (usually common tile) as far as we can
tell,
>> "More Information" (body text) with file links, "Other Resources and
>> References" (links to other articles).
>>
>> Ok, not rocket science - but this has been extremely useful to us. I gave
up
>> 2 years ago trying to remember everything (anything :->) and this is
always
>> my first port-of-call as it's easily searchable ... but this could be
>> extended to comprise summarised information from these lists - OK this
would
>> be manual - but honestly how many would we need for simple repeated stuff
>> for Struts = 50-100?
>>
>> e.g. mail from Mark Zeltser ("Can forward action point to tiles
>> definition?") - ok this can be got from the user guide, Cedric's article,
>> Wellie Chao's article (IBM), probably from this list in a previous post -
>> has solicited 9 responses. Unsuprisingly this really foxed us for a few
>> hours - we realised in the end we could only do this via an action but a
>> simple howto to cover this and include some info on Global Forwards would
>> answer this question and the potential next one "How do I create an
action
>> to do this?" with an example of it in use would be an excellent
searchable
>> resource for everyone and a real jumpstart for anyone just getting-into
>> tiles.
>>
>> The questions would really be ... where could it be hosted, any articles
>> would need to be vetted but where better than this list, who decides on
>> which howtos to write. OK, resources like theserverside (and many others)
>> already does this kind of thing but most I've read are more like mini
books
>> again - nice to read - I've printed > 5,000 sheets of paper (to read in
the
>> bath) to get up-to-speed over the last 6 months - hence our reason for
>> compiling our own KB.
>>
>> Ok, I've probably bored you now - any comments or anyone else have any
>> comments?
Ok, I appreciate this is different to what you're proposing but I'd be
prepared to spend an hour a day composing articles on common threads that
keep on occurring - once this is up-and-running - admittedly on the stuff I
understand on this list - which is about 80%.
I'm trying not to duplicate stuff already done - but as a newbie I must
state the volume of articles out there is vast and sometimes I'm just trying
to get an answer to a question which has been asked before. Yes - I know the
mail archives can easily be used for this and there is much more to be
learned in following a thread of discussion. When we have an answer - we do
try to write this up in a way that may be re-usable - admittedly for our own
internal use - but can anyone else see any value in this?
Any comments appreciated - including "don't reinvent the wheel"...
H.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Smith [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 07 March 2003 20:12
To: Struts Users Mailing List
Subject: Re: [OT] Learning Curve Management or Confusions of a Newbie
Having started the thread, I would be cowardly indeed if I did not offer my
time. But being a newbie, my efforts are probably best focused on vetting
the implemented solution, rather than writing it. (I just don't know enough
about all this stuff yet to contribute much there.)
Jefficus
----- Original Message -----
From: "Van Riper, Mike" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Struts Users Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 11:56 AM
Subject: RE: [OT] Learning Curve Management or Confusions of a Newbie
> I think the Java Tutorial "trail" approach would be a good fit for this:
>
> http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/reallybigindex.html
>
> For example, there already is a "Creating a GUI with JFC/Swing" trail:
>
> http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/index.html
>
> Similar to this in concept, there could be a "Building a webapp with
Struts"
> trail. Granted, this may not belong in the "reallybigindex" maintained by
> Sun because Struts is under the Apache umbrella. However, it might be time
> to setup a "reallybigindex" for an online Apache Tutorial comprised of
> trails similar to the way trails are used in Sun's online Java Tutorial.
>
> Specifically with respect to learning Struts though, there is already a
> significant amount of online learning material to be found directly or
> indirectly from here:
>
> http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/learning.html
>
> Still, I do see the value in having trails that organize some of the
online
> information in various trails to follow through this wealth of
information.
> I'm not sure how to go about initiating such a project at Apache, but, I
am
> willing to volunteer some time to contribute to the creation of a
"Building
> a webapp with Struts" trail. Does anyone else think this would be a good
> idea? Anyone else interested in volunteering some time to build a Struts
> trail? If there is enough interest, I would be glad to setup a separate
> mailing list for further discussion among interested volunteers on
creation
> of this trail.
>
> Thanks,
> Mike Van Riper
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Simon Kelly [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 1:01 AM
> > To: Struts Users Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [OT] Learning Curve Management or Confusions of a Newbie
> >
> >
> > Jeff you are not alone in this. I've been at this for six
> > months and have
> > gone through pretty much the same set of problems. The thing
> > with what you
> > are suggesting (and this is only my opinion) is, "Who will do
> > it *AND* look
> > after it?". The trouble is (and I have found this through
> > searching the
> > net) the shear volume of papers, documents, examples and
> > postings (150+ per
> > day) that would have to be referenced and collected to make
> > this of any use
> > to people. And I have to say, I DO NOT want the job :-)
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Simon
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Jeff Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: "Struts Users Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 9:05 AM
> > Subject: [OT] Learning Curve Management or Confusions of a Newbie
> >
> >
> > I have to confess, I'm a newbie. I've been a C/C++ programmer
> > for 20 years,
> > but after dinking around for a few months with ASP, VBScript,
> > PHP and a few
> > other technologies, I decided that Java was the language to
> > build my web
> > apps in.
> >
> > A month ago I was completely cold. Didn't know the first
> > thing about any of
> > this stuff. But I knew I wanted to learn it, so off I went,
> > marching into
> > the high weeds. First I had to learn Java. Then came servlets
> > and JSPs and
> > Tomcat. And along that path I also had to absorb Ant. And
> > JUnit. And Log4J.
> > And then there was a bunch of time lost exploring
> > NetBeans/Eclipse/WebSphere
> > before settling on JEdit as my environment of choice.
> >
> > Then came Struts, and all the various taglibs. An experiment
> > with Cayenne.
> > And Cactus. And god-knows what else I've explored.
> >
> > And through it all, I am continually amazed at the strength
> > and breadth of
> > the resources and support available. And equally frustrated
> > by it. I can
> > never remember where I saw a particular bit of information. So when I
> > finally learn enough to understand what Ted was talking about in his
> > monograph on Connection Pooling, I can't remember where I saw it.
> >
> > And when I want to learn enough about EJBs to figure out if I
> > need to care
> > about them, or if they are relevant to my planned project, I
> > have to wade
> > through another day of voluminous coverage before I have
> > enough of a handle
> > on what they are to make some intelligent guesses about where
> > to look next.
> >
> > My point is that I believe the Apache/Java/Struts/...
> > universe is quickly
> > reaching a point where its very breadth is becoming a barrier
> > to entry for
> > people who don't have a couple of months to devote to bootstrapping
> > themselves.
> >
> > Is there any thought being given to creating a higher-level resource
> > interface that could serve as a single point of reference for
> > all things
> > Apache? (I realize that "all things java" would be going way
> > too far.) As a
> > simple solution, if every document in the Apache
> > infrastructure had a meta
> > tag that listed the questions answered by the document, then a very
> > powerful, automated FAQ could be maintained. And such a
> > system would make it
> > much easier (I believe) to find things quickly than simply
> > searching the
> > site for key words.
> >
> > This may not be the best (or only) solution, but I do believe
> > that for all
> > the very specific support and discussions there are, there is
> > really very
> > little over-view material to assist newcomers or people looking for
> > information outside of their core area.
> >
> > Or maybe I'm the only one who feels overwhelmed by it all. :-)
> >
> > Jefficus
> >
> >
> >
>
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