I'm a noob here and haven't contributed much, but for whatever it's
worth, I have to agree with Morris on this one (and we haven't been
shy about disagreeing on other subjects).

I've been a professional programmer on private and government projects
for 23 years, and I nonetheless found the division here somewhat
"jarring" when I first was told that my questions were not appropriate
in the "non-dev" group, and still do.

TW's very strength comes from each user being able to alter it to meet
his or her needs to whatever degree required, and from the fact that
it is very good at allowing that to happen, and encouraging it. This
distinction doesn't seem to fit at all.

I have worked in many, many environments where the distinction between
"user" and "developer" was complete and unavoidable, for better or
worse, partly because the nature of the tools was such that the skills
required for each were entirely different, and partly because a
hierarchical chain of command was necessary to control the end
product.

This clearly doesn't have to be like that. Anyone can modify anything,
there are no secrets, no chain of command, no risk inherent in letting
people change whatever they like, and no apparent need for a
hierarchy.  Although I don't have much personal stake in it and am not
going to make it a personal campaign, I'm still a bit disappointed to
see the old patterns perpetuated here.

Drawing a line in the sand and saying "this complex and no more- any
more customization than that, and you're a developer" seems curiously
anachronistic in comparison with the open nature of TW itself. I might
have guessed that it was also self-serving on the part of the
developers, creating a developer "clique", but I haven't actually seen
that attitude. Perhaps it's been avoided altogether... but clearly the
artificial separation presents some danger of implied elitism. It's
almost like a small, final vestige of the day when the computer "high-
priests" wearing lab coats and carrying clipboards were the only ones
allowed into the sacred, glass-walled, overly-air-conditioned
"computer rooms" with raised floors.

Not my decision, and I'm not going to go on about it, but liberating
the tools from that nonsense was what the so-called "microcomputer
revolution" of the '70s and '80s was all about. Dealing with FOSS here
in the 21st Century I'd have thought we were WAY past that mindset.


On Jun 17, 12:51 pm, Morris Gray <msg...@symbex.net.au> wrote:
> On Jun 17, 4:41 am, FND <f...@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > Strictly development-related issues should be discussed on the dev group:
> >        http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWikiDev/
>
> > (Despite Morris's recent objections, most of us seem to think this
> > separation is valuable, in many ways.)
>
> With the greatest respect, Fred; 'Most of us..' is subjective to say
> the least. And 'in
> many ways' I'd like to know.  This is not a development issue.  It is
> a simple JavaScript issue that you and Eric, and others, answer with
> competence for the enlightenment of us all who wish to learn on this
> group.
>
> Besides, Morris' comments were tabled in the developers group in hopes
> that there would not become a such a dichotomy. JavaScript is not
> development, it is a mystery needing to be solved by those who are
> struggling to learn.  There is nothing wrong with someone wanting to
> share their discoveries with those who might be at the same level.  In
> fact it should be encouraged.
>
> The users group has been filled with valuable information like this
> since the beginning when I joined it in 2005.  In fact, judging by
> some of the deep technical discussions in the developers group, things
> like this are far less of a distraction here than there.
>
> As evidence I submit the following, (ignore my hot chocolate recipe
> and booking tickets to the theatre :-) things snipped from this group.
>
> http://sidesnips.tiddlyspot.com/index.html
>
> If such matters are to be directed from one group to the other and
> written down, one must ask; how could one delineate at what level of
> complexity and on what subject should this dichotomy take place?
>
> I would hope to be constructive with this distraction. And keep that
> smile, you never know when someone might be falling in love with it:-)
>
> Morris
>
> On Jun 17, 4:41 am, FND <f...@gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > N.B.:
> > Strictly development-related issues should be discussed on the dev group:
> >        http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWikiDev/
>
> > (Despite Morris's recent objections, most of us seem to think this
> > separation is valuable, in many ways.)
>
> > > Is there a list of all  where all the 'stuff in the store' which i can
> > > get? I'm currently trying to get custom fields from the store.
>
> > There's no comprehensive documentation (except for the core code
> > itself), but there are some articles on the community wiki - e.g.
> >      http://tiddlywiki.org/wiki/Dev:Extended_Fields
>
> > -- F.
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