My only objection to a non-virtual book is how quickly things
change. Chuck Hill's book on WebObjects is brilliant. It's the best
book I've read on the subject by far. But many aspects of it are
already out of date with respect to the best way to do things. For
example, my company just muddled through over a week of development
time to implement comprehensive localization for a client's site,
following the information in PWO as an example. Then we learned at
WOWODC that project wonder now has the exact functionality that we
implemented, although probably done better because more people have
worked on it longer. I haven't refactored our code to use it yet,
but I'll bet we could have saved days if we had known about the
project wonder code. This kind of thing happens all too often, and
it would be nice if, embarking on a new undertaking, there were one
place to go and feel very confident that you could get the best, up
to date information on a subject. To me, that's better than googling
something and then sifting through half a dozen sites or more of
varying quality on the subject. But judging from all the email posts
earlier today on the subject, that may be an impractical utopia.
On Jun 14, 2007, at 2:10 PM, Michael Warner wrote:
The amount of brain power in the WO community is staggering. This
was confirmed when I attended the WOWODC session last Sunday and
listened to the presenters. Yet, IMESHO, there is something bogus
about asking others to write documentation for you (see post
below). I HATE writing documentation and I am as guilty as the
next person of not doing it. Nevertheless, the difficulties in
one's initial approach to WO, Project Wonder, etc., and
difficulties in understanding and learning how to apply its (their)
most powerful features are its central weakness. And this
weakness is in turn based on a problem that is endemic to Apple and
WO -- the lack of the kind of documentation that clearly lays out
the why, when and how of the WO way.
Clearly written expository text can make practically all of WO and
WO-related methods (including when and how to use them) accessible
to almost anyone. The elegant design aspects of WO could similarly
be revealed by way of thorough, extensive text. I argued a couple
of years ago that a multiple volume non-virtual book would be the
best way to go, because in taking on such a project, the authors
would have to develop a comprehensive sense of how all the specific
bits of information fit together. Moreover (perhaps I am too old
school) there is a public-ness and permanence (of historical value)
to a book, a concrete thing that one can point others to, as a
authoritative and centralized source. Just imagine a 2-3 volume
set sitting on the shelf of every Barnes and Noble. Most
responses to my suggestion at that time were negative, mostly
based on the idea the such a project was impractical, which it
probably is.
If I wanted to wax cynical, I would say that making WO available
to a wider audience is not a good idea -- people who were not smart
enough to 'just get it' (without documentation and examples) , or
not stubborn enough to approach things through extensive trial and
error (my approach), and who were unable to appreciate its
brilliance and elegance, might start using it -- the secrets of
the inner sanctum would be revealed widely and soon all sorts of
bad things might follow.
A more/less ? practical suggestion might be this -- require as part
of professional practice/protocol, that anyone who is developing
applications like WO or who is writing methods to enhance WO be
required to pair with a professional technical writer who's job it
is to writie documentation. It may well be that the developers
themselves may not be the best people to write the docs -- besides,
they won't do it anyway, as history has shown.
Mike Warner, curmudgeon at large
On Jun 14, 2007, at 8:57 AM, Steven Mark McCraw wrote:
My understanding is that the webobjects wiki book (http://
en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:WebObjects) is trying to become
the central point of documentation for WebObjects that people post
to. There's already a ton of info there, but we all know it could
use a ton more. At WOWODC, when the experts panel was asked what
could be done to help with project wonder, this is what they came
back with immediately: We need people writing documentation, and
this is the place to put it. Even if it's bad, there are so many
people watching it that bad info will get edited out quickly.
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Webobjects-dev mailing list ([email protected])
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/webobjects-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
This email sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
