OK, I'll try to be more helpful in my criticism... Having finally found wicket-stuff, I was able to spend some time looking at the code that addresses my needs (hibernate integration most specifically), and I'm feeling a little more comfortable. More importantly, I'm going to have to write sample/framework code and documentation for my team in order to bring them up to speed. If I do so, I will certainly be contributing them back to be integrated into the documentation in some way. Off the top of my head, here are some of the things I would like to see:
A suite of examples that build upon each other in gradual steps, introducing concepts in a logical order in order to build an increasingly complex application in an attempt to reduce the slope of the learning curve. Ideally, the final examples should be a fairly usable application, using all the functionality available and demonstrating best practices. That's basically the structure of the "... in Action" books from Manning, whgch has always worked well for me. Not trivial to generate, of course, but it seems like whoever does would be a srong candidate for authorship of "WIcket in Action" which is a nice resume bullet point. The widespread use of anonymous classes in all of the example code make life needlessly difficult for newcomers. I'm still having trouble understanding how and when some of the model objects get updated, although the wicket-stuff code started to clear some of that up. Personally, I think the use of anonymous classes should be saved until after a reasonable understanding of the functionality has been achieved. Database integration is fundamental to the vast majority of web applications, and yet it is totally unaddressed by the current documentation. I kept finding reference to tight integration with Hibernate, but could never find examples or even a description of it. That stuff should be put front and center in the core docs. It was the piece I started looking for first, in order to evaluate wicket, and I was unable to find it for days. The nice thing is that if examples use a fairly generic DAO abstraction, it should be possible to provide nice examples that aren't dependant upon any particular suite of technologies. Just describe the DAO interface and then use those them to access standard POJOs. Obviously, most folks will probably be doing a Hibernate/Spring thing, so addressing best practices for combin ing those technologies with Wicket is enormously valuable, but it should be secondary to providing generic best practices for dealing with DAO access, detachability, etc. One of the issues I'm still having is that I know nothing about Spring. Since every example I've found uses Spring inversion of control, they can be difficult to comprehend the flow. By using a generic DAO interface, it would be easier to understand the relevant wicket concepts, and I could then separate hibernate from spring and wicket. Another fundamental change - make sure ALL of the examples are listed on the website, even if they don't all have nice descriptive documents. I read through the examples on the home page (hellow world, navomatic, guestbook, and stockquote), and assumed that that was all that was available from the examples. I didn't happen to click on the link to see the wicket-examples in live action, which would have exposed all the other available examples, including the all important component reference. There is no direct link to the component reference from the wicket home page. You have to click on a link describe merely as 'live action' versions of the examples listed on the same page, in order to discover it. In my case, I didn't discover it until I installed the wicket-examples into my own container and pointed my browser at it. The descriptive documentation for wicket-stuff really needs to be improved. I hate to say it, but I'm pretty old school. I edit my java code in vi in a terminal window. I use CVS from the command line. I compile my projects with ant. I can't stand eclipse (it just eats up desktop real estate and forces me to use the mouse all the time). As such, randomly discovering that all of the instructions on the wicket-stuff website were incorrect is more than a little difficult and frustrating. Just cleaning up the instructinos and providing a decent description of what I can expect to fnd for my trouble would be REALLY handy. I still don't know what the wicket quickstart project is or does. I don't know use any of those IDEs and there is very little descriptive text. If I knew what it provided, I might motivate to install eclipse to check it out, but given the lack of usefulness of other examples and documentation, I figured it would be similar, so I never bothered to investigate that far, since it would have been a large PITA. Actually, I just watched the video and it doesn't provide any info about writing wicket code, beyond how to insert a label, which is covered by "hello, world." So, If I winds up using wicket, docs I'm likely to generate for my team would include 1. hibernate/spring integration (separate from wicket) 2. hibernate/spring/wicket best practices 3. appropriate use of anonymous classes 4. How to use wicket in a command line environment. - maybe I'll try to create a quick start for the 'terminal' ide. 5. Some kind opf guide to writing new components 6. Some descriptive (non-javadoc) text about how to use each component. What should the model object look like, best practices for use, etc. But I wouldn't expect these docs anytime soon, and I'll be building a team and constructing a product first and foremost. Everything else is secondary to that. That said, I could obviously use an engineer with some solid wicket experience on the team. Is there anyone out there who'd be interested in a senior software engineer/architect position at a small, well funded startup in the Santa Monica area? There is a strong (optional) potential for eventual relocation to Europe (Munich) if intereted. I'm happy to provide more details to interested parties. A strong background in scalable, database driven web site development is what I'm looking for. Someone with experience in high performance server applications in general would be extra nice. --sam On 11/17/05, Martijn Dashorst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 11/17/05, Scott Sauyet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > It's not that the documentaion doesn't exist. Much does, and much of it > > is pretty good. But it's rather difficult to find. > > I'll try to address this issue soon, preferably this week, but I have > some obligations that are just as important publicity wise for Wicket. > > Martijn > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the JBoss Inc. Get Certified Today > Register for a JBoss Training Course. Free Certification Exam > for All Training Attendees Through End of 2005. For more info visit: > http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idv28&alloc_id845&opclick > _______________________________________________ > Wicket-user mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wicket-user > ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the JBoss Inc. Get Certified Today Register for a JBoss Training Course. Free Certification Exam for All Training Attendees Through End of 2005. For more info visit: http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idv28&alloc_id845&op=click _______________________________________________ Wicket-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wicket-user
