[Product-Developers] Re: How can we win the battle for developers?

[Dylan Jay]

Andy McKay wrote:
> 
> On 11-May-08, at 6:22 AM, Dylan Jay wrote:
>> We could be driving forward but leaving everyone else behind. The more 
>> technology we introduce without replacing and COMPLETELY discarding 
>> old ones, the harder we make it for developers to join and help us and 
>> eventually we run out.
>> Is it a goal to get rid of old ways of doing things like form controller?
>> I think an excellent goal would be to make martins book half the size 
>> it is today. I suspect if another version were released to today it 
>> would have to include more chapters rather than less :(
> 
> I think that's a great goal. Another person to ask about this is anyone 
> who's done Plone training (or of course the God of Training, Mr Burton).
> 
> The list of what a person needs to know is huge and alot of time full of 
> terminology and jargon that really doesn't need to be there. As an 
> exercise (and maybe we should do this) try listing it all out and it 

I'd certainly like to see that list. As a developer that is trying to 
get on top of all this technology it would good just for me to see a 
single index of everything I need to know and why. Perhaps with links to 
  1-2 tutorials for each. And as you say it would make it transparent 
just how unneccerily complex we've made plone.

I'll have a go at creating such a list here soon.

Just a question about where to create such a list. It seems a good 
candidate for a wiki style collaborative effort and also for going into 
plone.org documentation.... rather than say openplans.org.
I can create a tutorial and there is a sharing tab but the review 
process won't allow a living document style documentation. Any suggestions?


> gets v. scary. I thought it was bad 4 years ago, nowadays I don't know 
> if it's gotten better or worse these days. But I do know is that if many 
> developers who use multiple systems or jump between different languages 
> will become familiar with recognized patterns and terminology. Making up 
> lots of new names and ways to do things only creates yet more barriers.
> 
> I agree with many of your points and wanted to express support. For many 
> people choices between x, y and z, etc aren't an advantage. It creates 
> confusion, worry and a fear that whatever they code will be obsolete.

There is psychologically proven effect where someone faced with 2 or 
more equally good options will often pick neither even though they would 
personally be better arbitrarily picking one. It's not logical but it's 
how humans work. I can't remember what this is called but it's written 
about in the book "made to stick".
For a core developer that knows all the technology inside out the 
choices are easy. They might have a favourite, or the know good reasons 
as to why to pick one technology over another. For everyone else that 
follows it's very intimidating.

If plone got rid of all the zope2 ways of doing things. skins, form 
controller etc etc. Is the reason this isn't being considered 
aggresively that it's just that its a huge amount of work or is it 
backwards compatibility?

Dylan.