Re: All these newbie questions that are answered by documentation
Re: All these newbie questions that are answered by documentation
- Subject: Re: All these newbie questions that are answered by documentation
- From: Donald Brown <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 14:47:11 -0600
Or maybe (5) there should be a mailing for people getting up on cocoa, where
those who remember what it was like trying to figuring out all this stuff
will help and those who only want to delete with the elite cocoa users won't
be bothered with the riffraff.
Donald Brown
C++ Newbie who obviously knows nothing about the Mac
on 11/9/2001 2:31 PM, Erik M. Buck at email@hidden wrote:
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It seems to me that most of the newbie questions that are easily answered by
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documentation and keep recurring in this forum and others are due to 4
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general causes:
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1) People seemingly refuse to look at the super class's documentation
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2) Sherlock sucks so bad that people will not use it to search the
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documentation and newbies can not be bothered to use MTLibrarian or another
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search tool.
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3) There is a lack of good concepts and overview documentation. Newbies
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refuse to just dive in and read the details about classes. They seem to
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want broad overviews that at least tell them where to look. Combined with
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the fact that newbies don't even know the terminology to use when searching,
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they can not find anything.
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4) Familiarity with C++ and MFC has warped their minds to the point that
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they just can not understand a dynamic language like Objective-C and
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flexible frameworks like the Application Kit. A refusal to change mindsets
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locks people out of Cocoa.
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I see several solutions:
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For 1), Apple could include every method from every superclass in the
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documentation for every class. That would only expand the size of the
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documentation by a factor of 5 or so, but then people would not have to look
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in more than one place as often.
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For 2), Apple could/should just scrap the shitty Sherlock and revive Digital
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Librarian or something better. People could also start using google.
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Google is very handy for searching Apple's on-line documentation.
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For 3), more is better, but most of the newbies posting have never bothered
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to read Object Oriented Programming and Objective-C. I don't know how we
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can expect these people to read any kind of overview if they are not willing
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to even learn the language of the frameworks.
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For 4) If people will not change and/or can not see the advantages of a
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different way of doing things then I don't think Cocoa will ever appeal to
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them. I suggest that we forward all such people to the Carbon lists.
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>
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--
Donald Brown
email@hidden
http://www.eamontales.com
We have met the enemy and he is us - Pogo