| 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 But many aspects of it are already out of date with respect to the best way to do things.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.
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