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Re: user obstacles to WOLips adoption (was: Apple's Support of WebObjects)
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Re: user obstacles to WOLips adoption (was: Apple's Support of WebObjects)


  • Subject: Re: user obstacles to WOLips adoption (was: Apple's Support of WebObjects)
  • From: Lachlan Deck <email@hidden>
  • Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 07:17:50 +1000

Hi Mike and all,

just some general thoughts...

On 05/05/2007, at 7:12 AM, Mike Schrag wrote:

I like the apple tools. I know WOLips and project WOnder exist for eclipse but I do not like these tools much.
I agree with Kieran completely,

Yes, I can concur with Kieran's experience having also crossed over from Xcode to WOLips this year.


I have to wonder, though, if our prior experience with WebObjects, e.g., knowing what a built app looks like, what ingredients are available etc, made the transition to WOLips far less painful than for someone who isn't familiar with what a WOApp or framework includes or looks like when built.

e.g., when I found the build file placing frameworks or components in weird locations I know how and what to fix - before deployment. It's ensuring these things are ironed out which reduces the pain/ frustration for newcomers.

but for people who just don't like Eclipse/WOLips (compared to Xcode, specifically), what /exactly/ is it that you don't like?

I've some sympathy for those whose first impressions drove them away from WOLips (or more specifically, Eclipse). I didn't initially like what I saw at first (i.e., of Eclipse itself) but decided to persist anyway (thankfully) especially as the raucous (particularly from a vocal few) from the WOLips camp was/is increasingly deafening ;-) I spent some time with Eclipse itself for a few months on another project to get familiar with it and was impressed with a number of things.


Note #1: This is NOT a question about WOBuilder, it's specifically an Xcode vs Eclipse question.

Yep. For most I'd guess that any resistance revolves around the paradigm shift from the Mac user experience to the Eclipse platform (and letting go of any safety ropes) rather than anything specifically in or missing from the WOLips perspectives themselves. I wouldn't put Eclipse in the naturally intuitive category of apps, however. But once you have an understanding of how/what it's doing it's then that you start to reap the benefits.


In the end, it's probably going to come down to the intuitiveness of the tool with regard to the 'simple things'. There's certainly some things about Eclipse itself that are nonsensical. That's true of Xcode also of course.

Also adding more tutorials (e.g., porting Apple's but substituting WOLips idioms) will help greatly.

The things I can think of offhand:

1. Not as snappy as Xcode -- yes, i agree, but it's doing WAY more ... probably not easily fixable, unless you can point to SPECIFIC things that are slow.

Sure. However, I believe any perceived speed loss is more than negated by the overall gains provided by Eclipse Java support. And besides, snappiness is more about optimisation (e.g., with regards to the modeler). Actually, Xcode, in the past, was not well known for its speed with respect for large files anyway.


2. No support for logical model vs physical model of project files -- Eclipse 3.2 DOES have a logical model API, but we're not currently using it in WOLips (and I haven't looked at how to yet). This is on the Perpetually Increasing List of Things To Do (TM).

I do remember noticing this at first. Perhaps that was because I used to organise components in some pseudo hierarchy. I don't notice this now. Perhaps it'd be nice to organise components artificially, but the Related Files view helps with this anyway.


3. User Interface doesn't "feel OS Xish" -- This is leveled a lot, but I'm REALLY curious to find out SPECIFICS of what people mean by it. One of the most noticeable ones is that tabs don't look like aqua tabs -- this is also on my list, but potentially harder to change because Eclipse tabs can do more than aqua tabs.

Eclipse 3.3 has a nicer look/feel actually. So I wouldn't worry about that too much for now. Only current downer is that some WOLips things don't work in 3.3 as we've talked about already. So I'm currently having to switch back to 3.2 for WO apps - but this is a known issue.


What else is wonky?

In general, as mentioned above, I think the off-putting factor for some newcomers comes down to Eclipse inclination towards 'making some simple things - hard'. i.e., some things just seem to run counter to intuition. Perhaps WOLips, to some extent, just inherits any such peculiarities.


But the onus is on us to just keep an eye out for what things ought to be made more intuitive as well as keeping the wiki up to date (and, as mentioned above, more tuts).

-- Generic look/feel, paradigm shift --
Here's a comical but simple example of my first impression tinkering with Eclipse (not WOLips)...


'Seemingly simple task': create a simple ant-based project at desired dir.
Xcode: File > New Project... > Ant-based [Library | Application]. Choose location. Voila. Easy. NetBeans has similar simplicity on this front.


Eclipse: No option to create an ant-based project by default (apart from creating a Java project from an existing build file - but insists on not keeping your project as is, but creating a dir in the workspace and copying your build file rather than keeping the one that's under svn). Ugh. Eclipse 3.3 has improved ever so slightly on this by referencing the external build file - but still won't treat your project dir in the external location as the project dir (for the sake of resources as so forth). That's just stupid.
---------------------------------------


Okay, so that's an Eclipse Java project thing and not WOLips related - but you get the point. It's the little things like these that should be simple that are illogically difficult, unintuitive, or not even possible. But then again, there's things that it does which are really nice too which allow me to put up with its warts.

In the end, people have to take the plunge and get familiar with Eclipse itself if you're going to use WOLips. Familiarity with ant and/or maven will be a bonus.

The main point is, while Eclipse offers a great deal of flexibility and power - it's exactly these things that are the additional hurdles for those crossing over from something like Xcode which is reasonably straight-forward. The newcomer doesn't have to fiddle with anything to create a project, build it, and so on. At least, in the days when I crossed over to WOLips I had to fiddle with the build file to get it working; perhaps this has been ironed out now. I'd have to create a brand new project to see what hurdles may still exist.

What will make things simpler for the newbie?
- keep an eye out for regularly newbie questions and look at ways of making things more intuitive
- perhaps providing any project templates for newbies that ensure everything's 'ready to go' (e.g., includes dirs for Components, WebServerResources etc)
- perhaps provide checkboxes for the various options (e.g., 'split install', webservice options, etc) which adjust the build.properties appropriately.
- tutorials. I can certainly help here when I've some time.


The wiki is a great help nowadays - so I think the hurdles have been reduced reasonably, but there's always more to do on that as with everything...

Intuitiveness/documentation are the key ingredients I'd say.

with regards,
--

Lachlan Deck


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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: user obstacles to WOLips adoption (was: Apple's Support of WebObjects)
      • From: Mike Schrag <email@hidden>
References: 
 >Apple's Support of WebObjects (From: Don Lindsay <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Apple's Support of WebObjects (From: Kieran Kelleher <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Apple's Support of WebObjects (From: Mike Schrag <email@hidden>)

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