Re: user obstacles to WOLips adoption (was: Apple's Support of WebObjects)
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
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Webobjects-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden