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Posted to user@turbine.apache.org by Todd O'Bryan <to...@mac.com> on 2004/02/10 09:59:01 UTC
Documentation Help
It looks to me like Turbine is incredibly powerful, but woefully
under-documented. Assuming that it's possible to start slowly (which is
kind of a necessity if you want to write good documentation; you have
to be able to lead people from knowing nothing to knowing a lot in
small, easily understandable steps), it seems like writing the
documentation would be a great boon to getting people to use the
framework.
I teach a class called Special Topics in Computer Science, and I have
17 high school seniors who I can basically get to do whatever I think
is important. We've been trying to develop a web application and it's
been a terrible slog uphill, so if adopting Turbine would speed that
up, we could easily develop documentation to share with the project.
But first I have to figure out if Turbine would speed that up, or just
be another thing to learn that we'd never get through.
Thanks,
Todd
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Re: Documentation Help
Posted by Gerry Duprey <gd...@Schools-OPEN.com>.
Howdy,
Unfortunatly, I don't. There really weren't that many materials as I tend to
have a rough outline (a little more items than my previous email, but less of
the actual details) and present in a more verbal form. Seems to work best for
me and the staff. But leaves little artifact :-(
Gerry
Todd O'Bryan wrote:
> And now for the real question, do you still have the materials you gave
> to your developers? :-)
>
> Seriously, though, this sounds like a great layout of concepts. My kids
> already know Velocity and MySQL, so they could do #1 and get started on
> #2. Unfortunately, I have them for 90 minutes every other day, and I
> don't have 2 weeks to learn Turbine on my own to guide them, and they
> have even less patience than I have for banging my head against a wall
> of unknown thickness.
>
> I guess I'll try to work through your steps myself...
>
> Thanks,
> Todd
>
> On Feb 10, 2004, at 10:59 AM, Gerry Duprey wrote:
>
>> Howdy,
>>
>> I think such a project would be grand, but it will probably take a
>> while for your kids to get up to speed on Turbine.
>>
>> From my experience, I'd say the #1 problem is being confronted with
>> what seems like a nearly endless series of new technologies to learn
>> all at once before you can do anything at all. It can be so
>> overwhelming that you can start to feel confused and uncertain about
>> everything because you start to believe you know nothing and every
>> uncertainty will turn out to be some other new technology you may not
>> have even known existed before.
>>
>> The TDK can be a big help, but in my opinion, it still requires too
>> steep a learning curve before you can understand what is going on.
>>
>> Off the top of my head, I would suggest an incremental introduction
>>
>> 1) Introduce folks to Velocity in a standalone context (no Turbine).
>> This is a great tool and pretty easy to use. Literally, a 20 line
>> program can provide a great testing environment with it.
>>
>> Being easy to learn, you'll soon feel confident about one of the core
>> technologies of Turbine. Once you do, you feel like you have some
>> anchor to start with. That can be an amazingly important psychological
>> boost when confronting everthing else.
>>
>> 2) Introduce using Turbine without Torque. You can make Turbine work
>> with no database at all (though you don't get all the security
>> services). I find the database thing, right up front, to be
>> problematic. Either the person does not have or is not ready to use a
>> database (in which case this seems like additional work/noise to the
>> learning process) or the user has a different database technology
>> (like hibernate) and you get bogged down on trying to either adapt
>> Torque or trying to figure out how to replace it with hibernate (both
>> moderately advanced topics). Skip it now, introduce it (and related
>> services like security) later.
>>
>> 3) Introduce a serious stripped down version of the TDK with no
>> auto-build, torque, implemented apps (the user manager stuff). Just
>> the Turbine jar (and dependencies), a simple
>> TurbineResources.properties file and a few templates (1 or 2 max of
>> layout, page, navigator and screen) the developer can understand and
>> tinker with (and one action class and one or two screen classes).
>> Don't get into how Turbine handles looking for various things (i.e.
>> the Default processing and such).
>>
>> The huge benefit here is the drastic reduction in file system "noise".
>> When there are hundreds of files, it's tough to know what is
>> important and what is not (yes, eventually, it's all important, but
>> it's too much all at once). When simplified, folks can more easily
>> become comfortable and confident.
>>
>> 4) After they are able to produce some screens/actions and are feeling
>> confident, introduce them to the next level concepts like where
>> Turbine looks for files (i.e. Default vs a named file, etc) and some
>> simple configuartion changes (location of templates, etc).
>>
>> 5) Next you can start hitting on the rest of the ideas (services,
>> security, database, etc) one at a time, building each on the last.
>> People can feel confident they know the basics of Turbine and can be
>> comfortable picking and choosing which technoligies they tackle next
>> (don't need a job scheduler, they can just skip it). This is where
>> the real power the Turbine services comes in - you can pick and choose
>> what you need/want and ignore the rest.
>>
>> After taking quite a while to get somewhat comfortable with Turbine, I
>> used this approach to ramp up the rest of my developers. It took me
>> about two weeks of really working to understand as much of Turbine as
>> I thought I had to know to develop apps. I was able to get my staff
>> trained on it in about 3 days once I was able to streamline the process.
>>
>> Turbine is really a great web development environment and we are
>> already cranking out code and pages with more functionality and easier
>> than we had thought possible. A good, simple, intro tutorial that
>> builds in stages on a very simple core set of files could very well
>> propel Turbine into a top spot for web development.
>>
>> Just some thoughts,
>>
>> Gerry
>>
>> Todd O'Bryan wrote:
>>
>>> It looks to me like Turbine is incredibly powerful, but woefully
>>> under-documented. Assuming that it's possible to start slowly (which
>>> is kind of a necessity if you want to write good documentation; you
>>> have to be able to lead people from knowing nothing to knowing a lot
>>> in small, easily understandable steps), it seems like writing the
>>> documentation would be a great boon to getting people to use the
>>> framework.
>>> I teach a class called Special Topics in Computer Science, and I have
>>> 17 high school seniors who I can basically get to do whatever I think
>>> is important. We've been trying to develop a web application and it's
>>> been a terrible slog uphill, so if adopting Turbine would speed that
>>> up, we could easily develop documentation to share with the project.
>>> But first I have to figure out if Turbine would speed that up, or
>>> just be another thing to learn that we'd never get through.
>>> Thanks,
>>> Todd
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: turbine-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
>>> For additional commands, e-mail: turbine-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
>>
>>
>> --
>> Gerry Duprey
>> ________________________________________
>> SchoolsOPEN, LLC
>> 123 North Ashley, Suite 120
>> Ann Arbor, MI 48104
>> Phone (877) 483-1944 Ext. 401
>> Fax (734) 661-0819
>>
>> Visit us Online at www.Schools-OPEN.com
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: turbine-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
>> For additional commands, e-mail: turbine-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
>>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: turbine-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: turbine-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
--
Gerry Duprey
________________________________________
SchoolsOPEN, LLC
123 North Ashley, Suite 120
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Phone (877) 483-1944 Ext. 401
Fax (734) 661-0819
Visit us Online at www.Schools-OPEN.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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Re: Documentation Help
Posted by Todd O'Bryan <to...@mac.com>.
And now for the real question, do you still have the materials you gave
to your developers? :-)
Seriously, though, this sounds like a great layout of concepts. My kids
already know Velocity and MySQL, so they could do #1 and get started on
#2. Unfortunately, I have them for 90 minutes every other day, and I
don't have 2 weeks to learn Turbine on my own to guide them, and they
have even less patience than I have for banging my head against a wall
of unknown thickness.
I guess I'll try to work through your steps myself...
Thanks,
Todd
On Feb 10, 2004, at 10:59 AM, Gerry Duprey wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I think such a project would be grand, but it will probably take a
> while for your kids to get up to speed on Turbine.
>
> From my experience, I'd say the #1 problem is being confronted with
> what seems like a nearly endless series of new technologies to learn
> all at once before you can do anything at all. It can be so
> overwhelming that you can start to feel confused and uncertain about
> everything because you start to believe you know nothing and every
> uncertainty will turn out to be some other new technology you may not
> have even known existed before.
>
> The TDK can be a big help, but in my opinion, it still requires too
> steep a learning curve before you can understand what is going on.
>
> Off the top of my head, I would suggest an incremental introduction
>
> 1) Introduce folks to Velocity in a standalone context (no Turbine).
> This is a great tool and pretty easy to use. Literally, a 20 line
> program can provide a great testing environment with it.
>
> Being easy to learn, you'll soon feel confident about one of the core
> technologies of Turbine. Once you do, you feel like you have some
> anchor to start with. That can be an amazingly important psychological
> boost when confronting everthing else.
>
> 2) Introduce using Turbine without Torque. You can make Turbine work
> with no database at all (though you don't get all the security
> services). I find the database thing, right up front, to be
> problematic. Either the person does not have or is not ready to use a
> database (in which case this seems like additional work/noise to the
> learning process) or the user has a different database technology
> (like hibernate) and you get bogged down on trying to either adapt
> Torque or trying to figure out how to replace it with hibernate (both
> moderately advanced topics). Skip it now, introduce it (and related
> services like security) later.
>
> 3) Introduce a serious stripped down version of the TDK with no
> auto-build, torque, implemented apps (the user manager stuff). Just
> the Turbine jar (and dependencies), a simple
> TurbineResources.properties file and a few templates (1 or 2 max of
> layout, page, navigator and screen) the developer can understand and
> tinker with (and one action class and one or two screen classes).
> Don't get into how Turbine handles looking for various things (i.e.
> the Default processing and such).
>
> The huge benefit here is the drastic reduction in file system "noise".
> When there are hundreds of files, it's tough to know what is
> important and what is not (yes, eventually, it's all important, but
> it's too much all at once). When simplified, folks can more easily
> become comfortable and confident.
>
> 4) After they are able to produce some screens/actions and are feeling
> confident, introduce them to the next level concepts like where
> Turbine looks for files (i.e. Default vs a named file, etc) and some
> simple configuartion changes (location of templates, etc).
>
> 5) Next you can start hitting on the rest of the ideas (services,
> security, database, etc) one at a time, building each on the last.
> People can feel confident they know the basics of Turbine and can be
> comfortable picking and choosing which technoligies they tackle next
> (don't need a job scheduler, they can just skip it). This is where
> the real power the Turbine services comes in - you can pick and choose
> what you need/want and ignore the rest.
>
> After taking quite a while to get somewhat comfortable with Turbine, I
> used this approach to ramp up the rest of my developers. It took me
> about two weeks of really working to understand as much of Turbine as
> I thought I had to know to develop apps. I was able to get my staff
> trained on it in about 3 days once I was able to streamline the
> process.
>
> Turbine is really a great web development environment and we are
> already cranking out code and pages with more functionality and easier
> than we had thought possible. A good, simple, intro tutorial that
> builds in stages on a very simple core set of files could very well
> propel Turbine into a top spot for web development.
>
> Just some thoughts,
>
> Gerry
>
> Todd O'Bryan wrote:
>> It looks to me like Turbine is incredibly powerful, but woefully
>> under-documented. Assuming that it's possible to start slowly (which
>> is kind of a necessity if you want to write good documentation; you
>> have to be able to lead people from knowing nothing to knowing a lot
>> in small, easily understandable steps), it seems like writing the
>> documentation would be a great boon to getting people to use the
>> framework.
>> I teach a class called Special Topics in Computer Science, and I have
>> 17 high school seniors who I can basically get to do whatever I think
>> is important. We've been trying to develop a web application and it's
>> been a terrible slog uphill, so if adopting Turbine would speed that
>> up, we could easily develop documentation to share with the project.
>> But first I have to figure out if Turbine would speed that up, or
>> just be another thing to learn that we'd never get through.
>> Thanks,
>> Todd
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: turbine-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
>> For additional commands, e-mail: turbine-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
>
> --
> Gerry Duprey
> ________________________________________
> SchoolsOPEN, LLC
> 123 North Ashley, Suite 120
> Ann Arbor, MI 48104
> Phone (877) 483-1944 Ext. 401
> Fax (734) 661-0819
>
> Visit us Online at www.Schools-OPEN.com
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: turbine-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: turbine-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: turbine-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: turbine-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Documentation Help
Posted by Gerry Duprey <gd...@Schools-OPEN.com>.
Howdy,
I think such a project would be grand, but it will probably take a while for
your kids to get up to speed on Turbine.
From my experience, I'd say the #1 problem is being confronted with what
seems like a nearly endless series of new technologies to learn all at once
before you can do anything at all. It can be so overwhelming that you can
start to feel confused and uncertain about everything because you start to
believe you know nothing and every uncertainty will turn out to be some other
new technology you may not have even known existed before.
The TDK can be a big help, but in my opinion, it still requires too steep a
learning curve before you can understand what is going on.
Off the top of my head, I would suggest an incremental introduction
1) Introduce folks to Velocity in a standalone context (no Turbine). This is
a great tool and pretty easy to use. Literally, a 20 line program can provide
a great testing environment with it.
Being easy to learn, you'll soon feel confident about one of the core
technologies of Turbine. Once you do, you feel like you have some anchor to
start with. That can be an amazingly important psychological boost when
confronting everthing else.
2) Introduce using Turbine without Torque. You can make Turbine work with no
database at all (though you don't get all the security services). I find the
database thing, right up front, to be problematic. Either the person does not
have or is not ready to use a database (in which case this seems like
additional work/noise to the learning process) or the user has a different
database technology (like hibernate) and you get bogged down on trying to
either adapt Torque or trying to figure out how to replace it with hibernate
(both moderately advanced topics). Skip it now, introduce it (and related
services like security) later.
3) Introduce a serious stripped down version of the TDK with no auto-build,
torque, implemented apps (the user manager stuff). Just the Turbine jar (and
dependencies), a simple TurbineResources.properties file and a few templates
(1 or 2 max of layout, page, navigator and screen) the developer can
understand and tinker with (and one action class and one or two screen
classes). Don't get into how Turbine handles looking for various things (i.e.
the Default processing and such).
The huge benefit here is the drastic reduction in file system "noise". When
there are hundreds of files, it's tough to know what is important and what is
not (yes, eventually, it's all important, but it's too much all at once).
When simplified, folks can more easily become comfortable and confident.
4) After they are able to produce some screens/actions and are feeling
confident, introduce them to the next level concepts like where Turbine looks
for files (i.e. Default vs a named file, etc) and some simple configuartion
changes (location of templates, etc).
5) Next you can start hitting on the rest of the ideas (services, security,
database, etc) one at a time, building each on the last. People can feel
confident they know the basics of Turbine and can be comfortable picking and
choosing which technoligies they tackle next (don't need a job scheduler, they
can just skip it). This is where the real power the Turbine services comes in
- you can pick and choose what you need/want and ignore the rest.
After taking quite a while to get somewhat comfortable with Turbine, I used
this approach to ramp up the rest of my developers. It took me about two
weeks of really working to understand as much of Turbine as I thought I had to
know to develop apps. I was able to get my staff trained on it in about 3
days once I was able to streamline the process.
Turbine is really a great web development environment and we are already
cranking out code and pages with more functionality and easier than we had
thought possible. A good, simple, intro tutorial that builds in stages on a
very simple core set of files could very well propel Turbine into a top spot
for web development.
Just some thoughts,
Gerry
Todd O'Bryan wrote:
> It looks to me like Turbine is incredibly powerful, but woefully
> under-documented. Assuming that it's possible to start slowly (which is
> kind of a necessity if you want to write good documentation; you have to
> be able to lead people from knowing nothing to knowing a lot in small,
> easily understandable steps), it seems like writing the documentation
> would be a great boon to getting people to use the framework.
>
> I teach a class called Special Topics in Computer Science, and I have 17
> high school seniors who I can basically get to do whatever I think is
> important. We've been trying to develop a web application and it's been
> a terrible slog uphill, so if adopting Turbine would speed that up, we
> could easily develop documentation to share with the project. But first
> I have to figure out if Turbine would speed that up, or just be another
> thing to learn that we'd never get through.
>
> Thanks,
> Todd
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: turbine-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: turbine-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
--
Gerry Duprey
________________________________________
SchoolsOPEN, LLC
123 North Ashley, Suite 120
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Phone (877) 483-1944 Ext. 401
Fax (734) 661-0819
Visit us Online at www.Schools-OPEN.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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