Re: [mv] Re: AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Birgitt Funk <birgitt@my-books.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Birgitt Funk <birgitt@my-books.com>     ******


On Tue, 9 May 2000, Mike Heins wrote:

> ******    message to minivend-users from Mike Heins <mikeh@minivend.com>     ******
> 
> > > To me, a persons success (or frusturation) with minivend depends LARGELY on
> > > their ability to extend it with Perl. 
> > 
> > Maybe thats the essence of this discussion. Someone who is not used to
> > Perl will get frustrated except he wants to learn MV inside (which you
> > described as the the minivend learning curve).
> 
> Minivend has a steep and definite learning curve, no doubt. I am hoping
> as more and more people move to MV 4 this will decrease, but so be it. I
> have done the best I could so far.
> 
> To be sure, you can program your own cart in PHP, Tcl, or whatever you
> wish.  And it can do many of the things that Minivend does, perhaps better
> and faster.  I know quite a few people have seriously tried Minivend and
> left it for greener pastures. More than one have come back to it after
> a while.
> 
> I do submit, though, that the main value of Minivend is in covering the
> border conditions. It has been in use for 4+ years, has taken millions
> of orders, and we have learned one or two things about shopping carts
> in the process. (The we is all of you and me; I learned much of what I
> have put into MV from the hard experience of the user base.)
> 
> It is easy to write a shopping cart that works for one user on one
> browser.  It is not quite so easy to write one that works well for most
> users and browsers.
> 
> There was a recent InfoWorld article docuemnting the troubles that await
> the shopping cart writer:
> 
>     http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/fixup.pl?story=/articles/ic/xml/00/03/07/000307icfail.xml&dctag=icommerce
> 
> I submit that designing a shop around a well-tested ecommerce solution, be
> it MV or another, makes stories like that less likely.
> 
> The biggest conundrum I face is making things simple....and powerful
> at the same time. Sometimes those are at odds. I have talked to many
> people that have used commercial shopping carts that are purportedly 
> easy to use, and the reports I get are that they work fine as long as
> your problem fits in their problem space. Once you go outside of that
> space and want more, it becomes much harder to use them.
> 
> Though I originally intended the demo to be just that, a demo, designed
> to illustrate MV's features, it has become more than that. There has
> been some standardization of fields and processes for transactions
> on checkout. The next big challenge for MV, which is being met,
> will be to make a store-oriented rather than a development-oriented
> admin interface. By this time next year, I expect to see a world-class
> store-oriented admin interface on top of Minivend. And a much better
> documentation set.
> 
> Any further contributions on this topic that are pointed at comparing
> Minivend and PHP or other technologies are welcome. Criticism of Minivend
> is always welcome -- facts and examples are especially appreciated. 8-)
> 
> Best,
> Mike

This is just to say thanks for one other classy comment from Mike Heins
and to say to Eran that, of course, I am not, nor was ever really upset.
8-)

I am just struggling with myself, MiniVend and becoming a little Perl
programmer. Enough stuggles to let out some "purposefully overphrased"
posts to the list some times. 8-)

You know, this little note saying one does not have to have
programming skills to handle MiniVend, I heard quite often from
people who claim they are not a programmer. 

But as it turns out most of those who say that have at the same time 
ten to twenty years of Network Administration in the Unix
environment with excellent shell scripting skills under the belt or are
just some professionals in any of the IT areas. For me, that means that
you "are programmers". May be that's were my misunderstanding came from.

I don't know, but to me MV seem to have some special power.
It draws even _real_ non-programmers to learn the stuff you need.
I see that as something very positive. 

I don't believe that any "easy" shopping cart system would have had the
same influence on me. That's why I like MV. Digging into the source is
fun. One just need to know if one can afford the time to do it.

Sorry Mike, this post has no facts and examples, nor much criticism.
And I promised to not make such OT comments anymore. So, I guess I
wait to see what comes out next year. Gosh, that makes me watching
MV for five years then. May be I have a chance to introduce my grandkids
to MV. 8-) 


Birgitt Funk                                  USA:     Greenbelt, MD 20770
http://www.booktraders.com                    Germany: 22926 Ahrensburg
http://www.my-books.com                       Tel.:    301 441 1808

-
To unsubscribe from the list, DO NOT REPLY to this message.  Instead, send
email with 'UNSUBSCRIBE minivend-users' in the body to Majordomo@minivend.com.
Archive of past messages: http://www.minivend.com/minivend/minivend-list