Re: [mv] use of demos as starting point

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

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



On Fri, 26 May 2000, Hans-Joachim Leidinger wrote:

> ******    message to minivend-users from Hans-Joachim Leidinger <jojo@buchonline.net>     ******
> 
> Birgitt Funk schrieb:
> > ******    message to minivend-users from Birgitt Funk <birgitt@my-books.com>     ******
> [DEL]
> > Why did the documentation project failed last year ?
> > 
> > The answer I give myself is simple. There are not enough people out
> > there who have enough technical insight in the Minivend source code
> > to translate what is happening in the program a.) into MV tag
> > syntax and then b.) into English for beginners.
> 
> I believe, this is not true, because there are a lot of people with good
> experience in MiniVend (and Perl too).
> I think, the common problem is "How to manage a document project with
> some or a lot of people?" or "How to organize such kind of project?" and
> "How to manage/organize the results of this project?". This was maybe
> the same problem with www.minivend.org.

[snip]
> > 
> > I have had a hard time to make one and half years free time to do this.
> > I could imagine other outsiders have the same problem. But outsiders
> > are coming in and try to use Minivend...and are going to ask _many_
> > questions.
> 
> Hmmm...Birgitt...I'm in a muddle. Did I understand you right? Did you
> make anything with MiniVend? Why can't I see any question about any MV
> codes? You know, my English is poor!
>  

8-)... the poor English is a sweet excuse...

I would really like to leave you in the muddle, but if you insist, I am
not shy to answer even this in public if this is what is needed to
defend myself. 

Yes, I did something with MiniVend in 1996 and in spring 1997. 

When I started out with MiniVend (in 1996) a demo didn't even exist. A
mailing list didn't exist and minivend.com didn't exist. I was simply
a paying customer of Mike Heins, who happened to like the book catalog
project which I had in mind and worked on (html done on a DOS machine and
later on a Linux box which a student had kindly enough set up in my home.)
and agreed to work remotely with it on a customer/consultant basis. In no
way had I in mind to become an "e-commerce consultant for MV", a
programmer or system administrator. 

When I started to think more seriously about my "little" book catalog
project in 1997, minivend.com came into being and a demo and mailing
list. I tried to tweak in a little system admin reading, a little
MV doc readings and as you put it, muddled around with the MV tags.
All this tweaked into a busy fulltime working day (unrelated to
to any programming, online publishing or even online writing work,
darn I was even not a Windows user, can you believe that ? 8-).

By fall 1997 I understood enough about my book catalog project and
about MiniVend (and about myself 8-)) to know that my project had
no future, my understanding of MiniVend would involve fulltime
and focussed work in learning programming, Perl and system/network
administration. The way I am used to learn things (when I was younger
at least), is either I do it or I don't, and either I do it
professionally (with school and hands-on real life exposure to the
industry and focussed self-study) or I don't even start.

Well, Joachim, I happened to have had a life and you just don't turn
everything upside down, quit obligations you have and become a
programmer over night or in between two or three hours of stolen 
time from other obligations. At least my feeble mind, who is most
probably too old anyhow, just doesn't play such games anymore.

But I think I am not that dumb to not understand what MV is about
and where I stand, nor am I too dumb to understand what it means to
dig into source code. 

All I can say, between 1998 til around a week ago there was no place and
time in my life to fit in serious work about MV, just a lot of watching,
planning and preparing for doing the work when I am ready for it.

Do I need to apologize not having answered any technical MV questions
on this list ? I do in a minute ! Actually I think my behaviour was
quite responsible. If it comes to code, I don't like to talk nonsense.
Such talk I like to save for my favorite off topic subject areas,
Amazon.com and documentation.

Now, if you ask me, why I didn't quit lurking and watching the MV
list the last too years and nonetheless never made an attempt
to help with MV tags, here is the answer:

MV had two major rewrites, at least 15 releases with many changes
and it would have really been a waste of time to try to play
catch-up, when you have no time and skills to go down to the code. 

And down to the code I like to go and learning to understand and
comment code as well and learn how to publish such things as
a technical document the more. (I don't like to make shopping cart
sites for other people, just for myself when I feel like it 8-))
 
As you can see, apparently it's humming so nicely over in MiniVend-land
that Mike looks out for professionals. Too bad, I hadn't a chance to
become one yet, but that's just tough luck.

So, to come to an end with this, I don't agree with you. One can learn
a lot from the archives and of course very much from reading the docs
over and over and from trying things out any way you can think of.

But what you DON'T learn that way is you how exactly and _why_
MiniVend works the way it works. And that's basically the only thing I
find worth finding out and working for. Is that such a strange
point of view ?

If so, so be it. 8-)

> 
> After thinking about this behavior, I noticed the difference between
> this mailing list and other mailing list.
> In this list, I did never get any short summary or short informations
> about MiniVend (URL to xyz, URL to FQA or any kind of short
> guidance/instruction of ""How to use MV, MV mail list..", "How to
> do...if...-> mailarchivs..", "How to ask this list..." and so on). 

ah, most people are to busy searching URLs for you  ...

> 2 years ago, after any subscribing of any mailing list, I get a short
> summary about the mailing list. In some mailing list, I get this kind of
> guidance/instructions periodically and this (so I think) is important.
> But I've not get this from MiniVend. This is not any kind of criticism
> about or to M.H (I love MV! :-)) ). But I think, it is time to offer or
> realize that.
>  

What do you want as guidance ? Other than read the docs, search the
archives, phrase the question as exact you can, give lines of code
etc...pretty self-explanatory. 

What MH wants to see as questions, he says in his docs. Should he 
post "Guidance FAQ" every month ?

If you have ever followed clpm you might know that this doesn't
change much. Even if you do all the reading, you still need to
comprehend what you read and most of the time the comprehension
comes after reading about the same subject several times and 
from a variety of different sources. And from trying them out.

At least that's the way it works for me and it takes time and
concentration, something lacking in many of todays's lives.

Birgitt



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