[ic] interchange question

[IC-Admin]

[take my answer with a smile, will you ?]

Wade Schilling said :

> Hello all-
>   I have read much of this list, and for somebody
> quite new to programming, it's like a foreign
> language. Can anybody recommend a good place to start
> (i.e. book, website) so that I can understand from a
> basic perspective how the interchange program is
> written? The tutorial seems to be written more for a
> programmer trying to learn interchange than for a web
> seller trying to learn programming. I am not a
> programmer, but out of force of necessity I do want to
> learn interchange front to back. My previous
> developers' incompitence has led me to further believe
> that if you want something done right, do it yourself.
> Can anybody out there have a kind heart and help me to
> get this thing started? I'm not quite ready to pay
> $180 per hour for tech support when I have all this
> time to do it myself!

> Thanks for looking and your resposes are welcomed!
> -Wade

It all depends on where you are, where you want to go and
why you feel compelled to go the way at all. 8-)

Here is aunt Ruth's five pennies worth of psychologic analysis: 

1. a. If you own a business, know how to use the browser and google, and
      want to sell goods online (having a nice brick and mortar  business
      running already), think the web is neat and want to get a
      catalog/shop running
          and    
   b. You don't know - anything about Unix System Admin
                       anything about Perl, C or shell programming
                       anything about SQL and databases
          and
   c. You ar not sure how much  time and  money you should invest
      in your endeavour
          and
   d. You really didn't want to become a programmer, but would just like
      to have your own brick and mortar business running a nice online
      site or fell in love with the idea of selling a bit of web space 
          then 
      this is  "Aunt Ruth Quick Fix" advice:
 
   Warning: Don't mix up your desire to become a programmer with the
   desire to jump on the bandwagon, learn a bit of this and that and
   hope to become a "web seller". You are either someone, who wants to
   become a professional programmer/web-site architect, who wants to
   earn the money those other guys are asking you to pay. Or you want
   simply your own business on the net and are thinking about doing it
   yourself, because you don't have enough money, but enough time to
   try it out on your own. Which one is it ?

       If it's more the latter, then all depends on how much you already
       know. Expect to teach yourself pretty much what Mike Heins
       mentioned (but use updated books) and expect to get to pull
       your hair once in a while and start to inhale the docs instead
       of reading them ten times. If you think that the tutorial is
       geared towards programmer you definitely should expect a long
       journey to be ahead of you, because even I think they are not. 

       Now, if it's the first and you want to become a real  programmer,
       DON'T start to look at IC until you have mastered 
       
       a. Linux/Unix System Admin (if you want to run your own machines
       and not pay a consultant to take over the responsibility that you
       have a secure, mission-critical-proof system running on a level of
       98.5 % up-time level and be able to recover your system after a
       hacking attack).
       b. Shell programming
       c. Basics of C programming
       d. Perl
       e. CGI, Apache, SQL
       f. html, Javascript, CSS, XHTML, XML
   
Good Luck ! There are some people on the list, who went from zero to
home-grown happy IC (MiniVend) users to run their own sites, but who
are not up to the task to be let loose as consultants.  There are a lot 
of people who had the necessary system admin and programming skills 
before they started looking at IC and I think, they keep looking quite
intensely at the source code and the docs. Expect to do the same.

Now, of course, you should never take Aunt Ruth's advice seriously.

She is female and has, therefore, typical characteristics which don't
match with the brave, male techo-macho, risk-taking attitudes. She
hates "trial and error" and looks for some logic approaches (gosh 
how come the males have so much time ), she hates "constant
changes" (can't you guys stay put for a while and enjoy a working thingy
even if it isn't the latest, greatest, coolest whatever), she hates
"taking risks" (aren't we the ones who always clean up the mess ?)

Well, I should stop my Sunday morning rants 

IC is a great program, I know it, I just don't know why. 8-)

Birgitt