[ic] Frustrated with IC 4.8

[Leon Harris]

You're not stupid, IC is hard. The learning curve is steep. I have been
learning it since april, and I still haven't got a fully workable site up. I
have made progress though, and I will get there.

With respect to the documentation: yes it is rough. It also lags behind the
current vesion of interchange. This is not unusual in documentation in Open
Source projects. Think of it this way - how much written and clear
documentation is there on MS service packs - next to none. IC is still a work
in progress. I would say the state of IC documentation is the same as that of
Perl when the Camel book came out - it is possible for an experienced IC
developer to work well with it. It is bloody difficult for someone to pick it
up. Personally, I have nearly quit it on at least 2 occasions. If I were with a
larger company, and not spending my own cash (which is always short, as
distinct from time which can be found from other projects)  on developing this,
I would probably advise them to spend money on getting a proprietary product
with a shorter learning curve and better support, if one existed.

Fortunately, we can do a lot to fix this. Yes us, the IC community of users. If
you have a problem, and find a fix, add it to the online documentation
annotation. Use the IRC - they can be a lot of help. Contribute your ideas
back.

Someday, someone versed with IC will write a cookbook, and it will sell a
bundle. Something like the perl cookbook would be nice. Something that takes a
problems-focussed approach to using interchange and then discusses how to solve
them in ITL or perl, using IC objects. Something that discusses debugging
strategies, performance profiling, flow of customers through your site and good
site design with IC .... [/dream]

Anyway, chin up. I think it gets easier after a while. Especially if you have a
teddy to thump !
:(



just my $0.02
Cheers,
leon



Kat Turner wrote:

> How is it that IC 4.8 can have so many great features and be so ill behaved
> in implamenting them? What I mean by this is IC 4.8 seems to have everything
> you could think of to put on a wish list for an online store and then some.
> But when it comes to using the Administration interface to setup the store
> it is contrary as hell. The changes that I make either give unexpected
> results or have no effect at all. The help file included seems to be an
> after thought that only makes one want a real help file. I find it next to
> useless. The documentation on the Redhat web site is not much better. The
> wizard that was intended to be used for quick setup seems to have a mind of
> it's own.
>
> If I am the only one that is having problems with grasping how to use IC
> then it won't hurt my feelings at all for you to tell me how stupid I am and
> for you to point out what I am doing wrong. I would really like to get IC to
> perform the way a program if this caliber should. I am use to stable
> programs that work as intended. If this is the type of program that stems
> from the open source code theory of designing software then it seems to be a
> step backwards.
> Just my $.02 worth.
> KAT
>
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