Re: [mv] Reading documentation....

[John Foster <jfoster@augustmail.com>]

mikeh@minivend.com wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I have heard the MiniVend documentation described with adjectives
> ranging from "awful" to "great". I am doing a lot of documentation
> for MiniVend 4, keeping some things, removing lots of things, rewriting
> things, and adding new stuff. But sometimes that is hard work, so I
> need a place to vent.
> 
> I will let everyone in on a secret; I am not a programmer. At least
> I wasn't when MiniVend started. Those hardy few of you who have used
> MiniVend since 1996 or so will know this if you have read the code. There
> is much code in MiniVend 3 which is downright amateurish. The code that
> is new within the last couple of years is at a fairly high and professional
> level; or so I am told by people I respect.
> 
> The tool I use most often is Perl. The tool I use second most often is MiniVend.
> 
> Would it surprise anyone to know that I re-read the Perl FAQ and documentation
> on a regular basis? Probably not, though I think that perhaps it is not widely
> done.
> 
> But does it surprise anyone that I re-read the docs I have written? Not
> maybe as often as I refer to the source, but I do it all the time. I
> have to.  Though I have a very good memory, there is absolutely no way
> I could retain everything about MV. But there is another, perhaps more
> important reason.  I have learned a lot with experience and my perspective
> has changed, and things I thought were obvious some time back don't look
> quite as obvious now. And I think of better ways of doing them. As it
> is with *any* complex system that I have used over time.
> 
> So I encourage anyone using any complex language or system, be it Perl,
> Apache, MiniVend, MySQL, or whatever, to periodically re-read the documentation.
> You may be amazed at what you learn in light of your hard-won experience.
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If the new docs for MV4 are as improved as the new product seems to be
then us newbies will be much better off. I hope that the folks who are
working on the doc project will have access to the MV4 docs in their
beta form so that they can help polish the final release to a point
where a person can actually setup a MV without having such a steep
learning curve. I must have read the docs 50 times in the last 6 months
(along with those for Perl and PHP3) and I am just now beginning to have
some clue what to even look for when I have a question. This reminds me
of the days when I learned to write HTML code with a word processor,
before WYSIWYG arrived. BTW it's been so long that I could not do it
now, seems we forget....
Keep up the great work, I realize there is a great deal of frustration
when trying to do something original, so just know that it is GREATLY
APPRECIATED.

-- 
John Foster
AdVance-Computing Systems
jfoster@augustmail.com
ICQ# 19460173