[ic] Pee-Poor Documentation Rant

[interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com (Ryan Hertz)]

At 07:48 AM 1/14/02 -0800, Prasit P wrote:
>RH is a big company.  They do this for their business
>potential and growth, unlike programmers who enjoy giving
>out their free script because they love what they do.  I
>just hope that RH will be more profitable if they do better
>documentation.  Software without manual is worth a penny.
>
> > I started playing with Tallyman and Minivend, and quickly
> > graduated to
> > IC when it was released.  I personally find some of the
> > documentation to
> > be a bit obtuse, but I consider time spent figuring
> > things out to be my
> > investment.  I mean I haven't paid anything for this
> > unbelievably
> > complex and powerful software, why not spend the time?
>
>Unbelievably!!  you earn $1/hour ?  So damn interesting!!!


Sure, the documentation can be a bit confusing at first, but obviously you 
know how to use the mailing list, and hopefully the list search, as 
well.  It is a good supplement.  Of course, maybe it is to your 
disadvantage since apparently English is not your first language.

It took me 3 months of full-time work to get my store live.  That is 
including some lightly complicated modification (to the templates, not the 
source) and the effort of writing descriptions, entering data, recording 
audio and video clips, various design, testing, etc.  I am extremely happy 
with my results and still find the time to tweak little bits, add 
functionality, run my forecasts and graphing...  but basically, now that it 
is done (since October '98), I haven't touched it very much.

What's my point?  3 months may or may not be a lot of time to you.  Some 
people apparently can't invest a few hours into figuring out something for 
themselves.  I couldn't at the time afford to call Mike Heins/Akopia for 
support, but since I've made $750,000 in the last 3 years, I could now 
(seriously).  I was certainly excited to find such a powerful solution, 
written in Perl (which I had just started to study), being free to 
download, having a working demo, mailing list with smart developers, oh, 
and it even had documentation.  Free OS, Free webserver, Free language, 
Free e-commerce software...

Have you ever noticed that the area at redhat.com where you search the 
archives is for "Interchange Developers"?  _Developers_.  It isn't the "for 
Whiny Babies, Lazy Conartists, or really even Interchange USERS".   IC is a 
professional tool used by knowledgeable, serious people to conduct 
business.   I entered this realm expecting to write my own, or drop a few 
ten thousands paying someone else.  I found something perfectly in the 
middle.  If I had paid Akopia (now Red Hat) to develop for me it would have 
been done perhaps quicker, maybe a little better or more scalable, in all, 
it probably would have paid for itself in only a few weeks.

So, your options are: figure out the documentation (feel free to ask for 
help after searching the archives), buy support (it doesn't even have to be 
from Red Hat), or use different software (go use zShops or Yahoo or 
something) and quit wasting my time.  Notice that complaining is NOT an 
option -- if you like complaining: wait for your first customers -- they'll 
probably think you suck worse than the docs and want everything for free, too.