Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

"Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

discuss.emberjs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 252 posts

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#141

Post by jackmaney »

rxcfc wrote: post #91
joshstrange wrote: post #27

Trek is making a huge mistake IMHO. As a developer I can think of nothing more helpful than to get a "steam-of-consciousness" excerpt from our users. This is something no analytics package can tell you, if you want to make your "product" easy to use then this is the exact feedback you need. Delverworld was outlining the various pitfalls of getting started with ember.js and a core contributor shrugs it off because he…

Knowing Trek, I think his frustration here is in large part with himself. He cares very deeply about giving users a good experience with Ember and knows that we aren't achieving that as well as we'd like. We've been planning and working on an improved Getting Started story for a while now but, because all of us on the Core Team are very busy with our day jobs, it's been slower going that we would have liked. To have…

Why was the Getting Started Guide not at (or near) the top of your priority list for documentation?

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#142

Post by pekk »

bcantrill wrote: post #126
trek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have admitted that, publicly, very often, in other topics on discuss.emberjs.com, on websites, on twitter, on videos, and elsewhere. It's no secret I'd like to improve the documentation for Ember.js and I'm already well aware of the places that people are facing difficulty right now. There's work, if people spent a moment reading the top topics in the forum, on a getting started guide with a direct call for feedbac…

So, here's the challenge: if you're going to develop systems software (which is to say, software that is consumed by a fellow software engineer), you're going to find that you're much more likely to hear about how the software doesn't work than how it does. This is frustrating because you -- like every other human -- react much better to praise than to scorn. But here's the leap you need to make: when you have someon…

I object to one thing you said. Criticism is often NOT because the critic wants you to succeed. If more than a few people know about your tool, some of them will hate your project and want it to be rejected and die. And they won't necessarily play fair. There are so many ways and so many reasons why an open source tool will be attacked, many of which are not constructive at all, not even honest, just intended to make your project look terrible in public so that they can "win" somehow. This is a social reality of writing tools for other people to use for free.

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#144

Post by bpatrianakos »

brazzy wrote: post #96
trek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have admitted that, publicly, very often, in other topics on discuss.emberjs.com, on websites, on twitter, on videos, and elsewhere. It's no secret I'd like to improve the documentation for Ember.js and I'm already well aware of the places that people are facing difficulty right now. There's work, if people spent a moment reading the top topics in the forum, on a getting started guide with a direct call for feedbac…

Sorry, but that's just ridiculous. You get some very detailed actionable feedback and flat out refuse to engage with it because it contains some mild sarcasm? No, obviously you would not like to help unless it's 100% on your terms, and you're not even telling which terms they are. Which is not very helpful at all and, in fact, showing a considerable degree of dickitude.

I'm on your side here but I still have to defend trek on this one. This sort of feedback is not all that uncommon and at this point the Ember team has to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know about it. Trek even says he knows about this and that they're working on it. And he's right that HN can sometimes be a place where people come to talk down to other people and rant like entitled assholes about asinine topics and the community can sometimes get so wrapped up in it that we almost truly believe we're the center of the universe (myself included). So I can understand his "dickitude" remark.

I think what this really comes down to is a few very simple reasons he doesn't need to respond to this:

- He and the Ember team have heard it before and many times said they're working on this (I know I've seen that stated publicly many times)

- There are only so many people you can respond to. Again, the team knows, they're on it, no response required

- A front page HN post does not automatically mean the project maintainers need to respond.

- This is OSS. Like Trek says, there's only so much time he can devote to this stuff especially for free.

I think we need to give him a break here.

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#145

Post by huntedsnark »

patrickaljord wrote: post #39

Had a similar experience, then tried AngularJS. Couldn't be happier :) http://angularjs.org

Same for me as well, I had previously used Backbone heavily at work (which is still awesome), but wanted to try something new. Angular has good docs, tutorials, screencasts and a very active Google Group with pretty helpful people.

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#146

Post by pekk »

jackmaney wrote: post #139
paulhauggis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been following the ember.js community for awhile and also trek. It's this attitude that makes me never want to use ember.js. If you check out his twitter account, you can see countless battles with new people just getting into ember. If you want someone to use your framework, it shouldn't be a verbal battle of passive aggressiveness and other childish antics. He is doing a disservice to the community and the f…

"It's this attitude that makes me never want to use ember.js." Agreed. In fact, I suspect I'll never end up using it, now.

I'm sympathetic. There is nothing you can do in open source which will not result in a political response.

Before, I had no interest in ember.js. Today I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Because so many people are trying to bury it, for some reason which has nothing to do with technical concerns.

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#147

Post by k3n »

joshstrange wrote: post #27

Trek is making a huge mistake IMHO. As a developer I can think of nothing more helpful than to get a "steam-of-consciousness" excerpt from our users. This is something no analytics package can tell you, if you want to make your "product" easy to use then this is the exact feedback you need. Delverworld was outlining the various pitfalls of getting started with ember.js and a core contributor shrugs it off because he…

Although he's already replied to you, I wanted to point out that a refusal to respond to a post in no way indicates whether or not the communication has been received. In other words, he's not ignoring the feedback, he's just refusing to engage in discourse which he sees as already unproductive.

Quite the opposite, he sympathizes with the OP to begin with, and so he most likely read it. He just doesn't want to engage in what could easily turn into a flamefest.

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#148

Post by mgrassotti »

Uchikoma wrote: post #125
rxcfc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing Trek, I think his frustration here is in large part with himself. He cares very deeply about giving users a good experience with Ember and knows that we aren't achieving that as well as we'd like. We've been planning and working on an improved Getting Started story for a while now but, because all of us on the Core Team are very busy with our day jobs, it's been slower going that we would have liked. To have…

If he cares that deeply, I'd suggest walk instead of talk and fix the problems now instead of hand waving. The Emberjs documentation problems have been there since the beginning. Instead of commenting on #HN how awful ungrateful sarcastic users are, write a new "Getting started" page.

I don't think trek called anyone ungrateful. He's just tired. Also he already is working on a new getting started page. A few days ago he posted to the forum outlining his plan and asking for feedback. http://discuss.emberjs.com/t/todomvc-based-getting-started-g...

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#149

Post by mgrassotti »

jackmaney wrote: post #141
rxcfc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing Trek, I think his frustration here is in large part with himself. He cares very deeply about giving users a good experience with Ember and knows that we aren't achieving that as well as we'd like. We've been planning and working on an improved Getting Started story for a while now but, because all of us on the Core Team are very busy with our day jobs, it's been slower going that we would have liked. To have…

Why was the Getting Started Guide not at (or near) the top of your priority list for documentation?

It is. http://discuss.emberjs.com/t/todomvc-based-getting-started-g...

Re: "Getting started with Ember.Js is easy." - No it isn't

#150

Post by pekk »

_ak wrote: post #38

> The tone of this topic is not in line with the civil level of discourse I'd like to maintain here, so I cannot respond. This sounds like the euphemistic version of "I don't like your attitude, so fuck off." Not exactly the answer I would want to get as a new user who is stumbling over terrible and inconsistent documentation and error messages.

These errors (and this frustrating process) are not at all unusual for Javascript libraries. Though I'm sure they could do some things better, I am afraid ember is taking a little bit of flak for the state of front end development, here.
Post reply on HN