eZ Components development list

Derick Rethans | 2 Mar 2006 16:43

Re: Re: [Sdk-public] Template Language

On Thu, 2 Mar 2006, Balazs Halasy wrote:

> If we make it easy for newbies, they will be happy & tell everyone else that 
> this is an easy system to use. Hardcore guys will learn a dumber/simpler 
> variant of for-loops in a second. If you complicate it, newbies will shout & 
> complain because it is not easy enough. I think that eZ publish should be 
> able to make non-technical people create a lot of cool stuff with a minimum 
> amount of effort. Do we want people to complain about unnecessary complexity 
> or do we want them to say: wow, this is the best/easiest system I have ever 
> used...?

The opposite of this is though that people who are much better known to 
the system get frustrated because they can't do something they 
would expect they can do with a for-loop. Do we want those people to 
complain about eZ publish being target for newbies only? 

This is a double egded sword and it is hard to make a good decision that 
pleases users all across the board. As many of us already said that the 
for() loop is probably not needed for most of the normal usage in eZ 
publish (foreach would cover most cases) I don't think it's much of a 
problem to make the construct powerful (and 'complex'). Newbies won't 
use it, and advanced users can then still harnass the power of it.

regards,
Derick

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Balazs Halasy | 2 Mar 2006 16:59

Re: Re: [Sdk-public] Template Language

> The opposite of this is though that people who are much better known to
> the system get frustrated because they can't do something they
> would expect they can do with a for-loop. Do we want those people to
> complain about eZ publish being target for newbies only?

Good argument; but still - do we really want people to do complex things using 
the template language? Isn't the template language supposed to be used just 
to display things and possibly contain lightweight logic? Using your 
argument, I could say that we should add a lot of other things to the 
template language or else C++/JAVA/PHP programmers will be upset.. :)

> This is a double egded sword and it is hard to make a good decision that
> pleases users all across the board. As many of us already said that the
> for() loop is probably not needed for most of the normal usage in eZ
> publish (foreach would cover most cases) I don't think it's much of a
> problem to make the construct powerful (and 'complex'). Newbies won't
> use it, and advanced users can then still harnass the power of it.

Yep, this is also a good reason, but when you are teaching it to people you 
usually want to show them what they can do with the system. Learning about 
foreach, for, etc. are one of the first things you do... so, should we just 
skip the for-construct when teaching eZp to people? I do not think that's a 
good idea.

Allman

--

-- 
Balazs Halasy
System Developer
bh@... | eZ systems | ez.no

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