Why is there no help here for newbies

[pixel67]

Seems to me that if you ask a noob question around here it doesn't get answered, what is up with that?

Maybe this is why jQuery has such a larger community!

[Sanford Whiteman]

> Seems to me that if you ask a noob question around here it doesn't get
> answered, what is up with that?

[Citations needed.]

Do you have a noob question I can answer?

-- Sandy

[Tony Brown]

Not I good sir not today,

but there are others that might need your help and certainly I will be asking some questions if it's okay?

--
Sincerely, 

Tony Brown

508.982.9892

 http://www.smarterer.com/pixelBender 

 http://www.tonybrownsdesign.com

Available for work

[Sanford Whiteman]

Certainly it's okay. The list is pretty quiet, but I don't think it's from lack of answers but lack of questions.

[Aaron Newton]

Agreed; there really aren't many examples of people asking for help here and not getting it. Occasionally someone will ask for help on something so obscure that no one has an answer. Our golden rule here is if you don't have anything nice or helpful to say, go do something else. But such examples are exceptionally rare. I'm quite proud of how active this community is in helping people.

[pixel67]

well I saw a couple of un-answered questions, The thing is whenever I chime in on a post with a question; it just get's ignored, so when I do have a question I don't bother to ask. I am pretty new to mootools and to be honest I just started to learn jQuery because of the lack of good learning material for moo. I really like mootools' syntax it is just like Javascript, but there are very few good learning resources for beginners in general.

I was getting the 'if you are learning go away and come back when you know something' kind of mentality.

Thanks

[pixel67]

and it seems like you have to learn jQuery these days, I was trying use backbone and it wouldn't work with moo, everything has jQuery baked into it

[Aaron Newton]

Without a specific example (of you not getting an answer) I can't offer any suggestions. I will say that help here is voluntary and as a moderator I'm more focused on seeing people be civil to each other (which everyone here is) than making sure each and every post gets replied to.

You won't get an argument from me that jQuery is used more ubiquitously and that it's learning materials are more robust. It's also easier to learn. You give up a few things for that convenience though. See http://jqueryvsmootools.com for a break down.

But one of the things you trade away by adopting a more advanced framework, a more low-level framework, is that it's harder to learn and consequently, there are fewer people using it. Anyone can use jQuery, but you need to know how to program to use MooTools and other frameworks out there...

[pixel67]

yes moo is not for the beginners this is for sure!

Just for the record I didn't post a question that didn't get answered I just noticed that a few went unanswered that seemed like they should have been answered like that one from ArtRyad about the slider class, and they few posts on mootools 2 I just asked what it was and was ignored, and this isn't an attack on this user group by any means, just frustrated about my learning mootools in general. :)

Thanks for hearing me

Peace

[Matthew Hazlett]

Just in case you don't know, there are a lot of great moo resources for learning:
http://www.mootorial.com/

If you just want to practice with moo (or almost any library):
http://jsfiddle.net/

And the best (imho) place to learn is:  (Lots of examples here too)
http://mootools.net/docs/

And for everything else:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript

Hope this helps

[Dimitar Christoff]

This is a tad unfair. The amount of time each and every one of us
spends helping out people here, on IRC, on blogs, forums etc is
actually staggering. Sure, it's not like jquery where there is a
staggering amount of stupid questions that need answering but
none-the-less.

For example, I have answered some 591 questions tagged mootools on
stack overflow over the last 2 years alone:
http://stackoverflow.com/tags/mootools/topusers - and this does not
cover the number of blog posts or replies to the mailing list here or
even replies to tweets.

This is out of our personal time - time I would rather have spent with
my daughter, wife or working on something useful, don't know about the
others. Coming in here and claiming there's little/no help is grossly
disrespectful of all the work we try to put in.

Just my 2 cents anyway, believe what you will.
--
Dimitar Christoff

"JavaScript is to JAVA what hamster is to ham"
http://fragged.org/ - @D_mitar - https://github.com/DimitarChristoff

[Rolf Langenhuijzen]

++

Maybe @pixel67 can invent the human.clone() plugin for jquery we can use to copy ourselves to better serve the list :)

Seriously, keep posting questions, don't turn your back if some questions don't get an aswer; just answer again. I'm pretty sure someone will answer, especially when you use jsfiddle!

As for learning.. also browse the forge at http://www.mootooles.net/forge and then check the source of things at github when you wonder how it works or how some things are done. You can also refer to such sources at ask here what is going on.

[pixel67]

No disrespect intended!

Lets not blow this out of proportion here.

so sorry did not mean to offend any of you

I too have a family, except unlike you I am just learning, trying to find work in this field after 18 years of back breaking construction work I spent the last

3 years learning web development

am just looking to learn not offend people

I know this project is close to your hearts,  I want to learn too, 

enough already about this.

[Dimitar Christoff]

On 11/05/2012 09:31, pixel67 wrote:
> No disrespect intended!
>
> Lets not blow this out of proportion here.
> so sorry did not mean to offend any of you
> I too have a family, except unlike you I am just learning, trying to
> find work in this field after 18 years of back breaking construction
> work I spent the last
> 3 years learning web development
> am just looking to learn not offend people
> I know this project is close to your hearts, I want to learn too,
> enough already about this.
>

I am not being offended nor do I plan on stopping doing my bit for the
mootools community. Just laying down the facts. When i first started,
there were a lot of developers helping me out so it's only fair....

I do realise and appreciate the fact that is becoming increasingly more
difficult to find new tutorials and sources of help out there - but I do
hope that if we ever manage to complete the new help pages (and helping
work on that would be time far better spent than helping people use
Fx.Scroll or setup accordions where they can read the manuals), things
will get infinitely better.

The ability to contribute user comments and examples, the separation
into new per-api pages as opposed to per host type with anchors and so
forth. So if anyone can spare time to help with this and the forge:

https://github.com/fakedarren/mootools-forge
https://github.com/fakedarren/mootools-website

There is a lot of work that needs to be done and it's not just work that
requires the touch of a mootools-core dev - bootstrap, less, html
markup, php, mysql, DESIGN - there are many things that can be done to
help mootools and make the community vibrant and active again by giving
it the proper platform to contribute on.

I am not the best person to speak with regarding this but if you want to
help make this better, drop in on IRC on
irc://irc.freenode.net/#mootools and ask fakedarren for something to do.

best regards,

--
Dimitar Christoff

"JavaScript is to JAVA what hamster is to ham"

http://fragged.org/ | @D_mitar | https://github.com/DimitarChristoff

[pixel67]

Dimitar,

Thanks for the info, I have to ask though what is up with the irc.freenode, I was on the one for node.js and didn't get any responses

not sure if I know how to use it?

I would like to really see more people using moo, but it is tough going at first and maybe when I get up to speed a little more I will post 

links to * beginner tutorials * I really want to be a part of this community, I love javascript and moo is in line with that.

I got Arrons book, after I finish the Modern JavaScript Develop and Design by Larry Ullman I will start in on that and I found this http://mrpaolo.github.com/mootools30days/ 

some of the links are dead on the sites that were referenced to learn moo.:(

Thanks again !

[Dimitar Christoff]

On 11/05/2012 10:06, pixel67 wrote:
> Dimitar,
>
> Thanks for the info, I have to ask though what is up with the
> irc.freenode, I was on the one for node.js and didn't get any responses
> not sure if I know how to use it?
> I would like to really see more people using moo, but it is tough going
> at first and maybe when I get up to speed a little more I will post
> links to * beginner tutorials * I really want to be a part of this
> community, I love javascript and moo is in line with that.
>
> I got Arrons book, after I finish the Modern JavaScript Develop and
> Design by Larry Ullman I will start in on that and I found this
> http://mrpaolo.github.com/mootools30days/
> some of the links are dead on the sites that were referenced to learn moo.:(
>

IRc = internet relay chat -> a real time chat room where ppl talk (async
at times) about mootools or other stuff that matters.

you need an IRC client like mIRC or BitchX or Colloquy for mac etc -
many clients.

freenode has nothing to do with node.js - though there probably is a
nodejs channel on there.

You connect to irc.freenode.net and then /join #mootools

If you don't get a reply immediately, don't worry, people reply when
they return.

Aarons book is awesome. When you read that, there's also Garrick's and
Keetos books to consider.

For tutorials, http://stackoverflow.com/tags/mootools/info is more or
less up-to date.

http://mrpaolo.github.com/mootools30days/ is interesting and new to me,
seems it is being collated from the Wayback Machine, if you look at
https://github.com/mrpaolo/mootools30days/ it has been updated as
recently as 2 months ago.

Some of the practices are probably out of date or incomplete but it
certainly can't hurt to read it.

have fun.

[pixel67]

Dimitar,

I am on the channel now but just a blank screen ( I will look into it )

In your opinion what is a good plan , I'm all over the place

learning PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Python and a little moo and JQ ( I think learning JS first is best? )

Do I just stick with JS and pick away at moo or does learning JQ help with moo ?

Thanks again who said there's no help for beginners ? =]

[Dimitar Christoff]

On 11/05/2012 10:35, pixel67 wrote:
> Dimitar,
>
> I am on the channel now but just a blank screen ( I will look into it )
> In your opinion what is a good plan , I'm all over the place
> learning PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Python and a little moo and JQ ( I think
> learning JS first is best? )
> Do I just stick with JS and pick away at moo or does learning JQ help
> with moo ?
>

.-Ä pixel67 [ad4cf3f2@gateway/web/freenode/ip.173.76.243.242] has joined
#mootools
<pixel67> Dimitar are you here ?
.-Ä signoff: pixel67/#mootools (Client Quit)
.-Ä pixel67 [ad4cf3f2@gateway/web/freenode/ip.173.76.243.242] has joined
#mootools
<coda> yeah
<coda> i am 'here' :)
.-Ä signoff: pixel67/#mootools (Quit: Page closed)

you came and you left... - get a new IRC client that works and stay on.
esp on a friday, it can take a long time for ppl to notice the typing.

can't tell you what to learn, learn what comes easy to you and what can
give you the most money. personally I stopped doing php and any other
server side stuff, quite happy to just focus on js/mootools/front-end.

trend wise, the sector is now with an increased awareness of the
importance of the client vs the server due to performance / render /
conversion and this is starting to be reflected in the money that
front-end devs make. it is also probably more demanding and far more
volatile to learn than a static language like java, ruby or python.

learn moootools and you can't help but learn some javascript as it just
extends it. learn jquery and you end up the proud owner of some dom api
skills without necessarily understanding what goes on behind the scenes.
by the same token, it's difficult to gain employment in front-end these
days unless you know jquery. :/

best regards,

[pixel67]

Thanks for the words of wisdom.

Talked to fakedarren =]

well I guess I have some work to do and thanks again for your time.

[piotr_cz]

You mentioned Backbone:
I'm using Backbone MooTools Adapter (https://github.com/inkling/
backbone-mootools/) with great success. It was bit tough to find this
gem though.

[Garrick]

I may not always respond. But when I do, I respond with lame humor.

But seriously, I'm watching this group daily. If there's a question I can answer that some other dev hasn't gotten to, I will. But everyone is so quick!

[kentaromiura]

So I think instead of lame your is late humor.

[Rolf Langenhuijzen]

JavaScript is super hot now, So I suggest you start learning node.js and CoffeeScript as well haha. Node.js.

Seriously though there's still more than enough demand for static languages. I never picked up Ruby, Python only in tiny bits (which is sometimes useful on mac or for specific programs that can read macros written in Python), I still use PHP and alot, like a gazillion companies. I always had a weak spot for 37signals (who invented Ruby), if I was to learn a server side language now I would pick up Ruby I guess over PHP just for fun.

As far as JS you can quickly read some "javascript basics" or "javascrip in 24 hours" or "javascript for dummies" books.. or whatever they are called. Aaron's book for the old mootools could be considered deprecated, but it's still worth a read to get a feel of Moo syntax. Keeto's book is great, but more in depth and difficult. Check it anyway. I have not read the book by Garrick and Jacob, but I'm sure it's a good read. It's all Moo 1.2 so deprecated code, but you can easily make the switch to the latest version. Can't comment on jQuery! There's tons of jQuery stuff (also "for dummies" books), so I guess it wouldn't hurt to check it out as well, after you know some more about JS or Moo. Untill then you can still use jquery plug n play stuff.

Oh btw- books might be outdated, then just grab the pdf if you want to read on screen. Books are usually better then short tutorials or snippets of code if you're starting out with something imho and you'll get a better overall feel of a language.

PS > and did we mention already to check the source code of everything?

[pixel67]

Thanks Rolf =]

[pixel67]

I guess my problem is I am trying to learn too much at once, php, ruby, javascript. I am going to just stick with JS for now and dig deep and stay there.

Thanks so much for all the advice, I am glad to be in this group => really!