Re: Apple and WO (Google Moderator thread)

[Ramsey Gurley]

On Mar 28, 2012, at 3:57 AM, ISHIMOTO Ken wrote:

> Hi Gino,
>
>> I would love to contribute but I don't think my code would benefit in any way as there are better programmers with better understanding of the needs.
>
> There are always better programmers out there, but if we can contribute code, and bring nice ideas to the Community, it will helps the Community.
> Also if better programmers fix some mistake than the not so good programmer can learn what fixes was done to the contributed code.
> And next time the contribute will be better.

In my case, I was a not so good programmer contributing. A good programmer (Anjo) told me my code was crap and pointed out problems I needed to fix before it could be committed! Harsh? Yeah... but knowing my code would be evaluated without sugar coating made my work a lot better. I miss that guy :-)

Ramsey

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[Chuck Hill]

On 2012-03-28, at 9:55 AM, Ramsey Gurley wrote:
> On Mar 28, 2012, at 3:57 AM, ISHIMOTO Ken wrote:
>>
>>> I would love to contribute but I don't think my code would benefit in any way as there are better programmers with better understanding of the needs.
>>
>> There are always better programmers out there, but if we can contribute code, and bring nice ideas to the Community, it will helps the Community.
>> Also if better programmers fix some mistake than the not so good programmer can learn what fixes was done to the contributed code.
>> And next time the contribute will be better.
>
> In my case, I was a not so good programmer contributing. A good programmer (Anjo) told me my code was crap and pointed out problems I needed to fix before it could be committed! Harsh? Yeah... but knowing my code would be evaluated without sugar coating made my work a lot better. I miss that guy :-)

I think most of us miss him. He is a really talented guy.

That is a good point: if want to get better then submit changes. People WILL see them and comment if they are substandard.

Chuck

--
Chuck Hill Senior Consultant / VP Development

Practical WebObjects - for developers who want to increase their overall knowledge of WebObjects or who are trying to solve specific problems.
http://www.global-village.net/gvc/practical_webobjects

[Denis Frolov]

By the way, do we have any evidences of Apple's commitment to continue
using WO internally? Did anyone check - do they continue using it for
their own new projects?

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Pascal Robert <pro...@macti.ca> wrote:
>
> Le 2012-03-28 à 05:24, Gino Pacitti a écrit :
>
>> Well I for one would like to have some sort of contribution scheme fixed on an annual membership for development etc...
>>
>> And just so I am not too behind on what is the current state of the union - what is the Apple current think on WO. I think I read here that they are no longer contributing to its development. Is that correct? Any one know of their plans for the software?
>
> They keep it for themselves, and it won't change, plain and simple. Many things have been done to try to change that, and nothing worked.

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[Pascal Robert]

If Mike still works there, I guess they are still working on it :-) But are they using it for new stuff, I don't know.

[Johann Werner]

We should stop asking those questions. What would that change anyway? Don't look at the past and mourn, look at the now and future and how you (with your commits, ideas and help for the community) could make Wonder even better and more useful for you and everyone else! Pascal wrote what is needed:

"[…] we need help on documentation, unit testing, marketing, the list of needs is quite long."

So anyone who wants Wonder to keep a sexy technology and to continue to grow should contribute his/her part. If you don't have any patches to commit but have other strengths, those are needed too. In one word: participate! :)

Am 28.03.2012 um 20:46 schrieb Pascal Robert:

> If Mike still works there, I guess they are still working on it :-) But are they using it for new stuff, I don't know.
>
>> By the way, do we have any evidences of Apple's commitment to continue
>> using WO internally? Did anyone check - do they continue using it for
>> their own new projects?
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 1:27 PM, Pascal Robert <pro...@macti.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>> Le 2012-03-28 à 05:24, Gino Pacitti a écrit :
>>>
>>>> Well I for one would like to have some sort of contribution scheme fixed on an annual membership for development etc...
>>>>
>>>> And just so I am not too behind on what is the current state of the union - what is the Apple current think on WO. I think I read here that they are no longer contributing to its development. Is that correct? Any one know of their plans for the software?
>>>
>>> They keep it for themselves, and it won't change, plain and simple. Many things have been done to try to change that, and nothing worked.

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[Chuck Hill]

On 2012-03-28, at 12:16 PM, Johann Werner wrote:

> We should stop asking those questions. What would that change anyway?

That there is an excellent point. Who cares if Apple is still using it? What difference does that make to you? They are NOT going to release a new version so if they have developed cool new features, you are not going to see them. You have what you have. Either it is better than anything else you can have, and you should use it, or it is not and you should move. If Apple is not using it, then they are either using something else better that is public (unlikely as I don't see it) or they are using something else that is better but private. But how is the latter different from if they are still using WO? It does not benefit us outside either way.

Chuck

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>
> This email sent to ch...@global-village.net

[Jean Pierre Malrieu]

Le 28 mars 2012 à 19:04, Chuck Hill a écrit :

> On 2012-03-28, at 9:55 AM, Ramsey Gurley wrote:
>> On Mar 28, 2012, at 3:57 AM, ISHIMOTO Ken wrote:
>>>
>>>> I would love to contribute but I don't think my code would benefit in any way as there are better programmers with better understanding of the needs.
>>>
>>> There are always better programmers out there, but if we can contribute code, and bring nice ideas to the Community, it will helps the Community.
>>> Also if better programmers fix some mistake than the not so good programmer can learn what fixes was done to the contributed code.
>>> And next time the contribute will be better.
>>
>> In my case, I was a not so good programmer contributing. A good programmer (Anjo) told me my code was crap and pointed out problems I needed to fix before it could be committed! Harsh? Yeah... but knowing my code would be evaluated without sugar coating made my work a lot better. I miss that guy :-)
>
> I think most of us miss him. He is a really talented guy.

Anjo, are you still on this list?
What is your take on Project Wonder future?
Do you have an exit strategy from WO? If you have, I'd be happy to know what it is!

JPM

[Denis Frolov]

If Apple is still using and plans to use WO in the future, then we
have and will have killer examples of web apps that validate the tech
and make marketing it to new developers much easier. On the contrary,
if Apple is moving away from WO, this can be a detractor. That's the
only reason I've asked the question.

[Farrukh Ijaz]

There are certain parts of Apple's website which is using WebObjects. Which version, I don't know. You can easily identify by looking at the URL which contains /WebObjects/wo/.... Some parts are also based on Struts and JavaEE framework where you can find a /.../Something.do type of URLs. These are by conventions but what lies beneath is a secret.

Why don't we just consider what we've as WebObjects and Wonder as Foundation and keep building on top of it? How many updates you've seen in JDK itself in the last 15 years? They are still using most of the foundation classes with few enhancements. They add new features and that's it.

To me WebObjects is not just a framework or a platform. It's a foundation of something which is robust in reality. If Apple didn't have patents for its technologies, all those companies out there could have stolen what Apple owned decades ago. As an example Apache Cayenne, Rails, Grails, EJBs, Microsoft Dynamic Data are all attempts to copy what you already have in WebObjects.

Technology doesn't matter much if it's already stable. What matters is the idea. What is Facebook? It's just a better networking idea which killed Orkut and it's standing on the same open source PHP and Graph model. Although Google is trying to persude Facebook users to start using Google+ but I don't see this will happen unless 51% of the Facebook users become Google employees or in case of some Force Majeure, Facebook infrastructure collapses.

We've great people, we need to remain enthusiastic and energised. Things will change and this community will grow. We just need better marketing strategy and clear roadmap and lots of contribution. We'll discuss all this and much more and will finalize a doable roadmap when we meet.

Farrukh

> https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/webobjects-dev/farrukh.ijaz%40fuegodigitalmedia.com
>
> This email sent to farruk...@fuegodigitalmedia.com

[Jim Kinsey]

Regarding WebObjects in URLs, I've worked on one app in the past year which used WO solely as an application container for the sake of Monitor - behind the scenes it was all raw JDBC and Velocity templates. Prior to that I worked on one which was gradually migrating away from WO as a framework, but which is still running as a WOApplication - it's often easier to change the frameworks you use than your deployment infrastructure!

-----Original Message-----
From: webobjects-dev-bounces+jim.kinsey=bbc....@lists.apple.com [mailto:webobjects-dev-bounces+jim.kinsey=bbc....@lists.apple.com] On Behalf Of Farrukh Ijaz
Sent: 29 March 2012 09:49
To: WebObjects-Dev Mailing List List
Subject: Re: Apple and WO (Google Moderator thread)

There are certain parts of Apple's website which is using WebObjects. Which version, I don't know. You can easily identify by looking at the URL which contains /WebObjects/wo/.... Some parts are also based on Struts and JavaEE framework where you can find a /.../Something.do type of URLs. These are by conventions but what lies beneath is a secret.

Why don't we just consider what we've as WebObjects and Wonder as Foundation and keep building on top of it? How many updates you've seen in JDK itself in the last 15 years? They are still using most of the foundation classes with few enhancements. They add new features and that's it.

To me WebObjects is not just a framework or a platform. It's a foundation of something which is robust in reality. If Apple didn't have patents for its technologies, all those companies out there could have stolen what Apple owned decades ago. As an example Apache Cayenne, Rails, Grails, EJBs, Microsoft Dynamic Data are all attempts to copy what you already have in WebObjects.

Technology doesn't matter much if it's already stable. What matters is the idea. What is Facebook? It's just a better networking idea which killed Orkut and it's standing on the same open source PHP and Graph model. Although Google is trying to persude Facebook users to start using Google+ but I don't see this will happen unless 51% of the Facebook users become Google employees or in case of some Force Majeure, Facebook infrastructure collapses.

We've great people, we need to remain enthusiastic and energised. Things will change and this community will grow. We just need better marketing strategy and clear roadmap and lots of contribution. We'll discuss all this and much more and will finalize a doable roadmap when we meet.

Farrukh

On 2012-03-29, at 10:55 AM, Denis Frolov wrote:

> If Apple is still using and plans to use WO in the future, then we
> have and will have killer examples of web apps that validate the tech
> and make marketing it to new developers much easier. On the contrary,
> if Apple is moving away from WO, this can be a detractor. That's the
> only reason I've asked the question.
>
> On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:19 AM, Chuck Hill <ch...@global-village.net> wrote:
>>
>> On 2012-03-28, at 12:16 PM, Johann Werner wrote:
>>
>>> We should stop asking those questions. What would that change anyway?
>>
>> That there is an excellent point. Who cares if Apple is still using it? What difference does that make to you? They are NOT going to release a new version so if they have developed cool new features, you are not going to see them. You have what you have. Either it is better than anything else you can have, and you should use it, or it is not and you should move. If Apple is not using it, then they are either using something else better that is public (unlikely as I don't see it) or they are using something else that is better but private. But how is the latter different from if they are still using WO? It does not benefit us outside either way.
>>
>>
>> Chuck
>>
>>
>>> Don't look at the past and mourn, look at the now and future and how you (with your commits, ideas and help for the community) could make Wonder even better and more useful for you and everyone else! Pascal wrote what is needed:
>>>

>>> "[...] we need help on documentation, unit testing, marketing, the list of needs is quite long."

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[Cheong Hee (Gmail)]

I hope my _weak_reference_ voice could be heard. I am not as outspoken as
one of mr davids : )

To grow the community, especially getting new wo developers, we may need to
have a different approach. From personal observation, I do notice that new
developers are going to php, phyton etc because they need to maintain open
source application. So my question to the floor is - have we thought before
to create an open source application that could made popular and showcase to
the world the strengths of wo? It should be easy to be downloaded and
deployed with good documentation. I would think once we have this, the new
comers will be more energetic to start going into customization and learning
curve. Is it possible to put our gurus under one roof and make it happens?
This is just my low low 2 cts though i always think we should try a
different path a long the line.

Cheers

Cheong Hee

[Kieran Kelleher]

2 cents:

(Cent #1) If you want something done, you need to just get stuck in and try and do it yourself. The fact that Mike Schrag and Q were completely lost in a jungle of unknown code/logic/architecture when they first ventured into Wonder and WOLips should be confidence-building and motivating for all of us, as shown by these quotes below: (in fact, print those and pin them to the wall and look at them the next time you feel that it is too hard to add a feature to Wonder)

"I didn't know how to write nearly any of what was in WOLips before I started working on WOLips, and likewise with Wonder. I learned WebObjects working on Wonder. I'm would wager that everyone who worked on Wonder was in the same category. Contribution is also positive reinforcement. The coolest times in Wonder for me were always when one person contributing got someone else energized to contribute and amazing things were made."  - MS

"I have worked on many different parts of WOLips, Wonder and numerous other projects, and more often than not I had no idea where to start, all I knew was what I wanted to achieve. You just have to know what you want to do, and don't give up until you succeed or know that it can't be done. Some of the code I have contributed took me over a year to get right" - Q

The point is: (a) Everyone must start somewhere and sometime to learn something new, so explore and try to add and/or enhance the features you want. You will learn *a lot* while doing so. and (b) If you don't like the wiki or the documentation, stop complaining about it, go fix one wiki or javadoc thing, even one little 10-minute thing. With github and the Wonder integration branch, the barriers to contributing fixes and javadoc to Wonder are gone. Gone. The only barriers are *our own* time and *our own* motivation.

(Cent #2) Probably the primary objective of every developer in our community is to support him/herself and if he/she has a family, to take care of them, keep a roof over their heads, food on the table and to spend quality/fun time with the wife and the kids. (Kids are young once - don't miss out). Wonder and WOLips contributions are voluntary. Those that contribute do so commonly because 

(a) they wanted to modify something for their own project, so they are sharing the enhancements, 

(b) something is bugging them about WO, Wonder or WOLips and it is bugging them so much that they feel compelled to fix it, or 

(c) they were building some reusable functionality for their own project and they decided "hey, let's build it with the intention of adding it to Wonder when it is finished", or ....... either way, they somehow fitted it into their existing work day.

When people like Anjo and Mike went through phases of huge code/feature contributions, they did not complain that others were not working as hard as they were. They did what they were motivated to do when they had the time, opportunity. (Also, I am sure that a sense of pride in one's work and a genuine desire to help others is involved too when people contribute to open-source)

If you want something badly enough, you will make an effort to try and do it yourself, and if you care (and the intensity of this discussion shows that most do care), you will share it back with a pull request. And if java and WO/Wonder is still too hard for you, try some quality javadoc pull requests on Wonder methods that you just spent 5 minutes figuring out what the method did.

The point is not to keep expect/hoping for others to contribute stuff that you want (in general). Just start a private branch in your fork and hack away over time when you get quiet periods here and there.

"How do you eat an elephant? ....  One bite at a time." ( http://goo.gl/aDx2w )

(I have a few more cents if needed)

Cheers, Kieran :-)

[Johann Werner]

Am 29.03.2012 um 16:35 schrieb Kieran Kelleher:

> […] If you don't like the wiki or the documentation, stop complaining about it, go fix one wiki or javadoc thing, even one little 10-minute thing. […]

There are over 900 javadoc warnings in Wonder frameworks waiting to be fixed let alone all those methods and classes having no javadoc at all. So there is plenty of work for those wanting to help improving Wonder.

[Pascal Robert]

Le 2012-03-29 à 14:28, Johann Werner a écrit :

>
> Am 29.03.2012 um 16:35 schrieb Kieran Kelleher:
>
>> […] If you don't like the wiki or the documentation, stop complaining about it, go fix one wiki or javadoc thing, even one little 10-minute thing. […]
>
> There are over 900 javadoc warnings in Wonder frameworks waiting to be fixed let alone all those methods and classes having no javadoc at all. So there is plenty of work for those wanting to help improving Wonder.

And tons of components and other classes with wrong or missing documentation. I fixed a bunch a couple of weeks ago, but it's big task.

To see the warnings that Johann is talking about:

http://jenkins.wocommunity.org/job/WonderIntegration/63/tasksResult/?