Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2001, Brenda J. Butler wrote:
I'm not complaining about open source stuff (on my home systems
that's all I use and I'm very grateful for it), but open source
has changed from when we learned it. It's hard to learn it
that way any more, because lots of people now write this stuff
for a living. A hobbyist can't keep up any more.
I'm not really sure I understand your logic. Because there's more
material available, it's harder to learn? I don't agree with that
logic.
Do I really want to step into this . . . ?
I can't speak for Brenda, but I did have a sense of what she was trying
to say. Although I agree with Zonker that more material is better, I
have found with my own problems (particularly sound issues) that much of
the documentation is simply wrong (because it's out of date). That does
make it "harder to learn" for the newbie who has honestly tried to find
answers. And yes, I know most docs have a "You can find the most recent
version of this document 'here'" line somewhere near the top, but I as a
newbie glossed over the intro sections, and didn't find that line for
several months, and even when I did find it, I still found that in some
cases the newest doc was still out of date.
Mind you, I'm not complaining (my dog ate my flameproof suit, you
understand); I'm just trying to hopefully illuminate what Brenda was
saying. Or at least that's my take on it, but then, I'm an idiot and
don't usually know what I'm talking about, so feel free to ignore this
line of reasoning.
Kent
(who doesn't write real documentation, but has been known to answer
posts on this list with hopefully semi-useful answers as part of his
contribution to the community)
