[TYPO3-mvc] Documentation

[Felix Oertel]

Hey guys,

I've been thinking about this topic over the last days as well.

Am 10.04.10 20:45, schrieb Bernhard Kraft:
> [... ]There is almost nodocumentation. Or I am just to stupid to find it.

This simply results from the fact, that there are quite few people 
having enough knowledge to write documentation about. In TYPO3 v4 core 
some parts are documented even less, though there are hundreds of people 
using (and knowing) it.

I think we have to take into account that this is beta1 and at current 
time there is no manpower to write good documentation. Once all this 
stuff settles and people start using it, more and more people will 
become used to it and write wiki/blog/howto/forum-stuff about it.

Afterall this is a backport of FLOW3 which is not as good documented as 
well. Things keep changing over and over again, so why should some spend 
hours writing docs if propably all his writings will become useless in 
under a month.

So far to the technical / pratical side of the "problem".

> I also noted there is this "Ahhh" effect missing. I mean: When you
> started to write your first TYPO3 extension it was very easy to
> understand.

Yeah, and that encouraged everybody who was able to write "hello world" 
into an content-element to call himself a "TYPO3 developer". You were 
able to start workin with a lot less skills and funny things appeared. I 
saw extensions using their own mysql_connect(), because you were able to 
use the system without reading more then two pages of documentation.

 > And I have to admit it was quite more complicated getting my
> first extbase extension up and running. You have up to three or four
> levels of directory structures, all this MVC paradigms, etc.

Yip, I would second that. It was harder in the beginning, but now I've 
got the basics, it's a lot more fun. It takes you longer, but you'll get 
the better results.

Of course documentation is one of the reasons, it takes you longer. You 
want to build an v4 extension? Just visit some $blog, chance is high you 
will find a tutorial for that. But try to find out how all this 
LazyLoadingProxy and Persistent ObejctStorage stuff works - without 
propper documentation. But once you got it, you will know the system you 
are working on much better.

> I would just opt for NEVER removing the old way of creating a TYPO3 (v4)
> extension as this is a big plus of TYPO3: It was easy to extend it
> without being a information technology guru having studied 5 years of
> computer science.

Ya, as mentioned, I think this is more of a small minus. *g* Not only 
does higher technical requirements save my job >;-) but it also shares 
the average level of development.

Take a look into the TER. There is a lot of crap in there, do you think 
this makes TYPO3 more attractive? I don't ... People keep saying "If I 
want to do something with TYPO3 there are 12 extensions for it. First I 
don't know which to use and afterwards it turns out that none of them is 
working fine."

> And of course the evolutionary pressure is misssing. Is it?

I don't think it's missing, but evolution of extbase is still before the 
big bang (think that's, what the non-christians call it? *g*) Things 
will become more popular, more people will get involved and eventually 
more documentation will become available.

regards, foertel

What I DON'T say:
- People who write v4 extensions are bad guys.
- People who can't handle extbase are bad developers.
- I have allways written perfect extensions. *g*

What I say:
It's good to digg into the system you develop for ... wether the system 
forces you to or not