On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 12:06:12AM -0400, David Abrahams wrote: > > On Apr 23, 2009, at 10:29 PM, J. Bruce Fields wrote: > >> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 01:37:05PM -0500, Michael Witten wrote: >>> On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 12:57, J. Bruce Fields >>> <bfields@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> Why don't the docs start out defining blobs and trees and the object >>> database and references into that database? The reason everything is >>> so confusing is that the understanding is brushed under the tutorial >>> rug. People need to learn how to think before they can effectively >>> learn to start doing. >> >> OK, but let's not over-generalize: the person that just wants to >> figure >> out whether the driver for their network card was fixed in today's >> network devel tree shouldn't have to sit through a discussion of the >> object database. > > Those people don't need a VCS. They should download a snapshot or use a > web interface. Seriously. There's no way you can make even the > best-designed VCS simple enough to justify the time it takes to learn > enough just to use it for that. > >> And even among readers that are in it for the long >> haul, I think many people will react better to something that gives >> them >> at least a little concrete how-to information up front. > > People (well, people like me) should get a brief "hello, world" demo up > front, to give them a feel for the flavor of the system, but > [important:] it shouldn't attempt to be instructive. Fundamental > concepts are next. How-to information can come after that, or after the > reference information. > >> So the goal was always to find a tutorial route through the material >> that would allow us to introduce the concepts as we go along. > > Maybe that will work for some people, but it *really* won't work for me. > You can't start throwing around terms of art without defining them unless > you want to raise more questions than you're answering. I would be > surprised if it wasn't the same for many tech people. I agree that (with rare exceptions) terms shouldn't be used before they're defined. I don't agree with all of the above, but I think we could come to a satisfactory compromise. I'll see if I can find a few hours this weekend to at least sketch a new organization. But, as I've said, I'm short on time and could really use some help. --b. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html