Why people are so hesitant with Revolution

I’ll be quite honest here, I’m happy as a clam at high tide with Evolution. I’ve got some ideas for improvements on it. I just don’t have the energy and patience any more to struggle with trying to learn the alphabet soup underlying Revolution. I’ve spent some time on it, and I can see where it will be a wonderful tool for heavy-duty web designers. But I suspect that the simpler structure of Evolution will continue to suit small-to-medium sites for many years to come.

Susan,

I agree with you. I am work almost exclusively with small business clients and Evolution is where its at. I see some optimizations and some changes and other such improvements over the next while and I see that it will survive until 2010. It may be that Mootools won’t so I will make the distinction when I make the post.

Evolution is not even out yet and it is the current production branch of MODx. We don’t need to talk about things in the future until they happen. Revolution can stand alone and be what it is and I won’t mislead the Mootools folks that it will be in every future release of MODx because no one can promise that. If someone else makes a better JS library it may be replaced. I think Mootools is more than aware of this.

Quote from: sottwell at Jul 29, 2008, 08:36 AM

I’ll be quite honest here, I’m happy as a clam at high tide with Evolution. I’ve got some ideas for improvements on it. I just don’t have the energy and patience any more to struggle with trying to learn the alphabet soup underlying Revolution. I’ve spent some time on it, and I can see where it will be a wonderful tool for heavy-duty web designers. But I suspect that the simpler structure of Evolution will continue to suit small-to-medium sites for many years to come.

Hmmm, this really depresses me; makes me kind of feel like I’ve wasted the last 2 years of my life trying to take MODx to the next level, responding to all the complaints and experiences we’ve had with the legacy code. Revolution is supposed to be where these improvements come together; I just wish I could understand why everyone is so hesitant with it and refuses to get involved in the development. Alphabet soup? Really? The tags are easier to learn, the parser is more flexible and consistent, the API is more consistent (rather than different functions all over the place with no naming conventions), and manager customization is infinitely less painful (thank you Shaun). I would argue that Revolution is simpler, has less core code, is more extensible, and, well, maybe I just don’t get it.

I’m gonna go cry now... :’(

Why, because everybody has to like what you love? Goodness, I’d spend most of my life crying then, because all of my "friends" and neighbors only want to talk about their clothes, makeup, and kids. That bores me to death! And they just can’t understand me, and mostly don’t have much to do with me. Typical geek girl problem I suppose. And most guys seem to think I’m only interested in computers and such because I was interested in them. I got called lesbian more than once because I shut some idiot down.

Right now I’m just tired. Give me a month or so, and I’ll be back at Revolution; I can’t help myself, if there’s something I don’t understand I may gripe and bitch about it, but I have to keep at it until I do understand it. But like an old shoe, even though it may have holes and a few gaping seams, Evolution is just comfortable!

You are our resident genius, Jason. You can’t get all sorry for yourself because few people can understand what you’re doing! That doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate you, and stand in awe of what you’ve accomplished so far.

Jason,

You make a point there:

I just wish I could understand why everyone is so hesitant with it and refuses to get involved in the development.

This is a point for investigation.

Currently it is annoyingly difficult to locate the Revolution Download from the download page or main site. It takes a minimum of 3-4 clicks and text scanning to find it. A simple cleanup of http://www.modxcms.com/downloads.html whereby all the downloads were linked from here. No more here there and everywhere.

We need to ask people clearly to try it out. Compared to Cake 1.2 which had people building live sites on unstable code I think we can ask people to do the same given the appropriate caveat. Especially when the core can be overwritten as needed and not bork the site.

I’d love to hear other suggestions but I think if the downloads were rationalized and cleaned up--even on the existing site--it would make a huge difference.

Don’t cry (I hope you are joking)

I have been doing some thinking on how Revolution will effect me personally. It is a big deal and will impact modxers in different ways. As others have stated, I am also very happy with 096x and feel extremely comfortable with it (that’s why I am here). However, I am very interested with the whole Revolution project and feel that even though 096x is good enough for now, that in the future Revo will be the way to go hands down.

My transition will most likely be gradual, where I will first take my time to learn the system, then will use it on personal projects then eventually replacing 096x. I guess that I will suffer a little with the coding side of things (this is what scares me the most, I am a jr php coder and have the impression that it will be more advanced to code for Revo). Once I get confident I am sure I will not look back.

The largest influence in the transition for the established MODx user will be the fear of the unknown and the resistance to change. It is like being a senior in high school and suddenly going to being a freshman in college. One minute you are confident and the king of the scene, the next you are starting from scratch and trying to understand the basics.

I just wish I could understand why everyone is so hesitant with it and refuses to get involved in the development.

The beta was only released a short time ago, give it a little more time and the interest will pick up for sure. I am a Jr coder and am initially intimidated by coding in Revolution, not based on any experience but based on the talk of xPDO and OOP and since I an illiterate with both of these I hesitate. This may be a common misconception that may need to be addressed in order to get us light weight coders more confident.

We need to ask people clearly to try it out. Compared to Cake 1.2 which had people building live sites on unstable code I think we can ask people to do the same given the appropriate caveat. Especially when the core can be overwritten as needed and not bork the site.

A test site powered by Revolution would be good. Maybe a live site that could show off some of the advantages. Seeing it in action is a great point of interest. Is the MODx site powered by Revolution? I think I remember reading that it was a breeze to migrate. Will the new site be built on Revolution?

The global environment may be a component here as well. The world is in recession and many of the small businesses are frantically trying to stay afloat. My phone has been very silent recently and we are closing less deals than ever before. Since 096x is working for now, my focus has been on business and trying to find a way to make it over this next hump (and where to get my next meal).

Quote from: dev_cw at Jul 29, 2008, 01:50 PM

Don’t cry (I hope you are joking)

It was all virtual tears, yes.
Quote from: dev_cw at Jul 29, 2008, 01:50 PM

My transition will most likely be gradual, where I will first take my time to learn the system, then will use it on personal projects then eventually replacing 096x. I guess that I will suffer a little with the coding side of things (this is what scares me the most, I am a jr php coder and have the impression that it will be more advanced to code for Revo). Once I get confident I am sure I will not look back.

The largest influence in the transition for the established MODx user will be the fear of the unknown and the resistance to change. It is like being a senior in high school and suddenly going to being a freshman in college. One minute you are confident and the king of the scene, the next you are starting from scratch and trying to understand the basics.

Indeed; it’s a fear that everyone encounters with change; but if anything, Revolution should make it easier for beginners to learn how to code more extravagant add-ons with less effort, as well as how to code using the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle and other important object-oriented concepts that can help reduce the cost and complexity of the entire development life-cycle.

In the end, this framework can only be as good as the folks that develop components with it demand it be, so I’m just anxious for more folks with existing MODx experience, especially team members, start developing with it and give real-world feedback BEFORE it gets out to the public and is then harder to improve. And mostly, I was just whining so maybe someone would feel bad and help down the stretch...

Jason, I’ll tell you what. Don’t cry. I’m going to be redesigning my smashingred.com in the next month and I’ll start out with Revolution and ask for help. I have plans to build out template based low budget sites for clients over the next month and those will be on 096x but if I see the light and bugfixes come and go I may migrate them to Revolution.

What we need to do is post just that to get people to use Revolution and use it and test it. How about a blog post asking for people to try it out. I can write something up but I think that it should come from you. Otherwise let me know and I’ll draft something.

Cheers,
Jay

A few months ago I tried to set up a demo site with backend access like I have for sottwell.com now, but couldn’t get the permissions/roles to work; I guess they just weren’t quite ready yet (or I wasn’t, is more likely). I’m in the middle of a couple of projects right now, but as soon as I get that cleared up I promise to set up a demo site and if I can’t get it to work I’ll nag you unmercifully until it does work!

Quote from: OpenGeek at Jul 29, 2008, 10:29 AM

Quote from: sottwell at Jul 29, 2008, 08:36 AM

I’ll be quite honest here, I’m happy as a clam at high tide with Evolution. I’ve got some ideas for improvements on it. I just don’t have the energy and patience any more to struggle with trying to learn the alphabet soup underlying Revolution. I’ve spent some time on it, and I can see where it will be a wonderful tool for heavy-duty web designers. But I suspect that the simpler structure of Evolution will continue to suit small-to-medium sites for many years to come.

Hmmm, this really depresses me; makes me kind of feel like I’ve wasted the last 2 years of my life trying to take MODx to the next level, responding to all the complaints and experiences we’ve had with the legacy code. Revolution is supposed to be where these improvements come together; I just wish I could understand why everyone is so hesitant with it and refuses to get involved in the development. Alphabet soup? Really? The tags are easier to learn, the parser is more flexible and consistent, the API is more consistent (rather than different functions all over the place with no naming conventions), and manager customization is infinitely less painful (thank you Shaun). I would argue that Revolution is simpler, has less core code, is more extensible, and, well, maybe I just don’t get it.

I’m gonna go cry now... :’(

I’m actually looking forward to moving to Revolution. Having seen the code, it’s clear that it will be more robust than Evolution and much more extensible. I’m impressed by something new in Revolution almost every day.

That said, I also can relate to what Susan is saying. It’s not the tags or the parser or the API or even the fear of change (at least for me). Having started from scratch with both 0.9.6 and Revolution, I can say that Revolution is *much* harder to get a grip on. I’ve wandered around in the mostly uncommented code for hours with no idea what I was looking at or what it did or where to find what I wanted (and, yes, I’ve looked at the docs). I’ve written strictly OOP programs with thousands of lines of code, figured out the internal structure of an Excel spreadsheet file (before anyone had published it) by trial and error, and deconstructed uncommented assembly code, so I can only imagine how daunting Revolution looks to someone fairly new to OOP and/or PHP.

Just look at the nesting depth and taxonomy here :

core
model
modx
processors
layout
tree
element
schema
smarty
internals
modx

As a new user, I can guess what the core is, but I can’t imagine what a model is or what I would expect to find in any of the other levels except maybe element. The structure suggests that modx is a model and that a model is only one part of the core, but then why is there another modx under smarty, which appears to be another model? And isn’t the core part of MODx? Then why is modx in multiple places *under* the core??? And isn’t a model the same thing as a schema? And what the heck are these new "connectors"?? It’s enough to make you dizzy.

I’m not suggesting that these questions don’t have good answers, just that a new user is going to have a hard time finding them and that developers are going to be hesitant to join up to work on a system they don’t understand. I have no doubt that it all looks pretty simple to the people who built it--and maybe to the many people smarter than me.

Shaun’s new tutorials are great but I think at some point, somebody needs to explicate the MODx directory tree in plain English to explain what these things are and what they do.

I hope I don’t sound too negative here because I really love MODx and Revolution. I’m just trying to give my take on why developers aren’t jumping aboard right and left.