On Dec 2, 2009, at 11:11 AM, David Avendasora wrote:
>
>>> There may be personal preferences on how to do things, but I mean,
>>> how can you have an overview and discuss about the relationships
>>> and the quality and naming of them when you have just a list of
>>> entities in a tool?
>> Just how I work ... I can reword your sentence to say "just a pile
>> of boxes and lines on 30 pages" and make it sound just as silly, I
>> suppose. I find diagrams to be completely worthless. Maybe it's
>> just me. When I go to a website for some new technology and it has
>> an architecture diagram on it, my brain turns off. They just do
>> nothing for me. I'd rather navigate EOModelDoc or just Entity
>> Modeler. I can double-click a relationship and jump to its
>> destination, i can open entities and see their subentities, all
>> without filling my entire wall with a subway map. Maybe it's just me.
>
> No, it's not just either of you. I think this delineates the
> difference between two different kinds of people.
In English they are called "smart" and "stupid". :-P
> I'm guessing they are the exact same people on different sides of
> the WOBuilder vs Component Editor discussion. Some people need to
> see pictures to understand the more abstract ideas behind code, and
> others just mentally compile the code.
I don't think that I mentally compile anything. I just reason about
things at a higher level of abstraction that allows me to think about
more things at once and to relate things at a coarser granularity than
the artifacts in a text file.
> I, personally, am a visual person. I loved WOBuilder, I missed being
> able to switch over and look at a diagram in EOModeler and I still
> rely on D2JC's Assistant. They take abstract concepts and make them
> real for me.
Visual? See above. ;-)
I'd totally use a really GOOD visual WO Component editor. But
WOBuilder did not cut it. I'd also use a good visual representation
of a database, but ER diagrams of a schema of any complexity seem to
obscure rather than highlight the useful information. I'd rather just
look at a relationship than trace a bendy line between two boxes to
see if there is a crows foot on the end.
> I can only wish that I were the type that can just mentally
> "compile" code on the fly and understand it at the level Mike, Anjo
> and many others do, but I just can't. If I don't have the visual
> tools, I'm much less productive. That's just the way I am. Which
> also means that I'm likely not going to be creating those lovely
> visual tools either.
You don't need to understand all the code, you only need to understand
the intent of the code. Only when hunting bugs where the intent does
to match reality do you need to fully understand the lines of code.
Chuck
>>> I can't speak for others, but in my environment I have never found
>>> anyone questioning the necessity of a diagram view to discuss and
>>> review a model within a group of people. May be I am living in
>>> another world ,-)
>> I know lots of people like diagrams. I'm just not one of them.
>>
>>> My question is, how much of an effort would it be to include a
>>> diagram view in Entity Modeler similar to the EOModeler, even if
>>> it seems we would be the only ones using them? Or is the answer
>>> anyway that will never happen and we have to look for another
>>> tool? At least I know then there is no hope and we have to leave
>>> and look for something else, although not what we would like.
>> It's enough effort that I haven't done it. If you care enough about
>> it that you want to fund the development of it, we're always open
>> to that, but I don't really plan on investing a huge amount of time
>> in a diagramming component that will unquestionably be subpar
>> compared to what Graffle can do. It doesn't make sense to me.
>>
>> ms
>
> David Avendasora
> Senior Software Engineer
> K12, Inc.
>
> *****
> WebObjects Documentation Wiki : http://wiki.objectstyle.org/confluence/display/WO/
> *****
> WebObjects API: http://developer.apple.com/legacy/mac/library/documentation/MacOSXServer/Reference/WO54_Reference/index.html
> *****
>
-- Chuck Hill Senior Consultant / VP DevelopmentPractical 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/products/practical_webobjects
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Wed Dec 02 2009 - 14:36:59 EST