Hi Jim –
I think everyone who is learning Servoy (or who has already put in their time learning it) would agree that more examples would be nice. Little demos/free examples are a phenomenon that grows organically, and the source is generally the developers themselves. And the growth of that community - which is already well underway - is the key to motivating more experienced dev’s to create learning materials for their colleagues who are just starting out. (Try to think back to 1995/1996, when FileMaker Pro 3 came out and our brains warped trying to wrap themselves around relational design. No examples existed for quite some time. Then within years there were literally thousands of them.)
I think you and I, and probably most people coming to Servoy from the world of FileMaker Pro, spend a bit of time fumbling around because for many years we have been using a tool whose target market is the NON-professional. Therefore it behooves a company like FileMaker to create learning materials that start at A, move on to B, C, etc., in a process of leading the rank beginner through every aspect of making a solution with the tool. Significant resources are invested in developing such materials.
When it comes to Servoy Developer, we have now deliberately selected a tool that overcomes so many of the shortcomings we ran up against with FMP. We wanted more power. We wanted events. We wanted a non-modal development UI with scripts we could just type. We wanted a standards-based tool. We wanted to create applications that are easier to deliver, easier to integrate in an enterprise. Servoy, with its 3-tier architecture and javascript methods, etc., brings us what we wanted. (“So be careful what you ask for…”) We have left the world of being masters of a tool that was really meant for amateurs, and entered the world of “real application development”. It is a hard transition! We are now responsible for all kinds of things, right down to controlling aspects, like transactions, of our architecture and coding that we never had to think about before (because we never had control over them before).
Jim, you posted your thoughts in the “SAN Program” topic … does this indicate that you feel SAN should provide free training and support to its members? If so, I for one do not agree (as much as I’m also putting in significant “stumbling-around time”). I do not wish to see Servoy expend resources (at this time, anyhow) on writing a book that functions as a training manual. I wish to see them continue to make fantastic improvements to the product. I want to see a Servoy 3 that blows everyone clear out of the water, that garnishes major attention in the technical press, that attracts thousands of new licensees and developers.
Any development environment you choose does require that you either spend significant time in self-training (even if examples abound) and/or that you spend a tidy sum on purchased training. I’m not unsympathetic to your situation – I also am doing several projects at the moment on “sweat equity”. I’ve begun making notes for myself that I see could be turned into a Getting Started With Servoy book. Maybe some day I’ll write it. I’ve also begun creating little sample solutions to help myself tackle various “how-to’s”. Maybe some day I’ll spruce them up and create a resource area of Datatude’s Web site for the next generation of Servoy Newbies. Consider doing the same!
Also keep your eye on servoyforge.net, the site that is under development by our SAN colleague Robert Ivens (Roclasi) where all kind of interesting and helpful examples are likely to start accruing some day very soon.
kazar