What's all this fuss with Laravel ?

Yii 2.0 General Discussions
41

I am looking forward to seeing the comments that people make for the documentation - should be interesting to see - and how it could help to improve it. :)

42

You get me wrong :) I don’t mean a newbie as somebody completely new to programming. In this context I mean a person who posses enaugh knowledge and has been on the market for some time BUT is new to Yii. This is the goal - gather this kind of people. Of course, a certain level of difficulty as it’s now, is a point where a certain amount of newbies has to go away because of the weak knowledge. Here I agree with you, let them go away to learn more, or we learn them to make a future community.

Between these all newbiews are real, good programmers - just let them easy get in, then show the power of Yii :) It’s like a supermarket promotion ;) This way will allow to kill two birds with one stone - get the professionals into the community (it’s important to spread a good word about Yii to the market by them) and the second is the knowledge they may put into our community & product (Yii).

43

You do have a good point, yes: I also want Yii to be better at guiding newcomers.

It is important that we encourage newcomers to describe what difficulties they are facing when learning the ropes.

44

I agree with you completely on this. I don’t see YII as moving into a microframework.

There are MANY applications that need a more robust framework that does its job and stays out of your way. That is why I took to YII2. I had been trying to twist a CMS into doing what I needed in building a web based application. It got to the point that I was wrestling with the ‘framework’ more then working on my app.

I need more then microframework. I was looking for something that would provide some common functionality for me without dictating every detail of how my app was going to look. YII2 is working out great for me.

On the downside, the documentation is very sparse on many details. I am not a newbie, but I am not a daily php programmer these days either. And YII2 uses a lot of php features that I was not familiar with.

A lot of the features of YII2 have to be dug for. I almost dropped YII2 for my project because it started looking like I had to do everything ‘The YII2 way’, with GII, activeform, and the ugly forms it created.

I got a couple of the books, then after throwing out the ones on YII1, decided to stick with YII2 long enough to figure out how to make it do what I wanted. Sadly even the books throw in so many details to start with that they don’t really serve people that are trying to get into YII2.

I have not found much documentation for ‘YII2 Newbies’. PHP newbies would be better served by other frameworks, but even ‘YII2 Newbies’ don’t have a good information source for getting started with YII2. Other then the forum of course… :D :D :D

One of YII2’s biggest failings at this point is its documentation. The Guide is a good start, but it needs more fleshing out, and more examples of what it can do. I hope that once I get my app going, I can help with the documentation problems. Alas, I also suffer from the same thing most programmers do… Documentation is no fun to write… But I fight it every day. Both in commenting my code, and producing programmer and user docs.

</mild_rant>

-John

45

And you’re surprised why YII isn’t adopted by more people… Especially when such words come from an official moderator.

Fascinating.

46

Your very first post in our community is a random quote taken completely out of context.

Intriguing.

47

How is it “random” or “out of context”? A member suggested a simplification of the framework and you immediate dissed it by saying “fuck newbies”. Your previous comments “Truth be told: I am somewhat happy that Laravel gets all those users because that means that Yii gets less of users of that category.” and such aren’t particularly inviting as well.

Also I’m not really sure what are you trying to achieve by pointing out my number of posts here. Only Yii seasoned members are allowed to point out problems with the framework and/or staff…? Just proves my point I was trying to make. Is this the image of the framework you want to promote?

Imagine you’re not affiliated with any of the frameworks, you’re trying to do some research on your options and happen to stumble upon this thread. Be honest, what would you think if you saw a member of the staff talk like you just did towards newbies? I bet you would say to yourself “YES, this is the kind of attitude I like”, right?

48

walther

Original post indeed has a bit different meaning despite being in harsh language (that’s cultural differences for you). It should be read as "I don’t think Yii should focus blindly on what newbies say without evaluating it first. But if it’s good, it should be definitely considered. Note the very end of the post where jacmoe said "However, I do agree that it is always a good idea to improve the framework - without compromising :)".

Sorry if it offended you.

jacmoe

It’s better to use softer language not to alienate people who aren’t got used to Danish directness and culture. Deal?

49

по рукам Samdark ;)

50

Thanks for the clarification samdark :)

Btw, when it comes to promoting the framework, I think it’s a good idea to update few pages. For instance it seems /performance page shows benchmark of 7-8(?) years old version. I understand you still support 1.1 (which is great, it’s important to keep the old happy customers), but when the site is divided into multiple versions and sometimes show straight outdated stuff… I don’t know. I think people rather see graphs like this, that are more up-to-date: http://www.yiiframework.com/forum/index.php/topic/68791-yii2-running-at-2x-performance-on-php-7/ :)

Sure, it can be perceived as a minor thing, but sometimes the smallest of things matter the most. It just slowly adds up.

Also it would be great if you managed to get someone to create professional video tutorials on Yii2, that would lure more people in. Sure, there are already some by Tom King and by DoingITeasyChannel, but…

I don’t think it’s about some “Instant gratification” at all. Some people (me included) learn much more and much faster using video and sound, compared to reading text manuals. It was like this for me ever since school, where I learned 90% of stuff solely from lectures. Then I came home and used books and text materials only to supplement the already existing knowledge. I do the same still in my work. I watch videos, get a hands-on experience (when following the tutorial) and use manuals only for a deeper study and for reference on functions and stuff like that.

But when the video bores me and I fall asleep during it… It’s just way harder for me to get into it.

Just my two cents…

51

We are working on a brand new site and it will not feature outdated material :)

52

Here’s new website in the works: http://yiiframework.domain-na.me/

Development is open so you can help if you have extra time: https://github.com/yiisoft-contrib/yiiframework.com

53

Very nice! :) I’ll definitely take a look when I have some spare time.

54

Samdark,

Do you have any feel for how close to complete the website it?

What about new new docs site?

I was looking over the new docs site and I really like it.

I will look them both over and put together a list of anything I might be able to help with.

Thanks for the great work.

-John

55

There are still many things missing preventing the launch such as wiki and extensions.

56

I really dont understand why people complain about docs. I’m not a fan of videos for teaching, they are slow and hard to search. I like straight fast api docs. I love Yii2 , been a java programmer before, its like moving from hell to heaven. I dont have to care about css, or even class ids, js/jquery because we have Kartik. BTW , if all Kartik widgets become yii2 core, the adoption would skyrocket IMHO, but its just a marketing move. But is Gii templates that i really consider yii2 greatness. After you develop your first system, just change the template to do what you did by hand before and done !!! you have 75% of your work done. And i’m not talking about simples sites, i coordinated the development/management of two mini-erp softwares using yii2. Congrats to all devs !!

57

It’s a real relief to find another fan of Yii docs. I’m sure there are many people who are satisfied with the Guide and the API refs of Yii and seldom need to ask someone for help.

I’m also skeptical about video tutorials. It’s probably because I’m very poor at hearing English. :P

But, well, seriously, we are not kindergarten children but grown up developers whose job is to read, write and think about code and docs. If you don’t want to do it, you are in the wrong business. Sometimes I want to echo the cries of jacmoe: “F…k you, d…d n…b. Read the docs.”

58

I am a fan of the concept of R.T.F.M.

The catch of this concept is that it implies good documentation.

So many projects have limited documentation, generally limited to API type docs that might be quite detailed in function names and parameters, but don’t give much insight into how to really use it. Let alone any examples of how to use them, or greater concepts of how the overall system works together.

The Guide does a great job of covering these shortcomings and only gets better. It is everyones job to add and expand this documentation as they see shortcomings.

Thanks to the core team for managing the Documentation as well as the Software!

-John

The Guide does a good job of this and is gradually getting better.

So

59

One thing that I really like about Yii is the source code itself. :)

It is extremely well commented / annotated / written.

Edit:

Disclaimer: what I mean is that it is a great supplement to the documentation - Guide / API.

And I also think that documentation is an on-going / never-ending process - just as an important part of the development as coding.

60

Imho yii2 is very flexible and I rather read api docs than scrolling Tutorial Pages all day.

Yes it is necessary to think more about your Code and what it does behind the scenes, but thats what describes an engineer/coder right?

Comments are a good way to go with the guide and docs. What would help even more is to improve extensions Section removing obsolete ones for example. I am thinking of some sort of online cookbook at the Moment … Search for a Problem like "xeditable in Grid" and then Show solutions to it. I feel we Need something like stackoverflows "this is the valid answer".

Another good Thing would be to have Extension Management in gii for the non console savy People, like CMS WordPress and sort do it with plugins. Sure Composer needs to be there First but thats something necessary.

What about a marketplace for extensions? Themes? The real Problem is that yii has no Central Economy for such Things like WordPress has, like Ionic has… I could go on.

My 42 cents.