AUCS - a case of bidirectionally unmet expectations

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It is always depressing to end a project before it started, and I do not like to feel depressed; I had a long experience being in such state as a manager of 50+ talented engineers, where no two of them would agree on anything. Luckily, at that time, I had a stick: their job depended on how they agree with company policies and directions. In the current situation I only have a mini-carrot - desire to help Aurelia above their private interests - and do that for free.

At the time I wrote the first call for action I had a very clear understanding of what would I like to achieve and some understanding of how to do that - based on the firm expectation that I will get at best two people interested to do that. As the number of potential collaborators grew 1, by 1 in the period of several weeks to reach the amazing number of 24, I realized that I am in a deep trouble, as even organizing 24 people how to mow my lawns, to ensure that at worst not everyone does the work on the first lawn, requires some discipline for the whole team. So, while I spent more than 30 days of working on the infrastructure to support such effort with a team of people I knew absolutely nothing about. As the complaints about this infrastructure kept coming, I was both surprised that none of these folks did not ask any question why I am doing that and even more surprised what is that we will be doing.

No need to spend any more words on this failed effort. I do not expect any member of the aurelia-community people to feel obligated to do something, and I will continue on this project alone - as I really do not like defeats.

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hey there - I’ve noticed your team-building efforts for some time and just wanted to say thank you :slight_smile: It’s great to see you help to give aurelia its heart beat and even if it’s not turning out as expected, I still learn from your communication and how the dynamics of an open community are.

If I would be more connected in this open-source world, I guess I would have responded too :hushed:

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@adriatic I also appreciate your mission and want to do what I can to help solve the lack of Aurelia documentation. But my time is limited. I feel I can add more value to Aurelia by:

  1. Posting to my personal blog.
  2. Submitting new content to Aurelias official documentation.

Dont mistake feedback on your infrastructure as complaints. Thats valuable input AUCS will need to succeed.

Im not going anywhere. Keep at it and as time frees up, others like myself will follow your lead as you prove the concept.

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Good evening, Gentlemen - its really nice to see your opinions in the stream of almost offensive messages. These are nothing new in my long career in US; I encountered too many selfish people with limited culture and intelligence, that discourage me. Instead, I want to disassociate myself from that crowd - and start working on all projects I prepared for launch, myself.

@jonathan.eckman if your epression

was not written solely for making me feel better, then please consider syndicating your blogs on AUCS site - it would help keep it “interesting” acting as a honey-pot :smile:

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Sorry if you have found my messages offensive, there were no such intention. I simply stated my difficulties with onboarding experience. And explicitly said that it was not aimed at turning your initiative down. On contrary.
Good luck with your solo endeavours, I can only hope that they will solve the problems you think developers are facing.

:disappointed_relieved:

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Hi @Alexander-Taran - I understood your feedback precisely as you explain it:

I simply stated my difficulties with onboarding experience.

Absolutely no need for you to feel sorry - to the contrary, you helped me understand where was the impedance mismatch - people simply missed or ignored to comprehend that I was asking for help in a huge endeavor , writing at least 3-4 online guides, each being hundreds of page long. Such endeavor absolutely requires the document building infrastructure of the complexity I created - not just because of the complexity of the guides (interacting with a large set of samples that are at the core of the guides), but even more because of the size of the potential writers team. In other words, now when I decided not to spend any more time discussing the infrastructure issues and do everything alone, the cruel truth is that I do not need any infrastructure at all. So I wasted more than 30 days “building a house where my collaborators would live”.

Let me also comment your closing sentence:

Good luck with your solo endeavours, I can only hope that they will solve the problems you think developers are facing.

No need to hope for luck, I am working solo on these guides for well over a year already, have a good understanding of all related issues. In addition I know what problems developers are facing (as different from I “think”) and have verified that information with Aurelia team before even starting that effort.

P.S. to illustrate the size of the “missed expectations”: a person that better remains un-named, who never volunteered for any help with AUCS insisted that I need to “shrink” my infrastructure to a single repo that would accumulate contributions in the form of markdown files. This person must have missed the fundamental property this project - being a “portal that buffers the information slated to appear in the real aurelia portal”.

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I’m pretty sure that there is a need for such a reference, that you are on a mission to produce, on the other hand there are a lot of small pieces missing now. And a lot of good content spread out throughout the blogs and github.
Also a consideration is an amount of time commitment that is required to apprehend the material. Big book has less of a chance to be read than a short article of few steps.
For example, a good commented webpack.config.js - is a must. Or package.json for that matter. Or anything framework related.
Because when I started with aurelia there were only jspm and one had to learn it along with the framework in order to use 3d party libraries.

Now you say that you spent a month building a home… and as far as I remember there were about 25 names listed. People who have subscribed to the idea of helping out.
Will you just disband the band? All the good will?

If you were writing already for a year, how long will it take you alone to finish?

Will it still be needed?

I find troubling your attempt to retreat to hiding in a wake of discussion. Of opinions. It is hard, I understand, that when your vision is not 100% accepted.

Now here you declare that you know better… maybe you are… Maybe you have a life full of experiences that everyone around could not see the goal until you produced results.

I for one welcome series simple task oriented guides. With quick results.
Because people looking for them are trying to do something. Solve something at hand.

Cant solve my task at hand? Move on to the next framework.

And yeah… I’m one of those who reads manuals before using a dishwasher… but still…

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Oh, @Alexander-Taran - where to start commenting your comments and what good wil come as a consequence doing that.

The most important point in my mind is that two of us have very different understanding of AUCS, and that you still do not get what I want to do. A few examples:

Not my top concern concern, despite creating the skeleton of the document Tips and tricks, which is designed to be collection of data you named commented webpack.config.js - is a must. Or package.json for that matter. There are many other absolutely needed pieces, but that does not mean that I plan or am expected to deal with them.

Are you telling me that creating the GitHub / Gitbook environment described in AUCS project guide starting with this section should have taken less time to design and write, or that it is not needed all? What are your credentials, that should convince me to take your opinion as anything else than an attempt to discuss for the sake of discussion?

Why is then that you found it necessary to tell me that I should change my tack? Do you claim to be the representative of the whole Aurelia community? Remember, there are a lot of people that prefer the quick snack at MacDonalds - do you write every chef listed in MIchelin’s guide how they should instead get a MacDonald’s concession?

Brilliant advice, to be shared in such large community! What’s the nest step? Failing an exam - go to the next study subject. Have an argument with your spouse - dump here and marry someone else.

I have already spent 3 years with Aurelia, fought through all this time to understand it better, created some of the most advanced Aurelia Guides anywhere and instead of “move to the next framework” I am spending all of my time (meaning, not making any income) to help Aurelia to retain new users who may not be as stubborn as I am to stay with it. Why am I doing this? Because Aurelia as a concept and actual implementation deserve it and because the Aurelia team cannot afford to hire as many technical writers to create Aurelia’s own equivalence of Microsoft Learn: Build skills that open doors in your career which took 1100 technical writers to create.

Well, luckily writing this is my last crappy task for today (it’s close to midnight), so despite my deep conviction that I do not have “values” that are common with you, I still wrote this.

Please let’s stop this waste of time @Alexander-Taran.