How to convince your boss to use Aurelia?

#1

I was lucky with my previous job. It was my decision to make. I just prototyped something that got traction and I did not have to convince anybody.
Because I liked it that much. And how it made me feel about development.

I know there are a lot of developers who feel the same. I meet them everyday in gitter chat room.

Now here comes the frustration, when I try to talk about using Aurelia for the project I’m on now - there are a lot of hesitation. it sounds like this:

  • Oh… before you mentioned it, I never even heard about it.
  • Why is it good?
  • Ah well… where do we find developers?..

You all know the drill

I was not a part of community before. I never knew it existed. I was following Aurelia blog and reading the docs since early betas. And learned my way around. I even would go that far and say that before Aurelia I could not say that I was a javascript developer. Surely I was using durandal and knockout and jQuery. But it never felt like pure js.

But that was a learning curve. And if you followed like a true early adopter - if was easy to keep up.
But I was highly motivated.

Recent discussions here about state of the documentation concluded that it is lacking something as it is now. I admire @adriatic’s mission to create compelling guides and AUCS idea as a whole… It resonated with me…
But I come to it from another angle.
There are a lot of ‘newbie’ questions in gitter.
There are a lot of unanswered questions on stackoverflow.

In my opinion they are a consequence of a pour onboarding experience at the moment.
If you look at the …otherFrameworks some of them offer a possibility of getting started online. on code pen or other interactive tools.
Less friction - more attraction.

Current “getting started” guide for aurelia is skeleton based at best. And overloaded with choices.
Remember knockout?
http://learn.knockoutjs.com/
I don’t think there have been code pen, when Steven Sanderson created that awesome experience.
I still think it is the best learning framework experience I had.

We can do that with a series of gist.runs. And a simple document to follow along.
With a bunch of links to docs where relevant.
Very same guide could be executed with CLI.

I believe that for newcomers - the less choice is better.
When you give developers choice they will start figuring out what’s better instead of getting started.
Now imagine trying to compare webpack vs jspm when you know neither?
How do I bundle my svgs with webpack so they end up as a single file in a dist folder?

Some of those newcomers even make it to github and ask their newbie questions there.

So how do you convince your boss? Well by helping out Aurelia, obviously (-:
Help with easing the path for newcomers.
Help them get addicted. The more of us there - the better. (-:

…to be continued…

And go help with those issues on github (-:
Next post will be about how to, if you don’t know or feel scared.
Anyone can help out.

P.P.S
a link from the most recent issue on github at the moment

getting pop corn

#2

If several people in a completely dark room touch a part of an elephant which is also in this room (and the people are not aware of it), each of them might express a different opinion on what they just touched. Using this analogy, while I read your post with real joy, the section:

got my full attention and filled me with additional enthusiasm. Rather than “scolding” you when I thought that did not the purpose and scope of the AUCS project, I should have recognized that I did not provide the needed information for you specifically, by guessing which part of the elephant (sorry, AUCS) you touched in that dark room, I keep trying to illuminate.

So, thanks for the above post - and given the just initiated second attempt to boot AUCS with just one volunteer, please check AUCS Project start #2 as well as newly added sections:

to help me verify whether my communications are sufficiently clear for such team.

#3

It does hit on some of the problems

  • too much choice (build tools, systems)
  • too much documentation (or too difficult to get to the valuable bits)

It’s great to have choice but it’s not beginner friendly and documentation is good but you often have to read it back to front to get a grip on it.

#4

Hi, Matt (@mttmccb)
This

too much choice (build tools, systems)

sounds very familiar - when I first time entered an american grocery store, I could never decide which detergent should I buy. Well, I am still in US 40 years after and I have learned how to find my path through multiple options in many contexts of my life.

Just to show you one short path (assuming that we are discussing how to become active in AUCS - otherwise, please stop reading right here):

  1. Use markdown editor of your choice
  2. Have Git installed as all works gets accumulated in GitHub
  3. Create PR’s to add your current “load” of guide articles formatted as markdown files.

This is no different than any other type of work in OSS world, probably a lot simpler than most :smile:

A lot more important realization is that the amount of work is orders of magnitude bigger than solving this “initial approach” puzzle, because Aurelia needs as much additional work to get to the top (IMHO, of course)

#5

Thanks, but I don’t have the time to spare, if I do I try to write a blog post or do something small like fix a typo in the docs or maybe simply triage or query existing issues to help get them resolved.

#6

@mttmccb absolutely ant any contribution is and will always be welcome. There are other folks that initially told us that they are interested in AUCS - and later became worried about not being able to put as much work as AUCS seemingly may require. So, I find it important to point out how AUCS as any OSS projects can benefit from even spellng checks :slight_smile:

#7

glad you mentioned it…
be my guest (-:
https://github.com/issues?utf8=✓&q=org%3Aaurelia+is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+org%3Aaurelia+sort%3Aupdated-asc

#8

I really do too! Nick: thanks for your dedication in this mission; you deserve an Oscar! As I have been absent for the last month or so, I DO feel I let you down. But as many here we need to put bacon on the table first: I have been busy/kept ‘hostage’ in a project, hopefully this ends soon.

Couldn’t agree more.

#9

By the way,
All able bodies willing to donate some of their time to help with issue triage and small documentation fixes to aurelia core, ping me here or on gitter.
I’m in the flow and can totally set you up.