Re: Tech Docs and Consultants

On Tuesday, Apr 15, 2003, at 14:32 US/Central, Josh Berkus wrote:

> Scott,
>
>> My attitude comes from thinking that anyone who uses PostgreSQL is
>> going to do so as part of a development project. If that were true, I
>> think that my statement would follow, since I believe that anyone who
>> develops well does so using version control. But maybe it's not true
>> that all PostgreSQL users are developers. A mail merge is a good
>> example of something you can do with PostgreSQL without being a
>> developer.
>
> And the majority of *database application developers* have no exposure
> to CVS,
> Emacs, Latex, or similar "Unix geek" utilities.  Last I checked from
> Evans
> Data, acutally, something like 30% of database developers got their
> start
> with MS Access.   We want those people to move up to Postgres.

Yes, I suppose this problem, broadly, comes from us not having the same
idea of the intended audience for the techdocs or the same idea of who
would be contributing. I had made more assumptions about both groups:
namely that the audience would be more Unix-oriented (beginning)? OSS
developers and that the contributors would be significantly more
knowledgeable than the average audience member. You've convinced me
that's not a reasonable assumption; please leave it at that. I don't
need the tirade.

> (BTW, I, like Justin, know how to use CVS but find it arcane and
> annoying.
> Also CVS isn't the only version control system in the world, nor the
> easiest
> to use.  May I point out that Linus has stopped using CVS for the
> kernel?)

Sure, I use Subversion. But I don't think CVS is particularly difficult
to use. There are tools like TortoiseCVS and Cervisia available that
give you a decent GUI. (We use TortoiseCVS at work.)