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The Re-Education Of A Notes Developer Over at Rocky's, we have an interesting topic developing, and it got me thinking about another way that blogging can prove it's value. David Leedy sent Rocky an email asking for advice. David has extensive experience programming for the Notes client, and he wants to start doing Domino web development. He's asking for advice, and it's starting to pour into Rocky's blog. I started to post a reply there, with a few more books to recommend and some links to web sites, but then something occurred to me... Credit goes first to Rocky for seeing that David's question is an opportunity for the community to come together and give stronger advice than any one person, but I want to suggest something that I think is even more interesting. Let's turn this community around from it's more usual orientation of posting essays and advice, and start using blogging technology as a way to post study notes and questions. In the process, we'll build something useful in it's own right.
I am a strong believer in two things: (1) reading good code, and (2) participating in the community. I'm also a very big fan of the possibilities of this emerging social software phenomenon. So, David, in addition to "book learning", here's what I recommend: download the blogsphere template from OpenNTF, and dissect it. Do the same with some of the other web app templates that are out there, like DomBulletin. Analyze these templates as best as you can, and analyze the HTML source that they produce, and ask questions. Now, here's the core of my idea: Take advantage of dominodeveloper.net's free hosting and start your own blog. Call it "The Re-Education Of Notes Developer" or something like that. Post bits of your analysis of various templates in your blog and invite the community in to read it. Ask questions about the templates. Why is this a Form instead of a Page? What is this JavaScript trying to do? What is the purpose of this agent code?... People will answer your questions, and a permanent archive of your own personal learning process will be created so that others who want to make that jump from Notes client to web development will be able to learn with you. Who knows? Maybe some other developers will start their own similar blogs, or perhaps you could open up your blog to contributions from a group of similarly motivated Notes developers.
What I'm suggesting, David, is that you turn your lemons into lemondade! Actually, it's not unreasonable at all to think of your late entry into the browser world as a bit of an advantage. Those of us who started doing Domino web work have had to struggle along with immature standards, un-learning and re-learning lots of things as we go along. You can start out fresh, with a good foundation in all the latest standards. There are some great books that have already been mentioned over at Rocky's, but even more to your advantage is the fact that a strong community of Domino web developers has had plenty of time to develop, and blogging has emerged as a way to make the collaboration experience more pesonal. I think that addressing your quest for professional growth through a blog of your own could really be a neat new approach to collaboration and community. And it will work! I'm confident that you will learn quickly, and others will learn with you.
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