Learning XPages … Struggeling with ressources

After a weekend of grape harvest, I should be in a better mood, but my father in law gave the grapes away to somebody … for free. We don’t even get to taste the wine. And it is especially annoying, because this year it took us ages. Wasps had damaged the grapes and we had to cut of everything dry. It was hell, but it gave me time to reflect, what I had achieved with XPages in two weeks.

First there was me whining about not knowing where to start. Then there was the avalanche of information that buried me. Where am I now?

I tried the redbook wiki. I read most of the first part, which was interesting and gave me basic information. Then I watched the first two hours of David Leeds stuff. That helped me a to go on, because the Redbook wiki is outdated. Next, I did the free TLCC course. Accidentally, there was a webcast about it at the same time, which helped me to go on. Then I bought the bible of Xpages development, „Mastering Xpages …“ and I started reading it. Now, if you are a hardcore developer, who thinks the only way to write code is in a simple text editor, you will like this. I for the matter, don’t see the sense in making my live harder as necessary, because in the end, we will all use every tool we can get to finish the work as fast and good as possible. And no, I don’t believe that learning a programming language is the same as learning any other language. That’s why I gave up learning XPages with „The bible“ on chapter 5. It will certainly help me later on as a reference, but reading XML all along, does not motivate me to continue. There is no doubt about the quality of the book, but often it just goes beyond the scope a beginner can handle (that’s why it is called „Mastering…“?). Now I am using the IBM course material, that was made available to me and I am happy. Really! Even though it looks like it was made for 8.5.1 and Windoof XP, it works for me. It takes a bit time, but I learned a lot in a short time. I am half way through it still makes fun.