OpenEuphoria

Re: What we really need...

• Posted by irv at take.maxleft.com Nov 13, 2002
• 476 views

On Tuesday 12 November 2002 06:58 pm, Thomas wrote:

> You may not go to the web site for the web site itself, but I tend to
> see a web site like the front of a building. If you see a façade that
> looks like it hasn't been touched for 5 years, it's not going to matter
> that there are freshly baked cookies behind the broken glass and spider
> webs.

Exactly. It's an image thing. 
RDS' website appears to be static (only the contrib page changes regularly).
Compare this with, for example http://www.perl.com
What do you see first? Right down the middle of the page, an ever-changing 
selection of news, opinion and mini-tutorials on language features.
That gives the impression that people are busy using, and improving, perl. 
First impressions are important - you may never get a chance to make a second 
one.

> I think that if we can get a better layout for the site that promotes
> the archive, support (chat and forums) and learning materials a bit
> more, then there's a better chance of people staying at the site and
> learning more about the language before pounding into the download link
> thinking it's a miracle language. It's not, but it *is* extremely
> powerful.

I do wonder how many people try Eu, and just delete it after a few minutes. 
I know that I have certainly done that with other languages - yes, I try 
every one I can find on the web. If I can't figure out how to install or run 
the package, I just delete it. It isn't worth the effort to search for a 
mailing list and ask what is sure to be a series of dumb questions.

If there is a book on the language, I'm more likely to give it a try, since 
that's a pretty good indication that at least one person actually got the 
stuff to run.

Regards,
Irv