What do you want?
Aaaand we’re back. Phew!
It’s about to be the new year and I want 2007 to be far and away the Year of Slash7. Or at least, the best year so far. I’ve been at work spiffing things up, writing new articles, and so on, but I realized that I may be out of touch with what you, my all-important audience, is interested in.
So, my dearest readers, I’ve got some questions for you.
Consider this an unscientific poll, of sorts.
Pollin’, Pollin’, Pollin’…
These are the questions I’d love to see answered. I don’t care if you’re brand new to the site or a lurker since the days when Slash7 had 2 articles and was run off MovableType. I want to know what you think!
- What kinds of content on Slash7 would you like to see more of? What would you like to see less of?
- Any burning questions or issues you’d like to see addressed?
- How many of the cheat sheets do you use, if any? How many did you initially download? Would you be interested in more?
- Do you remember how you found Slash7? If so, how?
- Would you be interested in an “email subscription” feature, rather than having to use RSS?
- What do you like best about Slash7? What would make it even better for you?
- What do you want to learn, improve at, or do this year? (And I don’t just mean in the realm of Rails/programming/design/writing/tech stuff. This is the essay question 😉
- Free write! Any other questions, comments, or complaints?
You can copy and paste the contents of this textarea into the comments box for ease of answering:
Update: Durr. Made this copy & paste form a bit easier to use.
Thanks!
And Happy New Year to everybody.
Oh, and I turned off comment moderation as an experiment to see if we’ll be innundated with spam or not. I think the spam problem’s mostly solved by turning off comments on old articles. But we’ll see…
I really like to learn how people do things on a more conceptual level. Everyone on earth has the details of how to actually implement stuff, but I’m always interested in learning why people do things the way they do.
Do you do anything unusual? Why do you do it that way? Do you have any tips and tricks for how and why you do whatever the whatevers instead of the other thing?
Have you discovered anything interesting that I should know about? Some cool library or method or some such thing?
I guess that’s mostly what I’m interested in. I wouldn’t come here for the detailed technical stuff, i’ve got that covered.
The cheetsheets are cool. Now that I have a printer i might actuall start printing these things, mostly for the decoration though.
Why did you switch to Mophisto? What’s so great about it vs like wordpress or whatever? The Why is way more interesting than the that.
Trying this copy/paste business… apologies in advance if it doesn’t turn out pretty.
I’d like to see more content related to version control. Maybe a svn cheat sheet. I’m not exactly a novice programmer, but I have never really had to collaborate and the idea of source control is enthralling.
<ol> <li><p><em>Any burning questions or issues you’d like to see addressed?</em> My answer…</p></li> <li><p><em>How many of the cheat sheets do you use, if any? How many did you initially download? Would you be interested in more?</em> My answer…RJS!</p></li> <li><p><em>Do you remember how you found Slash7? If so, how?</em> My answer…Linked on another blog for RJS Cheat sheet.</p></li> <li><p><em>Would you be interested in a "subscribe by email" feature, rather than having to use RSS? Nope </em> My answer…</p></li> <li><p><em>What do you like best about Slash7? What would make it even better for you?</em> My answer… I like the voice the writing is done in and the easily digested and applied content.</p></li> <li><p><em>What do you want to learn, improve at, or do this year? (And I don’t just mean in the realm of Rails/programming/design/writing/tech stuff. This is the essay question ;)</em> My answer…Object oriented Design and Source Control.</p></li> <li><p><em>Free write! Any other questions, comments, or complaints?</em> My answer… </ol>
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<ol> <li>Content I want to see more of: Ruby on Rails advanced topics </li> <li>I use these many cheat sheets, tho one regarding RJS </li> <li>I found Slash7 this way: google.com</li> <li>I would not be interested in an "email subscription" to Slash7</li> </ol>
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<ol> <li><i>Content I want to see more of…</i> Anything interface or process related. How do folks approach problems and then solve them in the +interface+.</li> <li><i>I use these many cheat sheets… </i> RJS is about the only cheat sheet I’ve used. I really liked the "When Interface Design Attacks!" PDF and actually implemented a number of changes in our system based on it.</li> <li><i>I found Slash7 this way…</i> Main Rails blog</li> <li><i>I want to learn… improve at… do…</i> Considering interface makes or breaks a system I’d like to learn more about it so we can improve our own systems. I’d also like to be able to take some good photos but I think that’s a little outside the scope of slash7 ;)</li> </ol>
Content I have dug: the longer, talkier articles (the Why as opposed to the How). Your JavaScript rundown was a nice read — and I wish I’d had just that text when I learnt the language.
Found Slash7 via blog linkage. (Perhaps to some cheatsheet. I print them, since they look good. I have them folded in my coat pocket, and read them on morning commutes — an odd but condensed way of learning about a tool’s more esoteric options.)
I want to learn to use the Unix aspects of Ruby (the stuff around it), profiling, bottleneck-finding, etc. And, how to think about getting started there — where to begin. I’d also like to see some conceptual "experiments", and the road from "initial hunch" through to final implementation (or how/why the idea was scrapped!).
I love the human tone of voice in Slash7. And the thoroughness of the content. Thanks for that.
I like your Rails articles the most. In particular, your writing is what sets them apart from the rest. So please keep this aspect up.
I found your site by searching around for tutorials…
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<ol> <li>Content I want to see more of… Ruby on Rails. Content I want to see less of… can’t think of anything.</li> <li>Burning questions or issues… better structured tutorials – I often find myself bouncing around your articles trying to gather my thoughts into cohesivenes</li> <li>I use this many cheat sheets… 3 I initially downloaded 3 cheat sheets, but only use 3…</li> <li>I found Slash7 this way… I think a link from another blog</li> <li>I would/would not be interested in an "email subscription" to Slash7… nope</li> <li>I want to learn… improve at… do… improve my RoR</li> <li>Something else I wanted to say that you didn’t specifically ask for… have my babies. </li></ol>
If there is anyone interested in getting stuff emailed to them rather than using RSS; I’d recommend "NewsPipe":http://newspipe.sf.net. I use it to read my feeds in my mail client; it’s quite handy.
I think in the upcoming year I’d like to see more stuff on UI design. How do you break out of ruts and force yourself to think about how the user interacts with what you’re writing? What makes software intuitive? How can intuitive simplicity be achieved without sacrificing complexity?
Oh, the other thing I’d like to see is Slash7 getting syndicated at Planet Caboose. Just add your feed to your facebook profile; it’s easy.
<p>To be honest, I’m very happy with the content that’s here. With the many different RSS feeds I subscribe to, I’m pretty well satisfied with the amount of content I’m able to read. The cheatsheets, to me, are what set you apart from EVERYONE!!! I love the cheat sheets.</p> <ol> <li>I use the scriptaculous cheetsheet and I’ve downloaded the "What goes where" sheet. While I’m not a rails developer (yet), I really like what’s there and use it during my studies.</li> </ol> <p> What I’d love to see is cheat sheet(s) for prototype. Maybe a breakdown of the enumerables, form helpers, object extensions, etc. A series of cheat sheets on the different parts of it. There are a bunch of websites out there with some data, but nothing that explains the way you do.</p>
What do I want? My full-content RSS feed back! 😉
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<ol> <li>Content I want to see more of… Content I want to see less of…<b>Your take on Ruby on rails, I found your interpretation of the MVC more educational that a few books</b></li> <li>Burning questions or issues… None</li> <li>I use these many cheat sheets… I initially downloaded x cheat sheets, but only use y… I would/would not be interested in more cheat sheets on the following… Downloadsd the RJS one but not read it as still elarning Rails basics</li> <li>I found Slash7 this way… reccomended to read the MVC article by an experienced RoR developer.</li> <li>I would/would not be interested in an "email subscription" to Slash7… I would like email prompts of updates, I don;t use a RSS reader.</li> <li>I like … best…, … would make it even better…if there were more tutorials/and your take on learning Rails like the MVC tutorials. Also instead of interviewing Rails developers maybe getting them to give a quick tip or mini tutorial would be a good read?</li> <li>I want to learn… improve at… do… Currently I am a full time web designer but getting bored of coding style sheets all day and want to learn how to programme, particularly in RoR </li> <li>Something else I wanted to say that you didn’t specifically ask for… keep up the good work </li></ol>
Hey, just keep writing Human-centered and creative, expansive articles on use of the contemporary web. Love your work! Programmers need people like you around to keep it real. Andrew James, Australia 🙂