Have you seen the “Knowledge Paths” at IBM developerWorks?
I don’t know if it is “new” or if the logo next to a page where I was reading happened to catch my eye. Looking at the “paths” by their dates, it looks like early October 2011 when it was rolled out. Does anyone know differently?
It doesn’t look real promising at first but you have to drill down to find the goodies.
For example, I chose “Open Source Skills,” which lead to:
Open source development with Eclipse: Master the basics
Learn the basics and get started working with Eclipse, an extensible open source development platform.
OK, but it isn’t clear what I am about to find when I follow: “Open source development with Eclipse: Master the basics,”
1. Learn about the Eclipse platform
2. Install and use Eclipse
3. Migrate to Eclipse from other environments
4. Debug with Eclipse
5. Combine Eclipse with other tools12 Reads, 8 Practice, 1 Watch, 1 Download.
IBM needs to distinguish this material from other developerWorks content, which are all great articles but this is supposed to be something different.
It could be as simple as:
Open source development with Eclipse: Master the basics
12 Reads, 8 Practice, 1 Watch, 1 Download
So the reader knows this isn’t your average read along with the author sort of resource.
And while I did not look at the others closely, consistency in presentation of the paths, that is all paths have read/practice/resources (or some other structure) so that readers have an expectation of the content between paths. Think of the Java paths that Sun pioneered as an example.
Oh, and do have someone review the naming of the paths. “Querying XML from Java Applications” and its description don’t mention XQuery at all. Something like: “XQuery: Bending Data (and XML) to Your Will” would be much better.
A good start that could become a lodestone for training materials for designers and engineers. Particularly if sufficient guidance is given on creation and maintenance of content to make it attractive for third party content developers.
An alternative to having to hunt down partial, dated and not always accurate guidance about open source projects from mailing lists and blogs.