I was wondering just this week the purpose of ESRI’s EDN site now that they’ve got the Resource Centers online. The ArcObjects Development Blog has some of the thinking behind why EDN is just a placeholder now:
Feedback from the user community, as well as our own technology development goals indicate that developers need information about product installation, architecture, administration, and functional usage as much as any other user, and end-users more and more often are making use of information for product customization, components, scripting, programming, and other resources typically associated with application developers. As our technology continues to grow along with the maturity of information technology, the lines between “user” and “developer” continue to blur and overlap. It makes less and less sense to maintain two sites and have users decide which one to use.
I do like the Resource Centers very much, but the more I think about this move, the more it seems like the same old ESRI response; launch a website and then let it languish until it becomes useless. The support site is stuck in 1999, EDN seems like it was stuck in 2005 and now we’ve got the Resource Centers. I can only hope they don’t fall to the same fate as those before it.
ESRI, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me!
11 responses so far ↓
1
Ed
// Jul 17, 2008 at 2:00 pm
I for one love that the support site is circa 1999. It’s like a walk down memory lane, I get to see my posts from when ArcObjects was new and it was a thrill to add a shapefile to the map. Ahh the good ole days!
2
AA
// Jul 17, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Love the caveman…. “I was once like you…”
3
Lefty
// Jul 17, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Ed: Classic, you’d hate to think all that old MO IMS stuff might get lost over the years.
4
Buggy
// Jul 18, 2008 at 3:41 pm
James, why are you down on ESRI?
5
James Fee
// Jul 18, 2008 at 4:29 pm
@Buggy: Why can’t they invest in the existing EDN for developers and ESRI support sites? A third site spreads their efforts thin and means we can’t always be sure where to look.
If I go to http://support.esri.com and search for something, will it return information in EDN and the Resources sections? Why not one support site where everyone knows where to go and where to search?
While I do like the new Resource Centers, I wonder if they will be updated better than EDN has been. I really hope so.
6
Ray Saunders
// Jul 18, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I have 45+ years working on mainframes, but GIS is all Greek to me. I find I lack the basic terminology and concepts. Any suggestions or books recommended to bring me up to speed so I start using something like Global Mapper?
7
Chris M
// Jul 18, 2008 at 5:55 pm
@James: I think the searches are interlinked between the sites as a query from the Resource Center did send me to some support pages the other day. But I do agree that one site with all the answers (well ok info) would be better if it was well organized.
8
GuidoS
// Jul 21, 2008 at 7:20 am
@James I think that the reasons they may leave up old help resources up is related to the fact that they can never make a clean break from legacy code and may forget to add old patches to current issues. For example, I hope they don’t forget to tell people that the some of the import functionality is from legacy code requiring files names not to have spaces… but I don’t think that anyone would want to admit that.
9
Buggy
// Jul 23, 2008 at 10:46 am
James, the reason ESRI does this is because they have different kinds of users. A manager doesn’t want to know how to use IFeatureLayer.
10
blackpoll
// Jul 28, 2008 at 9:59 am
I’m simply thrilled that someone brought out Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. THRILLED!!
One of the most brilliant characters in SNL history.
11
D
// Aug 13, 2008 at 1:58 am
I do agree, sub-websites at ESRI are getting too widely spread and not used much. similar is also the Project center … A all-in-one good support wesbite would be sustainable step forward
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