Ease of use (was RE: Here is my Centipede scepticism)

	I think you folks are talking about two different user archetypes: (1) An
	'open source' type development team, loosely tied and distributed and (2) a
	commercial or in-house development team.

I use centipede for both.

	I've tried to use Centipede for commercial products, and I had the same
	learning curve issues that Mr. Henricson speaks of.  That is to say, the
	team did not respond well to the Centipede learning curve, for whatever
	reasons (maybe the're dumb ;->).

Ease of use/learning curve problems, now that is a discussion topic worth
serious time & communication...

This implementation of Centipede is a beautiful idea disguised behind gobs
of well meaning clutter. We need to trim centipede to the bone, to show
users the simple value and reduce the learning curve. It is that simple.

I myself almost gave up on centipede numerous times. Don't ask me why I
stuck it out, other than I believe in the concept. Now I know how to create
my repositories, create my cents, I am really getting value for money -- but
that was after a lot of investment. That value (in hindsight) is so cheap to
attain, if only centipede had been presented clearly. I think the whole
centipede team recognize this, and ease-of-use is our prime motivator these
days. We made this release so we could focus on a re-organization for that
very purpose.

I think it is important that we (the developers) prepare a communication to
post to this newsgroup, to show folks where we are trying to take centipede.

	 However, I think most of these issues
	could be resolved through better documentation and more examples,
	particularly in how to utilize Centipede in more tightly integrated groups
	(like a commercial software team).  For example:

	* How do I know when to make a 'cent', versus when to use an existing
	'cent'?
	* How do I share an installation of centipede in an environment where
	developers share common hardware (very typical in Solaris / UN*X shops)?
	* How do I migrate my existing ANT mess into Centipede?
	* How do I control the 'cent repositories', and why would I want to do
that?

These are great ideas, thank you. We will take them onboard.

regards

Adam



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