Ext "Curriculum"

[anthony-apd]

I've been using Ext for a on a decent size project, and recently started adding more people to the project. This brings with it the woes of people not being used to ExtJS and making beginners mistakes. For the sake of bringing people up to speed, i've been considering putting together a "curriculum" of sorts. Something along the lines of a "5 Day Ext Crash Course" consisting of Read Tutorial A, Do Exercise B, Read Documentation C, See Example D...etc

Now, i know there are a lot of tutorials, samples and posts on this forum, but all of those can be kind of daunting and overwhelming for a newcomer.

My questions to the community are:

1) has anyone done this so far and i just missed it?

2) do you guys have any opinions on the "right order" to learn things? Ie.. start with panels, work your way to grids ..etc

3) any suggestions on what this crash course should entail?

I would love to get any input, and if people are interested in collaborating on this, simply let me know.

Thanks,
- Anthony

[danh2000]

I found that understanding the component lifecycle was a huge help:

http://extjs.com/learn/Ext_2_Overview

And then to actually implement a custom component or some overrrides of existing components (with the above lifecycle in mind) really solidifies your understanding.

Aside from that, have you considered structuring your team to accomodate for the different levels of skill and experience.... Maybe a couple of core developers (experienced) who create the framework and lay the foundations for the less experienced developers to integrate with and learn from.

A few hours of Code reviews each week would help a great deal too - where everyone sits down around a projector and walks through the code as a team - as long as it's structured correctly and people are sensitive to the "Your baby is ugly" syndrome when highlighting shortcomings or improvements, this open forum can really help and get people familiar with what other developers on the team are working on and allow developers to get insight and understand good practice even when they haven't worked on a particular piece of code.

Another helpful approach could be to have an approval process on code that is checked in to your repository, where an experienced developer has to review and tick off a check list before code is commited.

I have found these things all beneficial when implemented in the correct way - hope they help.

Good Luck.

[Animal]

Start with HTML and CSS and the DOM.

Then ensure they have Javascript (including the principles of OO, scope, asynchronous operations and timers) and then work your way to Ext.

[Ronaldo]

Start with HTML and CSS and the DOM.

Then ensure they have Javascript (including the principles of OO, scope, asynchronous operations and timers) and then work your way to Ext.

Oh well, I knew a little HTML and CSS, and my OO knowledge was decent, but I really learned javascript by debugging and extending Ext code using Firebug. I love it now though with all its dynamic features. I really miss creating an object on the fly in java.

Ronaldo

[mystix]

I really miss creating an object on the fly in java.

Ronaldo
you can. use Groovy (http://groovy.codehaus.org/) ;)

[harley.333]

I agree with Animal. I've brought several developers over to Ext. They already knew HTML, some CSS, and enough JavaScript to do damage. They also understand OO principles from server-side languages. Learning OO-JavaScript and the Ext API was the "hard" part. But I've been dealing with professionals, and not hobbyists.

[ry.extjs]

Like most people, I learned what I know from writing code, looking at examples and reading/searching the forum. I very rarely need help with getting things done.

A crash course, or any course for that matter, on Ext would be nice to have, but it's not really necessary. If you know javascript and good programming practices, picking up Ext can be done in a relatively short amount of time.

[Jaitsu]

i agree with the above, you can't beat practice... I was thrown in on an application half way through its development, and started on the small things (tweaking ajax requests - which was more PHP) and then adding in extra elements to forms and so forth...

personally i think the best thing when introducing someone to Ext is to take them from the top down, so start with tabPanels (for tabbed applications) then your panels, forms, grids, column models, ajax requests, form elements etc