Just a question that I’ve had for over a year now.
How do ‘new’ people navigate and learn anything? For instance/example.
I see ‘badges’… okay great yes I want those for certain things.
Do a search in the forum… nothing really clear ‘how to’… well not for a new person anyway just more confusion for a ‘simple’ thing.
Do an internet search… nothing really clear there either.
Documentation… ohhhhhh that makes no sense. I go click on things it says and I don’t see or have what they say I should.
Okay well guess I’m not doing that…
Do a search for something else… look in the forum… nothing there that helps.
Read documentation… oh that makes no sense.
Do an internet search… okay I can do that… oh wait it says do this and I don’t have that. Where is that… do a search… nope still can’t find it.
Okay well guess I don’t need that either…
How do I… oh okay the forum says… uhmmmm where is that located? Oh no it’s not… this post was from 3 years ago and that’s not how to do it now.
Oh wait it says ‘just do this and that’… oh… where is that? spend 40 minutes looking through everything and can’t find that…
Okay well guess I’m not doing that…
Fast forward a year…
A year behind on everything that even looks like an update because the last time you updated everything broke and you couldn’t figure out how to fix it… so you put your back up in and just left it alone…
Does HA work? Yeahhhhhhh it’s working but things work and don’t work from time to time… how to fix those… uhhhhhh I don’t know. Goes out and reads… no that didn’t work. Read on the forum… no that didn’t work either. Now what? Oh well just disable it… didn’t really need that anyway.
What’s the end result?
Does it work… yeah for the most part…
Are you happy with it? Nope.
Is it where you want it to be? Nope.
Well how does it get updated, upgraded… how do you create what you want or new things that you like? You have to wait for someone else to do it for you… well that took 3 days to update and fix everything just to get you back to square 1… Oh look now everythings different and what little you did know you don’t know anymore.
Can anyone, someone without pointing to old docs or old forum posts please tell me how is anyone supposed to learn anything when you can’t find what you need to find? I completely understand this is a ‘free’ project but really doesn’t mean anything if someone can’t at least figure it out.
There has to be something somewhere that has to be easier to follow to begin to understand or figure things out. Trust me I write programs for other ‘things’ which I can’t name because it gets flagged [God knows why…]. So being ‘new’ only means being new to HA… which after a year I’m not new but still completely lost.
Many Thanks for all the people that have understanding what it’s like to be frustrated but just want to use and understand something…