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Since MEL is a proprietary language, it's not really possible to hire someone with MEL experience. So... how do you advertise the position when looking for a new coder? What kind of programming experience do you ask for? Is there another programming language that's similar enough to assist with finding a good applicant?
Wondering how others handle this... thanks!
Posted : February 15, 2013 12:15 am
MEL is similar to C++ and Java but I find as a developer the more important skill to have is UI design experience. Although MEL has quirks, it is not too difficult to understand if you have a programming background in object oriented programming. No matter how well you can code though, it won't matter if you can't design a form layout that helps a user consume and enter data. I have found that prior experience in Infopath and Web design has been helpful to achieve a form that not only does what you need it to but also gives the user a consistent, useable presentation.
Posted : February 15, 2013 12:40 am
I totally agree w above. Another reason to retain an experienced programmer is that MEL can be extended significantly with something like C++. We had a programmer here who was a wizard at writing little external widgets in C++ that would accept arguments from MEL and do whatever you can do in C++. Examples:
- pass context to an external functionality (much cleaner then CCOW)
- perform a complex operation or calculation that MEL can't do and return a result
- Do a lookup in an external database and return a result to MEL.
An experienced programmer will have no problems learning MEL. The difficult and poorly documented aspect of MEL is being able to access objects and this just takes some experience and some trial and error.
Posted : February 15, 2013 5:21 am
