need of a web based message board

Thu Jun 28 20:52:59 PDT 2007

Confusious (Brian K. White) say:
> I find mediawiki outstanding for documentation, but not very good for
> discussion.  Unless you are saying something like a BB plug-in?

I keep meaning to try MediaWiki but have no current actual use for it, so
it's a moot point at the moment.  I tend to only implement things when the
need arises.

> All this "web 2.0" stuff is awsome.  I can't imagine the bad old days
> before I had my own Gallery, Mediawiki, and Ampache at home so I can
> deposit, access, & share my pictures, knowledge, and music from anywhere.

I don't get caught up in the "web 2.0" buzzword scene.  There -are- some
cool site interfaces out there.  I've run into one that's just beautiful.
It has video delivery, but you basically can choose from arbitrary ranges
between any two timelines as deliniated by thumbnails of the start of a
segment.  So you may have 36 thumbnails, but you can choose to use 2-5,
2-30, 11-15, whatever it looks like you want.  Totally drag-n-drop.  A
-lot- of time and love went into that interface.  And it's worth it--all
parties save on bandwidth, you spend less time and disk space on stuff you
don't want and more time on stuff you do want.

It's really cool to see what people are actually doing with the technology
that actually provides new -useful- functionality, not just buzzwords.

> I must get off my rear and play with zope w/plone.
> http://seankelly.tv/videos/better-web-app-development

I've seen that video.  I think Bill Campbell pointed me at that,
actually.  I wasn't really all that impressed with what I saw in terms
of technology.  Interesting comparative analysis of the inadequacies of
various environments, and especially damning to J2EE.  But when you look
at what was all involved in what was practically a Hello World situation,
it was just overkill even at the lowest line-count/resource-use.  The
whole problem I have with this is that either 1) Hello World is a lousy
example [it is in some instances], or 2) anyone writing -dynamic- code to
demonstrate "Hello World" has totally the wrong idea.  Programming UI is
like Occam's Razor--the second you invoke more than you have to in order
to get the job done, you are on ground you likely shouldn't be on.  In the
case of the "better web app development", Hello World was a particularly
-stupid- example for dynamic content generation, because even at the what,
30 lines or something he got it down to, that's basically something that
requires like 1 line of HTML.  It's like building a bomb shelter to get out
of the rain--it's overkill.

For that reason, I was left unimpressed with the overall content of that
video.  However, as an example of screencast speed compression, it was an
eye opener, and I've since procured software that will let me do it far
more easily than vdub used to.  So at least it was good for something.

> Apparently it's the same idea taken even further. Not just managing
> content but developing apps without writing a line of code or
> configuration. ... Hey, wasn't that _exactly_ filePro's own claim to fame
> ..how many years ago?

That holds up until you want the apps to actually -do- something beyond
simple input/output--and even then, sometimese.  The
second you want even data validation or the tiniest thing, you need lines
of code.  I'm just not seeing the comparison.  Add to that the fact that he
had massive lines of code even in the smallest example for something that
didn't need more than "<html><head /><body>Hello World.</body</html>"
and...well, I can't say much for his logic, either in terms of example
choice or design choices.  At least one of the two was a bad idea.

It's hard to be impressed with LoC comparisons when you're spending the
entire viewing time wondering why there's -code- to begin with.  Given
that, it's hard to trust a comparative analysis to be worth a damn when at
least -some- part of the underlying logic is flawed, thus making the party
seem untrustworthy on the whole.  IMHO, he's just as flawed for choosing
whatever ended up with the lowest LoC count as if he'd used J2EE, since
both are overkill for the task.  How do you trust someone's judgement when
they blow such obvious calls in logical choice?

I don't.

mark->
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