need of a web based message board

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Thu, Jun 28, 2007 at 11:52:59PM -0400, Fairlight wrote:
> 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.

Yeah.  MW is at it's best for Distributed Knowledge Capture.

> > 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.

Where's that?  Or is it subscrition?

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

Indeed; there's a Flash animation of how a Chrysler A604 automatic
transmission works that's floating around out there that *almost* makes
up for all the Entirely-Implemented-In-Flash site I want to burn.

> > 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.

*My* personal problem with Zope is that's it's too much of amoving
target, a problem I've always had with WebGUI.  They both have somewhat
of an impedance mismatch problem as well.

> 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.

I haven't seen the video, and I'll go look.  What'd they compress it
with?

> > 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.

Sure.  But it's really hard to demonstrate a web-app-builder framework
reasonably in less than about 3 hours...

> 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.

There are always LOC.  The question is just:

Who has to *write* them.

And don't forget Component Software Hell.

If you base your code on other people's... then you have to track and
test as they upgrade, or supply your own copies; each has pitfalls.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra at baylink.com
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