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Thoughts on programming stuff
04:33:09 pm on September 20, 2005 | # |
I program by day, usually. I use a little framework thing that I came up with on my own to build out sites, and it works for me mostly I think because of the amount of problems ive figured out the solutions to over the years, and also because I created it. I was reading an entry on wikipedia about The Mythical Man Month. In a nutshell it is:
Reflecting on his time at IBM managing the development of OS/360, Brooks recounts the mistakes made and lessons learned. One of the mistakes was the attempt to add more workers to a project falling behind schedule, in the hope of speeding development. His observation, known as Brooks’ law, was simple: “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.“
There is an important concept from that book, the one of Conceptual Integrity, which states:
In order to make a user-friendly system, the system must have conceptual integrity, which can only be achieved by separating architecture from implementation. A single chief architect (or a small number of architects), acting on the user’s behalf, decides what goes in the system and what stays out. A “super cool” idea by someone may not be included if it does not fit seamlessly with the overall system design. In fact, to ensure a user-friendly system, a system may deliberately provide fewer features than it is capable of. The point is that if a system is too complicated to use, then many of its features will go unused because no one has the time to learn how to use them.
I think this makes alot of sense when you look at the 4 million different kinds of web frameworks that are out there, and why some people pop huge Ruby Boners over them. I think that in the case of Rails, it succeeds because:
- It forces you to use great, REUSABLE defaults for things from paths to rendering.
- It doesnt try to tell you HOW to make your website look.
- The concepts and technologies it DOES use, it uses them very well and effectively (ie; ajax)
Up until recently, only the original author of rails, David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals, had commit rights to the ruby on rails cvs. He wanted to make sure that what went in was important, and not just hype.
Yeah, Im sure that there are some things it doesn’t make sense for, but for alot of things it makes sense. I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but when I bought the Rails book and pdf and started reading it, I was like, yeah, cool, I already do that. Sweet to think that other people think the same way. Now there are alot of things in my pixel-app framework that are present in a rails environment or silly copy, and there are lots of things that don’t exist. Like some parts of Active Record. While its cool, I dont have time to hack it together, and at the end of the day, while it is uber-hot, I can get by with what I have. I understand the source code, and I know how to fix a bug when something happens.
I may never publicly release my stuff other than a few sly links here and there, and I don’t think I want to. In the end its just about DRY and getting things done. Ruby is great, but until it can manage its way into $8 a month hosts, I realistically won’t be able to use it for my projects. Believe me, it makes me sad.
There are some cool things my framework does auto for me, which makes my life easier. Things like some admin functionality, users, groups, form processing, dashboard crap, plugins, form hook plugins, page creation. All these things are done to make my life easier, not because I wanted to be another nuke or similiar community clone. I hate those systems, what a PITA.
Anyways, I talk to my friend Chris alot, and I feel genuinely bummed for him, as he is living his IBM right now. Someday it will rock, I hope.
kermit 8:01 am on September 21, 2005 | #
Ah, slow beaurocratic conglomerates, how I treasure thee. Luckily I can be a real stubborn pain in the arse.
For shiznits and giggles, I installed pixelapp on pgtci. Your buddy IE is having some real fun with it….
bucky 12:47 pm on September 21, 2005 | #
i put special code in there for IE. i just give everything in html an id of tags.
juliius 1:38 pm on September 21, 2005 | #
elitist wanna-be rebels … just get over yourselves and return to the real standard: Frontpage – what more do you need?
bucky 5:01 pm on September 21, 2005 | #
if you use frontpage then im sure private holmes will have something to say about it.