[Linux-aus] Linux Australia Website

[Michael Davies]

On 11/18/06, Andrew Donnellan <ajdlinux at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/17/06, Jeff Waugh <jdub at perkypants.org> wrote:
> > <quote who="Andrew Donnellan">
> >
> > > > Umm, why would you need to rewrite it?  Why not embed it?
> > >
> > > Er, in a different programming language it is a bit more difficult.
> >
> > You can host different applications in different directories. Even hostnames
> > if you have to go that far. It's not difficult at all.
>
> I'm quite aware of that. The key word is 'integration' and IMO hosting
> another app in a different directory does not qualify as integration.

Integration is more about what the user experiences than what
language/tool the backend is written in/uses.  Think like an end-user,
not a programmer.

> Also seriously how difficult is it to rewrite/adapt/port MemberDB to
> whatever we end up using?

Michael's first axiom: Any program more complex than "Hello World" has
at least one bug.

No matter how "simple" there will be teething problems, and if you do
this with a membership database responsible for elections on a public
web server, you want to minimise them (remember the privacy laws in
this country?)

Member_db spat out the SQL password at one point due to a bug (sorry
Stewart for bringing that up :-)  Anything we can do to make this
migration simpler should be adopted.

Keeping it a separate application, embedding it's output inside what
Joomla/Drupal/Plone/Typo3 produces, or writing it from scratch - let's
just get away from the NIH[0] attitude and the "XYZ language/tool
sucks, trust me" mentality and do a proper analysis of the options so
that we can choose the right tool, technology, and approach that makes
sense, and not jump in feet first to solve the wrong problem.

Of course this is IMHO :-)

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here
-- 
Michael Davies           "Do what you think is interesting, do somthing that
michael at msdavies.net      you think is fun and worthwhile, because otherwise
http://michaeldavies.org  you won't do it well anyway." -- Brian Kernighan