[Linux-aus] Linux Australia Website

[Stewart Smith]

On Sat, 2006-11-18 at 09:19 +1030, Michael Davies wrote:
> 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.

Very important point here.


> > 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?)

and patches to improve the current code are always welcomed.

In fact, when there's some remote amount of time, it'd be great to have
a hackfest on the MemberDB code as with a bit more love it can probably
be useful to a lot more people.

> 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.

it's a good example of a tiny bug with a lot of visibility. The old
saying of "a good programmer will produce 5 lines of debugged
(assembler) per day" still seems to be true.

> 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

here here!

-- 
Stewart Smith (stewart at linux.org.au)
Committee Member, Linux Australia

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