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Why must you laugh at my back end?

blog.pud.com

121–130 of 230 posts

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#121

The only piece that made me cringe was CFML. I promise that a better life awaits you if you have the courage to break free.

I had the same reaction to CFML. I too run my site on IIS, but I use ASP-JScript, which is similar in syntax to javascript. I haven't used CFML in a decade, I remember it being clunky and limited compared to ASP 3. If you really want to go modern, there is of course dot-Net.

That would be the problem then, that you haven't used CFML in a decade. I would cringe at using 2001 CFML too, just like I would cringe at using 2001 PHP. It's a whole different beast now.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#122
post #99
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a bad strategy. I also believe in "Just get it out and done ASAP and brush it up like heck afterwards". Worry about injection attacks, efficiency issues, scaling after you gain some traction. You can always rewrite later when it becomes an issue.

You're classing injection attacks with scaling and efficiency? I want to believe I've misread.

Most people do, but taking it as a calculated risk rather than ignorance or denial seems more honest. If you have no customers, and the worst case liability is not too bad, then a calculated risk is just that. Not something I would choose, but it is arguably rational in some cases...

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#123
post #98
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a bad strategy. I also believe in "Just get it out and done ASAP and brush it up like heck afterwards". Worry about injection attacks, efficiency issues, scaling after you gain some traction. You can always rewrite later when it becomes an issue.

Can you please list out the applications you've created? I'd like to add them to my "never ever register on these sites" list. If you're only worrying about injection attacks "...after you gain some traction" or "...when it becomes an issue" you're already too late, and I don't ever want to trust any of my private data with you, ever. This is the 21st century. Scrubbing and validating user input is _trivial_ now, fra…

Oh please. I'm not building anything that requires a credit card, or anything sophisticated. When you have literally just a hundred users, YES I will skip paying lots of attention on injection attacks because the chances of that happening is very low. To you techies, it sounds like a huge deal, but the priority in any business to make profit first.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#124
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand by my comment. A few things to note. > Some people write crappy code in CFML. Yes. But people write crappy code in [your preferred language] too. No, I said CFML code is universally hard to understand. Even more so for people already familiar with more popular languages. > OMG can you believe some people still use TABLES??? view source. That example was given to make a point about dated skill sets. I didn't i…

CFML is NOT universally hard to understand. I have been programming over 25 years, and use/have used all kinds of languages. CFML is just another tool. If you don't like tag based language, you can use pure scripting in CFML pages. Also, nothing in CFML requires or even leads ANYONE to use table based layout. I don't know where you got that idea from. When i first looked at CFML I had distaste for what i saw. The pro…

Sorry, you do not understand the meaning of "first class". You mean "included in the standard library". First class is as in first class functions, ie you can assign them to variables.

And for a second I was excited by first class transactions.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#125
post #51

Cold Fusion? No, no... no . > CFML. I really like programming in CFML (a programming language, “ColdFusion Markup Language,” as opposed to ColdFusion, a commercial CFML interpreter made by Adobe). I know it’s not "cool" like Node.js or Clojure or even RoR. Doctors used to bleed people with leeches to get out the "bad humors". They stopped using that "tool" for a reason. It was a bad tool , and better "tools" came alo…

> Why did the OP take an entire blog post to say what could have been posted to Twitter ("you darn kids and your twittin'!")?

How many blog posts couldn't be boiled down into a twitter post? The fact that something can be transformed into a 140-character blurb for teenagers with short attention spans does not mean that it should be.

> The whole post boils down to what appears to be proud, willful ignorance.

You whole comment really comes off as a bit short-sighted at best. The whole point was to share the way he gets stuff done. The fact that you do things a different way does not make his way wrong. Automatically assuming that your way is best is a sign of professional immaturity.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#126
post #62

(1) I have respect for people who can put a project together and get revenue flowing through it. (2) This technology stack sucks. (3) That your technology stack sucks does not mean you suck. (4) Maslow's Four Stages of Competence starts with Unconscious Incompetence. You don't even know you are unskilled. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence ) (5) This isn't a popularity contest. ( http://www.ribb…

1-3 remind me of a great "I Can Has Cheezburger?" anecdote about being a successful CTO: http://www.scottporad.com/2010/11/12/what-it-really-means-to...

I wish more people knew about FreshBooks' rewrite. They had horrible code. And they slowly morphed it into a php-python-ruby mix which is (from my dev friends there) pretty damn good now. It's ok to have a setup or tools that are fucked, but FB would never be able to hold onto developers or iterate quickly on their product if they hadn't sunk at least 9 man-years on the clean up. A million bucks for a slow rewrite is worth the price when it mitigates the risks of a failed from scratch rewrite.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#127
post #125
post #51

Cold Fusion? No, no... no . > CFML. I really like programming in CFML (a programming language, “ColdFusion Markup Language,” as opposed to ColdFusion, a commercial CFML interpreter made by Adobe). I know it’s not "cool" like Node.js or Clojure or even RoR. Doctors used to bleed people with leeches to get out the "bad humors". They stopped using that "tool" for a reason. It was a bad tool , and better "tools" came alo…

> Why did the OP take an entire blog post to say what could have been posted to Twitter ("you darn kids and your twittin'!")? How many blog posts couldn't be boiled down into a twitter post? The fact that something can be transformed into a 140-character blurb for teenagers with short attention spans does not mean that it should be. > The whole post boils down to what appears to be proud, willful ignorance. You whole…

You'll notice I didn't make a specific suggestion regarding technology. I merely suggested that what he is strongly advocating is archaic.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#128
post #9

This is great. Seriously. I cut my teeth in the early 2000s writing the type of PHP code that would make your eyes bleed. Global variables everywhere. HTML/PHP/MySQL in the same file. Career-wise I ended up going down a backend/database developer path, so if I do anything with consumer-facing web applications, it's on my free time. I'm working on such an app now, and right now the fastest way I can get anything done…

I'd really, really, really advise you at least check out a framework :) Spend 10 minutes reading the documentation behind CodeIgniter ( http://codeigniter.com/ ) and you'll see that you can have more time to spend developing, e.g., features, as the framework has taken care of the routine and mundane stuff. As a note, I would recommend Kohana ( http://kohanaframework.org/ ) over CodeIgniter, but if you're pushed for t…

I've worked with Kohana a lot and I really don't like it, besides how skinny it is (oh, and the H in HMVC). Weird thing is the best programmer I know recommended it to me.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#129
post #123
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please list out the applications you've created? I'd like to add them to my "never ever register on these sites" list. If you're only worrying about injection attacks "...after you gain some traction" or "...when it becomes an issue" you're already too late, and I don't ever want to trust any of my private data with you, ever. This is the 21st century. Scrubbing and validating user input is _trivial_ now, fra…

Oh please. I'm not building anything that requires a credit card, or anything sophisticated. When you have literally just a hundred users, YES I will skip paying lots of attention on injection attacks because the chances of that happening is very low. To you techies, it sounds like a huge deal, but the priority in any business to make profit first.

Sorry, but this is bull. If you take any information, even if it's an email and password, data security is either tops on your list or you're abusing your users (even "only a hundred"; one is too many!). There is literally zero middle ground on this: you do it or you shouldn't be building web applications. And given how utterly trivial it is to provide proof against injection attacks in any modern language and toolkit, choosing not to do so because it's "hard" as irresponsible as you can get.

This sort of behavior is why the rest of us get a bad rap.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#130
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have respect for people that can deliver, regardless of what they use. The allure of cool tech is strong but tech doesn't make products: people do. I cannot see what is wrong with your using plain PHP if you can get the job done faster (as long as you avoid things that make exploits easy, such as raw mysql db functions). When the time for a framework comes, you'll know. Stop worrying about what others think and goo…

here's how I learned Python without noticing it: (I had a background in PHP, JS, C++) 1. Off hours on 2-3 days with dive into python 3. 2. A month later - 'oh let's do this in python!' on google code jam 3. 'python challenge? that's cool' - one night hackathon a month later 4. 'I hate php, I'll do this new web app in django' 5. Two days messing with django 6. Five days and the app was done. I don't know if I write 'b…

Story of my summer Except now I have couple hundred of lines of "legacy" PHP that's not being written in Python just yet and considering time constraints won't be. It makes crossover projects hard.
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