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Trouble with Diaspora

blog.steveklabnik.com

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141–150 of 166 posts

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#141

Post by Mod_daniel »

mattmanser wrote: post #138

I've seen 'really, really bad' code. This ain't it. Yeas, it's made some rookie mistakes. Yes, there's a load of things they shouldn't be trusting on postback (silly things like not checking the owner of an object on 'delete' commands). That's not bad code, that's a bad implementation. That's not knowing what to trust and what not trust cause they've never been screwed up the ass by it yet. But bad code? No. The impl…

I'm worried that this is going to be one of those group think exercises where people are simply going to key off of their opinions without even looking at the code. Or, worse, reiterate their claims on other forums. I don't think, at least in Patio11's case, that this is gross self-promotion, I think its simply arrogance.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#142

Post by code_duck »

motters wrote: post #74

I can hear Zuckerberg chuckling like an evil genius.

Why would he even care? It's only in some confused fantasies that this project, of all projects, would be THE ONE to actually challenge Facebook. It might, it might not. No more likely Diaspora than some project cooked up by a pair of 16 year olds in Brazil.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#143

Post by X-Istence »

InfinityX0 wrote: post #110
moron4hire wrote: post #81

This is the problem: college students are terrible programmers. There aren't enough consequences for writing bad code in college. In industry, you learn very quickly that everything you learned in college is minuscule compared to what you actually need to know to work. I knew guys who only studied databases or only studied HTML+JavaScript+CSS. And we all expected that this level of specialization was common and even…

"Every programmer I've known thought he was a super hacker by the time he got out of college. Me included." This is referred to in the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquistion. It refers to a space in time where we are advanced enough to not be a novice, but not advanced to realize our own lack of expertise. Merlinn Mann refers to it as being an "advanced beginner". The problem with this stage is that's it's impossible to r…

I believed I was a super hacker when I got out of high school, it wasn't till I got to college (and after stubbornly admitting my teacher in HS was right) that I realised I wasn't and that my code sucked. Now I am out of college, I am in a real life working job, and I've received praise from my peers for the code I have written. Yes, getting told that your code sucks is good, it is even more awesome to get told by a veteran in the industry that your code is pretty good and easily maintainable.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#144

Post by [deleted] »

code177 wrote: post #122
mlinsey wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you up until your last paragraph "a startup was probably the worst endeavor for them". The sheer gumption to throw yourself whole-heartedly at problems you are unqualified to solve is one of the most important characteristics of a startup founder. Even if you spent time learning to be a great coder, there would be a dozen other things you'd need to be doing for the first time when you first start a start…

I wholeheartedly agree with you, if the fact was as simple. As it stands, the paragraph should have read: "a startup [with $200,000 funding of other people's money] was probably the worst endeavor for them", as that more accurately represents the reality of the situation.

[deleted]

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#145

Post by richardw »

moron4hire wrote: post #81

This is the problem: college students are terrible programmers. There aren't enough consequences for writing bad code in college. In industry, you learn very quickly that everything you learned in college is minuscule compared to what you actually need to know to work. I knew guys who only studied databases or only studied HTML+JavaScript+CSS. And we all expected that this level of specialization was common and even…

Where would Facebook be now if the founder went to learn the ropes by working for the man? Zuckerberg was still in college at the time, and now he keeps Google up at night.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#146

Post by nickbw »

carbon8 wrote: post #115
daleharvey wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they should develop the whole thing behind closed doors because some people are going to have to suffer the embarassment of having someone post "hahaha disregard that ... " on their mini facebook wall? Their code is out there, they have openly said it is full of bugs and they now have a hell of a lot of eyes, They will get a massive benefit from this being opened early and it really isnt their problem if people re…

Basic authorization for resource access isn't the kind of thing you add later. This isn't just an issue of bugs or being in development, it's a fundamental issue with their development process. Furthermore, one of the primary goals of the project was to make something more privacy-conscious than Facebook, and so far they show they have a development process that pays less attention to access control than any Rails ap…

For brand new/"experimental" projects with both user permissions and a non-trivial set of features, built by a small team, I've always found it easiest to work like this:

1. Build features, ignoring permissions entirely.

2. When the feature set is relatively stable, default to disallowing everything.

3. Re-enable one feature at a time as you add appropriate permissions checks.

Step 1 looks horribly irresponsible if you don't know 2 is coming. But if you do, it avoids a false sense of security from half-finished permissions in rapidly changing code, and it keeps up early motivation since you're rolling out "exciting" features right away. And counting on step 2 ensures you're always checking whether something is allowed, instead of foolishly checking whether something isn't allowed.

Whether this scenario applies to Diaspora at all ... I don't know. Time and another release will tell. But I do think there are valid situations where authorization is "the kind of thing you add later" for appropriate values of "later".

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#147

Post by startupcto »

I'm not sure what is the problem here. It's a piece of software that was released to the public on Github and if anyone decided to use it shouldn't expect it to work without flaws.

If it was a piece of crappy software that I wrote and put it on Github, I am going to get criticize to the point that it's worthless, I'm not sure where is the open source spirit going this way.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#148

Post by steveklabnik »

mattmanser wrote: post #138

I've seen 'really, really bad' code. This ain't it. Yeas, it's made some rookie mistakes. Yes, there's a load of things they shouldn't be trusting on postback (silly things like not checking the owner of an object on 'delete' commands). That's not bad code, that's a bad implementation. That's not knowing what to trust and what not trust cause they've never been screwed up the ass by it yet. But bad code? No. The impl…

Call me nasty names if you'd like, but I don't see how "please help this project, it really needs it" is self promotion.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#149

Post by mkramlich »

jpeterson wrote: post #14
cilantro wrote: post #3

This code was released to developers as an incomplete preview. I'm not sure why people are holding it to the same standards as a finished product that's being released to end users. Seems like a pretext to talk trash.

Indeed. These guys should be lauded for getting something out. It's a very non-trivial accomplishment. I'm afraid that Diaspora might be in an impossible position. If they release something early, they'll get a lot of bad press from knuckleheads like this one that the quality is no good. If they release late, everyone will be clamoring over the wasted $250k in the interim, demanding: "when will we see something?".

I'd argue just the opposite. Especially in today's world. "Getting Something Out" is very easy. I can come up with a project idea tonight, start coding, then publish the code within an hour. Then iterate (or not) to my heart's content. Granted, it's harder with a group. But still, it's always easy to publish shit code. Non-shit is a little harder, but also easier to do with experience and talent.

Now growing it over time, standing up to public scrutiny, hardening, balancing, monetizing -- those are much harder problems. Getting code out? Not really, in my opinion.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#150

Post by whyenot »

moron4hire wrote: post #81

This is the problem: college students are terrible programmers. There aren't enough consequences for writing bad code in college. In industry, you learn very quickly that everything you learned in college is minuscule compared to what you actually need to know to work. I knew guys who only studied databases or only studied HTML+JavaScript+CSS. And we all expected that this level of specialization was common and even…

Every programmer I've known thought he was a super hacker by the time he got out of college.

Wasn't Linus Torvalds a college student when he released linux? For that matter, Facebook was written by a college student. Some college students can do amazing things. Also, this is just a pet peeve of mine, but don't diminish college students by calling them "kids." Many may be young, but they are adults.

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