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Why must you laugh at my back end?

blog.pud.com

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Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#161

Post by dasil003 »

JasPanesar wrote: post #140
mgkimsal wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most techies who have a negative opinion about any technology do it with hearsay and not first hand experience." You'll find that even when you have first hand experience, you'll often be met with "well, you didn't do it right". Or "you need to do XYZ first - no one ever does foobar with XYZ first - are you stupid?". And so on. Even first hand experience isn't enough for some fanboys when you choose to reject their…

Lol, good point. It's kind of ironic that geeks who were picked/excluded/ostracized in school turn on each other in their adult lives and become snob/hipsters, instead of breaking the cycle. Love and power to anyone doing anything good out there with the tools that enable to do them. As for the fanatics who can't change the topic (to keep bashing) or change their mind.. I hope you can see the forest for the trees one…

> It's kind of ironic that geeks who were picked/excluded/ostracized in school turn on each other in their adult lives and become snob/hipsters, instead of breaking the cycle.

More human nature than irony, I'd say.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#162

Post by sanderjd »

itrackmine wrote: post #101
nhashem wrote: 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…

nhashem, wow you really hit the nail on the head. So accurate it's scary. I too, thought I was the only one who put DOING before "ramping up and learning some stuff so that I can maybe do some things a few weeks from now." And of course Pud for the courage to be honest about how he's working. So many times in startups and new endeavors, getting things out is far more important than doing it "right". It's stinky, but…

It's interesting to me that you thought you were the only one who put doing before ...learning, for lack of a better word - from what I can tell, the trendy thing at the moment (besides all the trendy technologies) is to spurn design, best practices, and maintainability in favor of doing things in the stinky, realistic, checkbook and bills friendly manner. At least if you're judging solely based on articles and comments that get upvoted on HN. It's a constant pendulum between "right" and "quick", which makes me think the answer is almost certainly somewhere in the middle. Honestly, it makes me wary of being a customer of startups currently, if everyone is just trying to get to version 1 as quickly as possible without any consideration for the future, so I hope that attitude is not as widely spread as it appears to be.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#164

Post by bitflipping »

JasPanesar wrote: post #140
mgkimsal wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most techies who have a negative opinion about any technology do it with hearsay and not first hand experience." You'll find that even when you have first hand experience, you'll often be met with "well, you didn't do it right". Or "you need to do XYZ first - no one ever does foobar with XYZ first - are you stupid?". And so on. Even first hand experience isn't enough for some fanboys when you choose to reject their…

Lol, good point. It's kind of ironic that geeks who were picked/excluded/ostracized in school turn on each other in their adult lives and become snob/hipsters, instead of breaking the cycle. Love and power to anyone doing anything good out there with the tools that enable to do them. As for the fanatics who can't change the topic (to keep bashing) or change their mind.. I hope you can see the forest for the trees one…

" It's kind of ironic that geeks who were picked/excluded/ostracized in school turn on each other in their adult lives and become snob/hipsters, instead of breaking the cycle."

This is more a result of our tribal tendencies which manifest themselves in a number of ways: including xenophobia, racism, nationalism, religious discrimination etc...

edit: Tarsems

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#165

Post by gabebw »

knieveltech wrote: post #90
earl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And snowboarders. People spend probably minimum $1k for clothes, boots, board and bindings; plus $70+/day for a lift ticket; but won't spend $50 to go to a group class and actually learn how to do it. And they're dangerous to everyone around them because they can't dismount a goddamn lift without falling down and probably knocking down their neighbors.

And climbers. Nothing like wading through a gibbering horde of prana wearing gumbies topropting with their $350 shiny new 70 meter bicolor ropes first thing in the morning at the crag. And kayakers. I've lost count of the number of times I've had someone's shiny new boat (closely followed by an expanding slick of random gear) float past me on class III+ runs. And hikers. Ever see a day hiker doing a mile and a half l…

Good point, with broad examples. Seems like you've led an interesting life - not many people would pull out "blacksmiths" as an example :)

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#166

Post by tsotha »

RossDM wrote: post #155
Hisoka wrote: 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.

Problem is that 'rewrite later' never happens because you're always busy. Setting up safeguards to protect against common attacks is quick enough that it can be done upfront. Efficiency and scaling can usually wait, though figure it out ahead of time if possible.

This. "I'll worry about security when I hit the big time" can only work if you never actually hit the big time.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#167

Post by mikedouglas »

PedroCandeias wrote: post #56
humbledrone wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about the differences between, say, assembly language and Ruby is very different than arguing about what color is the best. I guarantee that some projects will be successful if written in one of those languages, and not the other (webapp in assembly? bootloader in Ruby?). Also, in your view, how is talking about data structures any better than talking about languages? Wouldn't that just be "indoctrinating me…

I don't think you read me right. There's nothing wrong with debating the pros and cons of a language (or whatever else), but there's a difference between discussing and preaching. I'm always open to a nice chat, but I've got little patience for preachers. That's all I'm saying.

It's hard to understand your point if you change it. Of course no one likes preachers or endless discussions or anything else that's clearly bad: that doesn't have a whole lot to do with programming languages though. If that's all you're saying, it doesn't amount to much.

What you actually wrote (and what this article partially argues) is that the only thing that mattered was that it worked, which is a statement people can disagree over. Working isn't a binary switch that flips when you launch, any discussion of the value of something as complex as a piece of software has a lot of different dimensions. After all, bubble sort "works" too, but you'd be a pretty terrible computer scientist if that was as far as you investigated the issue.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#168

Post by rorrr »

rmason wrote: post #65
ary wrote: 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…

What I find sad is people making judgements based on twelve year old information. Like most languages CFML has evolved. People writing CFML today use MVC frameworks, use ORM and the cloud. Yes it is still easy for beginners to write bad code, I think that may be more true in ColdFusion than in other languages. But getting started easily can also be a virtue. You might be surprised but a lot of the ColdFusion communit…

Yet the OP mentions the tag, which is exactly the problem. It's mixing of the presentation (view) with a DB call (something that should be in a model and routed through a controller).

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#169

Post by Zak »

ary wrote: post #64
pud wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paraphrased: > Some people write crappy code in CFML. Yes. But people write crappy code in [your preferred language] too. There's nothing inherent in CFML that forces people to write bad or hard-to-understand code. > OMG can you believe some people still use TABLES??? view source

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…

PG has addressed the issue of HN's markup several times. One of the major advantages of CSS, that sitewide changes can be made in one place doesn't really apply to HN. All the HTML is generated by Arc code which is written in a reasonably DRY style; major changes can be made in a central place.

I like modern markup and layout better than the way things used to be just like almost everyone else, but It's hard to come up with an argument for switching HN to more modern markup. It wouldn't make the site easier for PG to maintain, and it probably wouldn't result in a change to the visual design unless a designer was brought in.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#170

Post by eapen »

As a ColdFusion developer looking for a job in the valley, I also faced all the negativity associated with the language. In fact, I ended up barely mentioning the language on my resume. If the language was renamed to something else and totally re-branded, it would probably gain more respect. Most people still think of the older versions when it was built in C. But since the conversion to Java, it has been able to benefit from a lot of the Java enhancements while still functioning as a duck-typed language.

Another advantage is that, it has a very short learning curve. But like with any tool, it can be used by amateurs to produce amateur looking code. Using a framework (eg. FW/1) encourages better structured code and OOP approaches.

You can meet most of your web needs with ColdFusion and some highly specialized items may be more complicated. But that is the case with just about any language. The only part where I havent found sufficient documentation or user experiences related to scaling applications. That is not to say, it hasn't been done.

Given the relatively high price of Adobe CF (compared to Ruby/PHP etc), it is not really an option that startups (in the Bay area) will consider. There are open-source CFML engines like Railo as the author notes, but unfortunately, it lacks publicity.

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