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BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

beebase.sourceforge.io

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Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#71

Post by cess11 »

Vegenoid wrote: post #68
cess11 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. You fill in with knowledge about regex, which isn't explicit in the error message.

The equivalent of BeeBase’s error in your example would be simply “invalid regex”, which I’d say is still more useful as regex is widely understood and there are many tools that you can give regex to that will tell you what is wrong with it.

No, there's a specificity to "name" and "group" that makes them similar, which is one part of why I settled on this example. The other is that I expected the recipient to have experience with regex and find the example dumb, confirming my position that one can very well demand a basic knowledge of the tool that isn't immediately communicated by it.

Like knowledge of the regex language, or having spent ten minutes skimming through the tutorial part of a PDF manual.

In my experience, how to use a manual is a technique more widely understood than regex. Maybe this impression is wrong, I'd welcome something tangible pointing in another direction if it is.

Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#72

Post by lysecret »

zokier wrote: post #35

Honestly I think LibreOffice Base (and its brethren) are underappreciated and underdeveloped pieces of software these days. In 80s/90s stuff like dBase and Access seemingly were relatively popular, but that whole category of software seems to have mostly died out which is imho a shame. I suppose Access being somewhat notoriously horrible has something to do with that, suffocating the whole field. Considering how much…

Notion is putting the database in the Center in a way.

Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#73

Post by zen928 »

AvieDeckard wrote: post #58
PurpleRamen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this are the reason why I will not touch software like this. I can live with the old school-style and the limited ability set sold on the webpage. But someone bringing up a legit complain and then receiving such hostile behavior, speaks for a toxic community or user hostile developers. And it's not limited to this one comment, but there are several collect here.

They simply said the information is in the manual, there was no hostile behavior. Please stop punching at shadows.

The replying comment side stepped the discussion of error messages lacking context that could be easily remedied to be identifiable and the response was "it's in the manual". All error messages meant to be understood by humans should be in the manual at minimum, but what the replyer suggested by ignoring the conversation was "your issue with the error message isn't important because you can figure it out yourself". It's dismissive to respond to nuanced articulated opinions made in good faith with simplistic matter-of-fact answers that don't address the problem, which could easily be seen as a form of hostility in a place meant for discussion and engagement.

You could argue that's not their intent or that it's the case of direct wording than intentionally being curt, but this is the second post in the chain that dismisses the legitimate discussion with additional redress to make sure you let the poster know that it's their problem "punching at shadows" and that their problems are imagined. What a shameful display of lacking empathy.

Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#74

Post by buescher »

humanfromearth9 wrote: post #41
zokier wrote: post #35

Honestly I think LibreOffice Base (and its brethren) are underappreciated and underdeveloped pieces of software these days. In 80s/90s stuff like dBase and Access seemingly were relatively popular, but that whole category of software seems to have mostly died out which is imho a shame. I suppose Access being somewhat notoriously horrible has something to do with that, suffocating the whole field. Considering how much…

I haven't seen anything that beats the UI and UX of FileMaker Pro from the 90s.

Agreed if FileMaker would do what you needed. 1990s FileMaker was not really relational, right? To be painfully fair to Microsoft, Access was more powerful and did a nice job of balancing capability and UX.

For many contemporary use cases where one might have used FileMaker in the nineties, there’s SharePoint lists and PowerBI.

Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#75

Post by lazyasciiart »

sigzero wrote: post #54
jeremyjh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure buddy. I began using the web in 1996 and I had the same reaction.

That says more about you then it does about the site. :)

Yes, I believe it is intended to say that he is definitively not part of “ A generation conditioned by horrible endless-scroll single-page "applications" ”

Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#76

Post by CharlesW »

buescher wrote: post #74
humanfromearth9 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen anything that beats the UI and UX of FileMaker Pro from the 90s.

Agreed if FileMaker would do what you needed. 1990s FileMaker was not really relational, right? To be painfully fair to Microsoft, Access was more powerful and did a nice job of balancing capability and UX. For many contemporary use cases where one might have used FileMaker in the nineties, there’s SharePoint lists and PowerBI.

> FileMaker was not really relational, right?

Not until v3 (1995) or v7 (2004), depending on how low your bar is.

Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#77

Post by jfyi »

cess11 wrote: post #71
Vegenoid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent of BeeBase’s error in your example would be simply “invalid regex”, which I’d say is still more useful as regex is widely understood and there are many tools that you can give regex to that will tell you what is wrong with it.

No, there's a specificity to "name" and "group" that makes them similar, which is one part of why I settled on this example. The other is that I expected the recipient to have experience with regex and find the example dumb, confirming my position that one can very well demand a basic knowledge of the tool that isn't immediately communicated by it. Like knowledge of the regex language, or having spent ten minutes ski…

If it's any consolation, I (some random guy on the internet) would look for naming conventions in the manual if I was given the error "invalid name".

Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#78

Post by jfyi »

carlmr wrote: post #25
cess11 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's explained on page 8 of the manual, in the tutorial section.

Exactly, it's a bad error message if you need to read 8 pages of tutorial to get that basic feedback.

Let's take a look at how the big boys handle something similar...

SELECT * FROM logs WHERE KEY = 'blah' LIMIT 10;

/* SQL Error (1064): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near 'KEY = 'blah' LIMIT 10' at line 1 */

I think there is some expectation of technical literacy for the use of a database. This would include being able to familiarize yourself with naming conventions and keywords.

I have personally never seen a database that gives detailed error messages like was requested and I'd be excited to see an example.

Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#79

Post by rambambram »

nxobject wrote: post #46

Beyond your computer/workstation, I'd love if there was a personal database program that could also access via your phone, so you can use it on the go (even via dynamic DNS if needed) – modern no-code platforms do that, but data sovereignty would be nice.

Try good ol' PHPMyAdmin from your local webhosting company!? The view on a mobile screen in portrait mode is not even that bad.

Re: BeeBase, a programmable relational database with graphical user interface

#80

Post by cess11 »

zen928 wrote: post #73
AvieDeckard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They simply said the information is in the manual, there was no hostile behavior. Please stop punching at shadows.

The replying comment side stepped the discussion of error messages lacking context that could be easily remedied to be identifiable and the response was "it's in the manual". All error messages meant to be understood by humans should be in the manual at minimum, but what the replyer suggested by ignoring the conversation was "your issue with the error message isn't important because you can figure it out yourself". I…

It's not important because there are many quirks to this software, including a Lisp-like programming language. Learning to use it involves internalising many things that aren't common knowledge, which one has to figure out by trial and error, and the manual.

If you are seriously interested in BeeBase you'll be spending hours learning the basics of the Lisp-dialect and GUI toolkit, getting a hangup on that error message means you don't have that kind of interest. Maybe the empathy got in the way of that, I don't know.

And let's say someone makes a patch that implements a new error message that specifies which of the two rules regarding table names has been breached, then what? More complaints about the next quirk? Some other error message? Begging for a Lua-implemented query language because parens lost the syntax wars of yesteryear, describing it as miserable that it isn't already integrated?

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