The Web Way - a philosophy

[Darren Dirt]

http://ifindkarma.typepad.com/relax/2004/12/_as_the_year_dr.html

The Web Way is a philosophy toward Web-based services:



They should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.

They should have clean designs for user interfaces and clean designs for programming interfaces.

Where it's useful, they should embrace REST.

Where it's useful, they should embrace loose coupling.

Where it's useful, they should embrace glorious, nonblocking, asynchronous pubsub.

Where it's useful, they should embrace microformats, a/k/a lowercase semantic web.

Where it's needed, they should embrace the time-tested principles of Scalable Internet Architectures (three simple rules: optimize where it counts, complexity has its costs, and use the right tool).

Are you listening, Redmond Bill and Monkey Boy?

[Darren Dirt]

Also related:

http://www.classy.dk/log/archive/001285.html

If you develop anything for the web, or even if you're just a user at the geeky end of the user scale you should read Adam Rifkin's aggregated take on weblications, Link's from that post will keep you busy for a long time. Of particular interest The Web Way, because it links to so many other cool places.

Well, there went my lunch hour <-- not joking.

[Shayne]

i got two words for you Darren "dot" "net".  I know its hard to hear with your head in your ass, but really.  As much as you dislike Microsoft, its pretty hard to come up with a better language for basically every point listed above.



Beyond Java, dotnet has no equal.

[Darren Dirt]

i got two words for you Darren "dot" "net".  I know its hard to hear with your head in your ass, but really.  As much as you dislike Microsoft, its pretty hard to come up with a better language for basically every point listed above.



Beyond Java, dotnet has no equal.

You're entitled to your opinion. And I'm entitled to my enthusiasm for my opinion, of which I noticed dozens of very talented well-knowns in the global web dev world also concur, many of which are being hired by Google Yahoo and others. Funny, no mention of dotnet in any of those discussions about what people are excited about.



And actually, just because I seem a bit excited about what certain technologies, and especially development mindesets, can bring, doesn't mean I'm a M$ hater, or that I have my head... actually, on that note: I'd appreciate a reduction in your insult level -- for I am at a keyboard in a room of which you can not see, so where my head happens to be is of no interest to nor knowledge of you.



http://forums.righteouswrath.com/viewtopic.php?t=2448



^ I am surprised personal insults (that are not clearly in jest) are not included in The Rules :|



-Dirt. A man who can take a joke, but finds the above was not intended as such.

[Melbosa]

Actually it is covered in there DD:

Trolls - is one who is deliberately antagonizing or posts with the main purpose of getting a negative reaction. Gone!

And yes, Shayne has stepped beyond the grounds.  Please refrain from personal attacks when framing your responses.  Intelligence is a measure of one person's ability to articulate him/her-self without the need to revert to degregation of the other's character, but instead focuses on the topic/facts which relate to the conversation itself.



This is your warning!

[Shayne]

Im tired of the constant Microsoft bashing that Darren puts in nearly 90% of his posts (might be an exageration perhaps).  Be it informed or not so much.



Thanks for the warning rather then the outright ban like other RW admin tends to do.

[Shayne]

nt (for the virgin ears)

[Melbosa]

nt (for the virgin ears)

[Shayne]

A moment where i felt i needed the last word, but decided against it.

[Mr. Analog]

Not taking sides here *BUT* speaking as someone who reads a lot of /., Kuro5hin and Slash I have to say from a "pure" perspective:

Are you listening, Redmond Bill and Monkey Boy?

Is considered flamebait, and:

I know its hard to hear with your head in your ass

is trolling.



As a moderator I would call a draw, but I should have responded when I saw this (these?) posts earlier (my bad).



Anyway, back to the thread at hand; The thing I don't like about design "philosophies" is that they are a kind of arrogant way of sharing general rules of thumb. Everything has it's pro and con and should be considered when developing any application, web or otherwise. It is never bad practice if code fits a solution, even if it's the worst hack job in the world; if it meets the deliverables and gets the job done then there you go.



This is a cynical view, and that is because I am a cynical programmer who has had some experience in the practical world of "stuff's gotta work". If I'm writing a throwaway application I am not going to spend time documenting or adhering to standards because in the long run it won't matter. As well, I would do all the optimization, error checking and "stupid code tricks" to make sure the app is solid for what it does and can at least handle errors gracefully. If I was working on a huge, collaborative project that had a multi-year life cycle I would want rich, up-to-date documentation, elegant design and agile code. Some projects get a blending of both styles (into undending shades of grey).



The point of all this is; there is very little use for overbroad standards  because it cripples the agility and sometimes the creativity of solution-based development. And that's not good for anybody.



"You can't get to the top if you reach for the middle!"

~Me, 2005

[Thorin]

Are you listening, Redmond Bill and Monkey Boy?

Is considered flamebait, and:

I know its hard to hear with your head in your ass

is trolling.

Pretty much what I was going to say

It is never bad practice if code fits a solution, even if it's the worst hack job in the world; if it meets the deliverables and gets the job done then there you go.

GAH!  Did you not hear me ranting today about the idiot (:evil:) who designed the software I'm supposed to support now?!  I promise I will never, ever, create a circular reference that gets fixed by editing source code that is auto-generated and overwritten if you update a Web Reference!  Yes, laugh all you want at my expense, Mr. A. :wink:  I hate hack jobs, though.



For those of you not in the loop...  An idiot (or set of idiots, more likely) created a solution to a problem using .NET.  However, they made a circular reference between two projects where the first directly referenced the second and the second then made a web reference to the first.  The code that was auto-generated as a stub for the web reference, and which gets overwritten every time you right-click on the web reference and choose "Update", had been replaced with custom code.  Sure enough, I tried to update the web reference to point it to the proper location so I could step through it, and suddenly the code would no longer compile!



I guess what I'm trying to say in a very long-winded way is...  No language nor suite will ever counterbalance nor neutralize idiocy.

[Shayne]

After all ive seen, i still perfer PHP.  Its crude, but whicked fast, whicked scalable, and whicked easy to code in.  Perl would be my close second, C# a far third.



THough i haven't done any Java, but functionally its gotta be similar to .net.

[Darren Dirt]

Not taking sides here *BUT* speaking as someone who reads a lot of /., Kuro5hin and Slash I have to say from a "pure" perspective:

Are you listening, Redmond Bill and Monkey Boy?

Is considered flamebait, and:

I know its hard to hear with your head in your ass

is trolling.



As a moderator I would call a draw, but I should have responded when I saw this (these?) posts earlier (my bad).

Ouch. I guess, sorta... Except mine was a light-hearted mocking name of well-known global personalities, but not a distasteful assumption about the anatomy of a participant of this local little forum



Interesting points after, folks... I think I'm gonna stop reading this stuff, I seem to get excited, waste time, and feel hopeful -- all apparently pointless emotional responses



And, yeah, PHP is great and intuitive and quick... I'm glad I'm playing around with it as server-side tech rather than ancient old ASP that I had relied on on occasion until necessity called for a change... Yes folks, I'm actually agreeing with Shayne about something

[Shayne]

Through your travels in PHP land, look at SQLite, and GD.  While working the previous 4 years i took extensive use of those 2 modules.

[Tonnica]

Curiously enough I just started learning PHP today. I essentially ran out of projects and my boss figured that because he's heard there's a large number of pre-built tools and doodads for PHP that might save us time in developing projects.



I've always been curious about PHP. Also many people I know have asked the inevitable "Why ColdFusion?" question to me (answer: because I really wanted to get a job within the first year out of college and it wasn't my choice of development language) quickly followed up by the "use PHP instead" suggestion. This hints to me that more than a small number of people like to use PHP to build their web apps.



I've tinkered with PHP just a little bit before, but I'll most likely be jumping right into developing (just like I did with ColdFusion). Any suggestions for good resource sites? (aside from the obvious like PHP.net)