At the University where I consult, we use uPortal which is an open source Java based framework for student portals.
The product is excellent. I learned a lot about good OO design from studying the code base.
The support from the community is superb. You need to know how to ask questions well. You need to show that you've done your homework and aren't simply being lazy. But, if you do this, you nearly always get a response and probably from the committer who built the area in question.
We get vastly better support from the uPortal community than we do from many commercial products where we pay serious sums of money for support contracts.
On another project I've been using the online learning product, Moodle. The support here is much more flaky and the code base is pretty dreadful. It's PHP and the original 'architects' appear not to have heard of MVC. Similarly, the support wiki is rather patchy.
One of the secrets to deciding whether to use an open source product is the community that surrounds it. Try a pilot or proof of concept deployment and test the quality of the support you can get from the community. Make good support an absolute must.
Re:Halfway through the book, and ...
on
Anathem
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· Score: 1
While I love Stephenson's earlier works, his later works are disappointing to me. If you could somehow plot a trend of his writing style, beginning with something like Snow Crash and continuing until the present, you'd find Anathem right on that trend line. If you've been reading his stuff all along, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Anathem is like the Baroque cycle, but more so.
I agree with you about the trend line but I was not in the least disappointed with Anathem, I enjoyed it greatly.
The Baroque Cycle was the turning point for me. I'd love his earlier works. Re-read the first page of Snow Crash, it's brilliant. However I found the Cycle tedious in the extreme. This was despite the fact that that I had read many history books about the period and I am a Maths and Computer Science graduate from Trinity Cambridge - I must have been the perfect audience I thought and I still disliked these works.
I managed to finish Quicksilver and eventually bought and read Confusion as it was a Neal Stephenson book but couldn't even be bothered buying The System of the World.
Some time later I read The Birth Of Plenty http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Plenty-Prosperity-Modern-Created/dp/0071421920 that discusses way the basis for the economic fundamentals and legislative environment changed during the period covered by the Cycle and how this created the modern era. I suddenly understood what the books were about. I re-read the first two, rushed out and bought and read the third and I've since re-read the whole cycle twice.
Stephenson doesn't really write novels anymore, he uses novels as a vehicle to explore concepts that intrigue him. In Anathem he is exploring philosophical concepts and ideas around the Long Now http://www.longnow.org/ and no doubt ideas that I missed when reading Anathem.
It'd be fun if he wrote a really tight, enjoyable novel like Snow Crash again sometimes but I guess it's up to him to write what he wants to and up to us whether we give him money for writing it.
Just don't but a new Stephenson book until you see a review that says he's written a novel rather than a lecture if you don't enjoy what he seems to enjoy writing nowadays.
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The product is excellent. I learned a lot about good OO design from studying the code base.
The support from the community is superb. You need to know how to ask questions well. You need to show that you've done your homework and aren't simply being lazy. But, if you do this, you nearly always get a response and probably from the committer who built the area in question.
We get vastly better support from the uPortal community than we do from many commercial products where we pay serious sums of money for support contracts.
On another project I've been using the online learning product, Moodle. The support here is much more flaky and the code base is pretty dreadful. It's PHP and the original 'architects' appear not to have heard of MVC. Similarly, the support wiki is rather patchy.
One of the secrets to deciding whether to use an open source product is the community that surrounds it. Try a pilot or proof of concept deployment and test the quality of the support you can get from the community. Make good support an absolute must.
While I love Stephenson's earlier works, his later works are disappointing to me. If you could somehow plot a trend of his writing style, beginning with something like Snow Crash and continuing until the present, you'd find Anathem right on that trend line. If you've been reading his stuff all along, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Anathem is like the Baroque cycle, but more so.
I agree with you about the trend line but I was not in the least disappointed with Anathem, I enjoyed it greatly.
The Baroque Cycle was the turning point for me. I'd love his earlier works. Re-read the first page of Snow Crash, it's brilliant. However I found the Cycle tedious in the extreme. This was despite the fact that that I had read many history books about the period and I am a Maths and Computer Science graduate from Trinity Cambridge - I must have been the perfect audience I thought and I still disliked these works.
I managed to finish Quicksilver and eventually bought and read Confusion as it was a Neal Stephenson book but couldn't even be bothered buying The System of the World.
Some time later I read The Birth Of Plenty http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Plenty-Prosperity-Modern-Created/dp/0071421920 that discusses way the basis for the economic fundamentals and legislative environment changed during the period covered by the Cycle and how this created the modern era. I suddenly understood what the books were about. I re-read the first two, rushed out and bought and read the third and I've since re-read the whole cycle twice.
Stephenson doesn't really write novels anymore, he uses novels as a vehicle to explore concepts that intrigue him. In Anathem he is exploring philosophical concepts and ideas around the Long Now http://www.longnow.org/ and no doubt ideas that I missed when reading Anathem.
It'd be fun if he wrote a really tight, enjoyable novel like Snow Crash again sometimes but I guess it's up to him to write what he wants to and up to us whether we give him money for writing it.
Just don't but a new Stephenson book until you see a review that says he's written a novel rather than a lecture if you don't enjoy what he seems to enjoy writing nowadays.