I've been lucky in that the apps I distribute are simple...an exe and a few dlls in a folder. I could see where something with more dependancies could become nightmarish in a large organization. Then, such an organization probably has something link Systems Management Server for pushing things out to the clients.
This undeniably gets more complex for deployment, but as I stated before, deployment is a small portion of the application lifecycle. I would rather have the complexity up front than the whole time people are using the thing.
Client app -> ODBC driver -> SQL server is simpler, and therefor less prone to failure than Browser x, y, z -> Client Side Scripting -> Web Server -> Server side scripting -> ODBC driver -> SQL server
If something is going to break, I prefer it to happen during deployment, while I am focused on the project. I hate deploying something, moving on to another project, and getting pestered to death by weird little problems that crop up later. It disrupts my train of thought, and ends up being more expensive in the long run.
Oddly enough, web apps also use more bandwidth, even on the rare occasions that a browser can be coerced into caching stuff correctly. At best, you still push a bunch of uncompressed text and formatting tags with every hit, while an SQL response is just the data, usually compressed and decompressed on the fly.
...rebuttals is "most of the time" and "with the following restrictions" and "if I target only IE6".
Which basically means you are tied to a given platform...so cross platform compatibility is out the window. I would argue compatibility with any platform is out the window with those restrictions, given the recent forced IE7 upgrade. Even something as simple as users twiddling their browser setting can break your app.
"Most of the time" and "we think it should work" aren't phrases you want to hear from someone developing a mission critical app for you.
That very link could be to your installer package....and you could build automatic updating into your app. I push update binaries out via a simple SQL query.
Well, if learning a high level language is such a barrier, you should definately stick with your scripting language....but I don't see how you can make an accurate comparison between the two methods if you have only ever used one.
And always I hear about the "ease of deployment". Deployment happens ONCE per client...while the application will be used thousands of times. Even if it were significantly harder to get an exe onto a machine, it is insignificant effort over the lifecycle of the app.
When I first learned how to write web apps, I agreed with your arguments. Multiple projects later, I learned otherwise, the hard way. The modern browser is a hack of a hack of a hack of a hack...and your application ends up being the top hack on the hack stack. Sometimes you need to do it that way, but I think browser apps are over used because people won't take the time to learn to write a thin client app. It really isn't any more difficult, it just requires a bit of willingness to learn, and the results are far superior.
"unless I use a particularly fancy bit of JavaScript, they almost always functionally work the same in multiple browsers. "
But which bits of java script are fancy and which are not? And how often is almost always? It comes back to pushing stuff out on the server and crossing your fingers...and there is plenty of that inherent in development without your two qualifications. I guess I'm kind of anal, but, dammit, when I write a line of code I want it to do the same thing for everybody that runs it. That way I can focus my attention my own boneheaded mistakes.
" I was thinking along the lines of quick fixes that were easily expandable, though, which in my mind is best for web app."
Quick fixes that are easy expanded tend to grow into gigantic morasses of tacked on code with no toplevel design. In 20 years, the poor churl that has to deal with that monster will be damning you to the fiery depths of hell!
I don't recall much getting much homework until Jr High though. Now I see itty bitty kids trudging around with backpacks full of books. Maybe "childhood" tends to run together in our minds as we age, so anthing from 6 to 16 is the same.
I do recall running around doing as I pleased after school, as opposed to being herded into some group activity. When I think of being a child, I think of those times as the best.
I don't buy the distribution thing...you have to distribute a link, and you could just as easily distribute a small downloader/installer, and build an auto updater into the app. With a web app, you also download your code with every single page. Graphics. HTML. Javascript. Every single time.
Then there is the joy of browser compatiblility. You start out saying, oh, we will only support browser X...but it never sticks...and your regression testing grows geometrically with each browser and version of browser you support.
If you have a simple form/submit application, or you don't control the workstations you will be deploying the app on, then a web app makes sense. Otherwise, a high level language running directly against an SQL server is the way to go. It's no harder than writing a web app, and you get much better response time and control.
I don't think you can really equate species survival with individual happiness. A creature that doesn't exist is neither happy nor unhappy. Same for a creature that never existed. Unless you believe that happiness and pain accumulate in some kind of universal vessels, dead and never born creatures don't really apply here.
I am of the opinion that the inbreeding done to the food animals (and things like those silly yapper dogs) could best be undone by ending those lines. It could be argued that continuation of some lines is cruel, as in the case of the arthritic micropigs and the turkeys that have breasts so huge they can hardly walk.
I'm not a vegetarian by any means, but I do respect their perspective. Meat production has by necessity a healthy portion of cruelty, free range or not. You just can't get around it. On the other hand, nature is even crueler than we are, so I don't know that the Universal Vessel of Happiness would get any fuller with nature in charge.
As for the evil animal, those exist. Weasels come to mind immediately...they kill for pleasure, and do it slowly, with a ferocity that is chilling to behold. Maybe I could start a WeaselBurger stand in Venice Beach.
I don't know that cows can really grasp #2...in order to have a shitty life, you need some basis for comparison. Feedlot cows don't know any better, so are most likely content. We are really projecting our expectations onto them.
A lot of 3rd world poor folks seem pretty happy living in situations that would drive me to suicide. Until they get media information that shows how much better other people live. I think that once basic physical needs are covered, any organism will self adjust to be happy in a situation, unless it is being repeatedly told how much that situation sucks.
You are correct that I am in pursuit of option 3, but not in the way most people are. I value time to pursue my own interests over money, so I don't work much. I don't have much, either, but I'm not in debt, have shelter, and enough to eat. It would be nice to have money and stuff, but I'm not going to trade my freedom for it, as I have discovered I am happier now than when I busted ass to bring in a lot of money.
...had always been prone to locking up though. It was a first run unit. MS initially charged me for a repair, and sent me a new one. A couple months later, a check for more than they had charged for the repair showed up in my mailbox. The new machine has been fine for about a year.
I'm willing to cut them some slack on a first productuion run, especially since they took good care of me when I had a problem. I guess I'm just a data point on the other end of the bell curve from the poor guy who went through 7 consoles.
...of all evil in the universe. I knew the liberals hated America, and wanted Osama Bin Ladin to be president, but I hadn't realized that they also wanted bums to be beaten to death. The bastards!
Had the conservative policies been in place, maybe he would have been locked up sooner, but I can guarentee he would have been fucking up kids in Juvie...creating more little monsters out of kids that already had problems. Sooner or later they would have let him out, too. Maybe the life of that bum would have been saved...but only if you lock the kid up forever before he kills anybody. You have to weigh the risk of him doing serious damage against the probablility he's just freaking out on hormones and will straighten out. A potential wasted teenager vs. a potential wasted old bum.
Locking people up with other messed up people doesen't tend to make any of them less messed up...and for the most part you have to let them out someday. Prison does not rehabilitate anybody, or serve as much of a deterrent to crime....all you have to look at is the recividism rates to know that. What comes out is worse than what went in. It's cruel and pointless, and its only done because we as a society can't quite bring ourselves to put down dangerous animals of our own species.
Ideally, we could spend the cash to get our prisons under control, and make a real effort to rehabilitate. If rehabilitation fails, the person is euthanized. Unfortunately, our government is way too incompentant and corrupt to do this in a sane or just manner...so we have...what we have...courtesy of the Prison Guards Union.
...beating doesn't work either. He's a full blown psychopath, and about all you can do is drug him into a stupor or lock him up. We don't know how to fix them. Would probably be kinder (for him AND the other prisoners) to euthanize him. Much better than graduating him from prison in 15 years...he's going to be a real, grown up monster then, with all that lovely prison lore and culture burned into him. You can blame the liberals AND the conservatives for his continued existence. I think he falls under both of their "sacredness of life" category.
Just because it has a humanoid form does not make it human.
...then nobody gets any credit for implementing it.
IT has a lot of backwards incentives like this. For instance, I worked as a freelance application developer for a number of years, and have dozens of custom apps out there that just work. The only time I make any money off them is if something breaks, or they need a modification...which is extremely rare, because apparently I did a pretty good job building the apps.
I can't in good conscience sell a 'service agreeement', as there is really nothing to service. Meanwhile, I have other clients running poorly designed and implemented vertical apps from other vendors, paying them fat monthly service fees because the darn thing breaks all the time, and they know they are screwed without the vendor to kick it back into some semblance of working order. Yet the monthly fee is just low enought that the customer won't pop for a custom app.
Sysadmins have a similar problem...if you aren't running around like the building is on fire, management assumes you don't do anything, and strangles your salary until you quit and they hire some numbnuts at half your pay. This person will look brilliant as they coast on your infrastructure...for a couple years until the whole thing falls apart. By that time they have forgotten who you are or what you did, so nobody ever learns from the debacle. They'll hire another young, bright person for cheap, and repeat the cycle once the system is running optimally again.
If I had a bit of charlatan in me, I could probably make gobs of money. Unfortunately my intellectual gifts came along with an inablity to lie convincingly. Therefore, I've decided to leave IT for the Indians and Chineese, as their limited alternatives make it an attractive career option....it's no longer a viable career in the US. Don't get sucked in. It's a dead end.
and McCain is a crook. Remember the Keating Five? IMHO, he should have gone to prison for that...but it works out karmically because of his POW time. He talks a good game, but he's a slimy criminal backstabber just like most any other suckup politico. He's been alternately sucking up to/backstabbing Mr. Bush throughout his presidency.
If it ends up being McCain vs Hillary, it'll be too close to call...both have shady histories that will come out. Obama looks to be pretty clean, and relatively sane, and would probably trounce whatever republican he ran against.
It is for this reason alone that the Democratic party is incapable of nominating him.
...and how does it boost the weapons production portion of GNP?
Bombs solve all problems, and require very little forethought to use. Everyone is impressed by large explosions...virtually nobody is impressed by iptables rules.
If someone actually thinks that if someone scares them, then they are a terrorist, then I think that the first person needs to toughen up.
I agree...if we weren't such a bunch of pussies, there wouldn't be much reward for terrorist tactics. The whole war on terror thing is embarrassing, futile, and shows the world that the United States will thrash around like a paniced water buffalo at the sound of a firecracker.
The Soviet Union was brought down in large part by scaring them into burning cash on military toys. It cost the United States bajillions of dollars to build the toys that scared the Soviets. Now the same thing is being done to the United States by a bunch of random whackjobs with a few million dollars here and there.
Maybe our empire was done anyway...we are becoming irrational and decadent. Dignity and courage have pretty much left the building.
"By a Frenchman, Bartholdi, who had sold the idea to the Egyptian government to grace the entrance to the Suez Canal. His original vision called for an Arab woman with a veil to hold this torch, and this would serve as a lighthouse at the entrance of the canal. But in 1869, the Egyptian government went bankrupt and Bartholdi was left without a customer for his statue. And in despair he traveled to the United States and he passed Bedlow's Island going in New York Harbor and he thought, that would be a good place to put my statue.
He sold it to the Americans with some French backers, but they insist on replacing the Arab woman with a veil and today you have an American woman holding that torch."
...it was actually a leftover...she was built for Egypt, but Egypt went bankrupt before the statue was completed. She was originally to have a veil.
Also, I think the French helped the USA in the revolutionary war more because they hated the British than had any love for us.
I don't hate the French or anything...but lets not wax too sweetly on them just because some rightwing nutball decides to demonize them. Rightwing nutballs are best ignored. It's the only effective stategy for dealing with them.
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I've been lucky in that the apps I distribute are simple...an exe and a few dlls in a folder. I could see where something with more dependancies could become nightmarish in a large organization. Then, such an organization probably has something link Systems Management Server for pushing things out to the clients.
This undeniably gets more complex for deployment, but as I stated before, deployment is a small portion of the application lifecycle. I would rather have the complexity up front than the whole time people are using the thing.
Client app -> ODBC driver -> SQL server is simpler, and therefor less prone to failure than
Browser x, y, z -> Client Side Scripting -> Web Server -> Server side scripting -> ODBC driver -> SQL server
If something is going to break, I prefer it to happen during deployment, while I am focused on the project. I hate deploying something, moving on to another project, and getting pestered to death by weird little problems that crop up later. It disrupts my train of thought, and ends up being more expensive in the long run.
Oddly enough, web apps also use more bandwidth, even on the rare occasions that a browser can be coerced into caching stuff correctly. At best, you still push a bunch of uncompressed text and formatting tags with every hit, while an SQL response is just the data, usually compressed and decompressed on the fly.
Yes! I must! They have been bad little users, and must submit to their master!
...rebuttals is "most of the time" and "with the following restrictions" and "if I target only IE6".
Which basically means you are tied to a given platform...so cross platform compatibility is out the window. I would argue compatibility with any platform is out the window with those restrictions, given the recent forced IE7 upgrade. Even something as simple as users twiddling their browser setting can break your app.
"Most of the time" and "we think it should work" aren't phrases you want to hear from someone developing a mission critical app for you.
That very link could be to your installer package....and you could build automatic updating into your app. I push update binaries out via a simple SQL query.
Well, if learning a high level language is such a barrier, you should definately stick with your scripting language....but I don't see how you can make an accurate comparison between the two methods if you have only ever used one.
And always I hear about the "ease of deployment". Deployment happens ONCE per client...while the application will be used thousands of times. Even if it were significantly harder to get an exe onto a machine, it is insignificant effort over the lifecycle of the app.
When I first learned how to write web apps, I agreed with your arguments. Multiple projects later, I learned otherwise, the hard way. The modern browser is a hack of a hack of a hack of a hack...and your application ends up being the top hack on the hack stack. Sometimes you need to do it that way, but I think browser apps are over used because people won't take the time to learn to write a thin client app. It really isn't any more difficult, it just requires a bit of willingness to learn, and the results are far superior.
"unless I use a particularly fancy bit of JavaScript, they almost always functionally work the same in multiple browsers. "
But which bits of java script are fancy and which are not? And how often is almost always? It comes back to pushing stuff out on the server and crossing your fingers...and there is plenty of that inherent in development without your two qualifications. I guess I'm kind of anal, but, dammit, when I write a line of code I want it to do the same thing for everybody that runs it. That way I can focus my attention my own boneheaded mistakes.
" I was thinking along the lines of quick fixes that were easily expandable, though, which in my mind is best for web app."
Quick fixes that are easy expanded tend to grow into gigantic morasses of tacked on code with no toplevel design. In 20 years, the poor churl that has to deal with that monster will be damning you to the fiery depths of hell!
...and now we get to do it to THEM!
I don't recall much getting much homework until Jr High though. Now I see itty bitty kids trudging around with backpacks full of books. Maybe "childhood" tends to run together in our minds as we age, so anthing from 6 to 16 is the same.
I do recall running around doing as I pleased after school, as opposed to being herded into some group activity. When I think of being a child, I think of those times as the best.
I don't buy the distribution thing...you have to distribute a link, and you could just as easily distribute a small downloader/installer, and build an auto updater into the app. With a web app, you also download your code with every single page. Graphics. HTML. Javascript. Every single time.
Then there is the joy of browser compatiblility. You start out saying, oh, we will only support browser X...but it never sticks...and your regression testing grows geometrically with each browser and version of browser you support.
If you have a simple form/submit application, or you don't control the workstations you will be deploying the app on, then a web app makes sense. Otherwise, a high level language running directly against an SQL server is the way to go. It's no harder than writing a web app, and you get much better response time and control.
in Santa Maria, CA yesterday. All I could think was "Damn, I wish they had that many WII's"
I pondered a purchase...but the price was prohibitive. Plus, they are kind of cheap looking and I saw no interesting looking games.
Maybe next generation...
I don't think you can really equate species survival with individual happiness. A creature that doesn't exist is neither happy nor unhappy. Same for a creature that never existed. Unless you believe that happiness and pain accumulate in some kind of universal vessels, dead and never born creatures don't really apply here.
I am of the opinion that the inbreeding done to the food animals (and things like those silly yapper dogs) could best be undone by ending those lines. It could be argued that continuation of some lines is cruel, as in the case of the arthritic micropigs and the turkeys that have breasts so huge they can hardly walk.
I'm not a vegetarian by any means, but I do respect their perspective. Meat production has by necessity a healthy portion of cruelty, free range or not. You just can't get around it. On the other hand, nature is even crueler than we are, so I don't know that the Universal Vessel of Happiness would get any fuller with nature in charge.
As for the evil animal, those exist. Weasels come to mind immediately...they kill for pleasure, and do it slowly, with a ferocity that is chilling to behold. Maybe I could start a WeaselBurger stand in Venice Beach.
I don't know that cows can really grasp #2...in order to have a shitty life, you need some basis for comparison. Feedlot cows don't know any better, so are most likely content. We are really projecting our expectations onto them.
A lot of 3rd world poor folks seem pretty happy living in situations that would drive me to suicide. Until they get media information that shows how much better other people live. I think that once basic physical needs are covered, any organism will self adjust to be happy in a situation, unless it is being repeatedly told how much that situation sucks.
You are correct that I am in pursuit of option 3, but not in the way most people are. I value time to pursue my own interests over money, so I don't work much. I don't have much, either, but I'm not in debt, have shelter, and enough to eat. It would be nice to have money and stuff, but I'm not going to trade my freedom for it, as I have discovered I am happier now than when I busted ass to bring in a lot of money.
"Good Life" is a slippery, subjective term.
...had always been prone to locking up though. It was a first run unit. MS initially charged me for a repair, and sent me a new one. A couple months later, a check for more than they had charged for the repair showed up in my mailbox. The new machine has been fine for about a year.
I'm willing to cut them some slack on a first productuion run, especially since they took good care of me when I had a problem. I guess I'm just a data point on the other end of the bell curve from the poor guy who went through 7 consoles.
Though I would argue that it is worse to kill the free range animal because it has more to lose.
...of all evil in the universe. I knew the liberals hated America, and wanted Osama Bin Ladin to be president, but I hadn't realized that they also wanted bums to be beaten to death. The bastards!
Had the conservative policies been in place, maybe he would have been locked up sooner, but I can guarentee he would have been fucking up kids in Juvie...creating more little monsters out of kids that already had problems. Sooner or later they would have let him out, too. Maybe the life of that bum would have been saved...but only if you lock the kid up forever before he kills anybody. You have to weigh the risk of him doing serious damage against the probablility he's just freaking out on hormones and will straighten out. A potential wasted teenager vs. a potential wasted old bum.
Locking people up with other messed up people doesen't tend to make any of them less messed up...and for the most part you have to let them out someday. Prison does not rehabilitate anybody, or serve as much of a deterrent to crime....all you have to look at is the recividism rates to know that. What comes out is worse than what went in. It's cruel and pointless, and its only done because we as a society can't quite bring ourselves to put down dangerous animals of our own species.
Ideally, we could spend the cash to get our prisons under control, and make a real effort to rehabilitate. If rehabilitation fails, the person is euthanized. Unfortunately, our government is way too incompentant and corrupt to do this in a sane or just manner...so we have...what we have...courtesy of the Prison Guards Union.
...beating doesn't work either. He's a full blown psychopath, and about all you can do is drug him into a stupor or lock him up. We don't know how to fix them. Would probably be kinder (for him AND the other prisoners) to euthanize him. Much better than graduating him from prison in 15 years...he's going to be a real, grown up monster then, with all that lovely prison lore and culture burned into him. You can blame the liberals AND the conservatives for his continued existence. I think he falls under both of their "sacredness of life" category.
Just because it has a humanoid form does not make it human.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy
...then nobody gets any credit for implementing it.
:)
IT has a lot of backwards incentives like this. For instance, I worked as a freelance application developer for a number of years, and have dozens of custom apps out there that just work. The only time I make any money off them is if something breaks, or they need a modification...which is extremely rare, because apparently I did a pretty good job building the apps.
I can't in good conscience sell a 'service agreeement', as there is really nothing to service. Meanwhile, I have other clients running poorly designed and implemented vertical apps from other vendors, paying them fat monthly service fees because the darn thing breaks all the time, and they know they are screwed without the vendor to kick it back into some semblance of working order. Yet the monthly fee is just low enought that the customer won't pop for a custom app.
Sysadmins have a similar problem...if you aren't running around like the building is on fire, management assumes you don't do anything, and strangles your salary until you quit and they hire some numbnuts at half your pay. This person will look brilliant as they coast on your infrastructure...for a couple years until the whole thing falls apart. By that time they have forgotten who you are or what you did, so nobody ever learns from the debacle. They'll hire another young, bright person for cheap, and repeat the cycle once the system is running optimally again.
If I had a bit of charlatan in me, I could probably make gobs of money. Unfortunately my intellectual gifts came along with an inablity to lie convincingly. Therefore, I've decided to leave IT for the Indians and Chineese, as their limited alternatives make it an attractive career option....it's no longer a viable career in the US. Don't get sucked in. It's a dead end.
Yes, I'm still bitter...but I'm getting over it
Don't touch it!
and McCain is a crook. Remember the Keating Five? IMHO, he should have gone to prison for that...but it works out karmically because of his POW time. He talks a good game, but he's a slimy criminal backstabber just like most any other suckup politico. He's been alternately sucking up to/backstabbing Mr. Bush throughout his presidency.
If it ends up being McCain vs Hillary, it'll be too close to call...both have shady histories that will come out. Obama looks to be pretty clean, and relatively sane, and would probably trounce whatever republican he ran against.
It is for this reason alone that the Democratic party is incapable of nominating him.
...and how does it boost the weapons production portion of GNP?
Bombs solve all problems, and require very little forethought to use. Everyone is impressed by large explosions...virtually nobody is impressed by iptables rules.
If someone actually thinks that if someone scares them, then they are a terrorist, then I think that the first person needs to toughen up. I agree...if we weren't such a bunch of pussies, there wouldn't be much reward for terrorist tactics. The whole war on terror thing is embarrassing, futile, and shows the world that the United States will thrash around like a paniced water buffalo at the sound of a firecracker. The Soviet Union was brought down in large part by scaring them into burning cash on military toys. It cost the United States bajillions of dollars to build the toys that scared the Soviets. Now the same thing is being done to the United States by a bunch of random whackjobs with a few million dollars here and there. Maybe our empire was done anyway...we are becoming irrational and decadent. Dignity and courage have pretty much left the building.
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript .php?storyId=7070098
"By a Frenchman, Bartholdi, who had sold the idea to the Egyptian government to grace the entrance to the Suez Canal. His original vision called for an Arab woman with a veil to hold this torch, and this would serve as a lighthouse at the entrance of the canal. But in 1869, the Egyptian government went bankrupt and Bartholdi was left without a customer for his statue. And in despair he traveled to the United States and he passed Bedlow's Island going in New York Harbor and he thought, that would be a good place to put my statue.
He sold it to the Americans with some French backers, but they insist on replacing the Arab woman with a veil and today you have an American woman holding that torch."
The more you know....
...it was actually a leftover...she was built for Egypt, but Egypt went bankrupt before the statue was completed. She was originally to have a veil.
Also, I think the French helped the USA in the revolutionary war more because they hated the British than had any love for us.
I don't hate the French or anything...but lets not wax too sweetly on them just because some rightwing nutball decides to demonize them. Rightwing nutballs are best ignored. It's the only effective stategy for dealing with them.
...for thinking you are a terrorist scares somebody else...some innocent bystander? Does that make us a terrorist cell?
And what about The Children?
...so that would make the relegious people terrorists, right?