Questions:Aregularjoe
Hello all. As of late, I have been getting very disillusioned with software. Where the hell is it going? It seems to be straying farther and farther away from the concepts of simplicity and minimalism. Every time a new app comes out it makes things easier by adding layers of complexity in the background. After being a code hack for the last ten years of my life specializing in database technology and moving onto web apps, I feel like I am becoming a non-believer.
Object oriented programming taught us that you don't need to code every class yourself. Open source taught us that you don't need to code every app yourself. But how much closer are we to simplicity.
Every application needs redundancy just as much as functionality. Who wants to rely on an app that can disappear in a second? So the world answers back with backup software and additional layers of complexity. I was blown away when and engineering buddy told me years ago about rsync. What the hell? Later I learned about LDAP. Why the heck doesn't every app authenticate against an LDAP? Why is there not an LDAP integrated into every webserver if webapps are the future? We are now several years from those revelations and we still are turning one trick ponies into three trick ponies instead of picking best of bread and teaching them to pull as a coherent team of horses.
I used have this far out dream of integrating Vtiger, MediaWiki, phpBB, Knowledge Tree and dotProject. I wanted to have a suite of apps that meet defined business needs that I could rev or replace independently based on scope and scale of the need.
After spending a year of my live deep into SugarCRM and now Vtiger, I think people start with a pure idea and direction but lose it once they start thinking, "Gee we can do this too, if we add in this!" Now these tools have entity relationships defined on the application level instead of database level, losing all the native features of indexing and relationships that exist on the database layer.
I am going to spend some time going back to basics if I am going to spend anymore time in the app development world instead of the organizational consulting realm. What the heck does an OS have to offer? What about a web server and a database? I want to know what problems these raw components can solve with a little bit of organization and the least amount of code.
If anyone has any input or references to read I would appreciate it. Otherwise I am just going to sit here in the closet, in the dark, pulling my hair out cursing my parents for buying that damn 286 clone.
Aregularjoe 07:06, 7 Feb 2007 (NZST)
