Older blog entries for slef (starting at number 34)

tk: Scheme is unituitive? No shit... programming isn't exactly a natural activity. I think what you mean is "scheme doesn't look like what I'm used to so I am scared by it," which isn't a terribly good way to approach things.

While I'm ranting about you, I think your "pragmatism is wonderful" piece misses many points. FS "fundamentalists" (which I think is what you call "idealists") may upset some people, but they are necessary. So-called "pragmatists" are the biggest threat that we have to face today: these people would gladly exchange all our progress for a perfectly working closed system. I find it confusing and contradictary that there are so many involved in GNU/Linux development today. My recommendation is "realism", which I will get around to writing about in more detail one day. Summary: you follow the basic ideas of Free Software and help to move it forwards, but accept that we're not there today, so occasional comprimises have to be made by some people. Sometimes even yourself, although it makes you unhappy.

Your other argument is the old chestnut that "free software is dirty code". I think that can be dismissed very quickly, as most software is dirty code, while free software actually has peer pressure to make it tidier. Sometimes people are lax on coding standards, but they soon learn.

Why don't I like the term "OSS"? Firstly, it was cooked up by a monopolist quoted by ESR, as far as I can tell. Secondly, it is a pure "spin" campaign by pragmatists that adds no value. Thirdly, the term "open source" doesn't actually mean what OSI wanted it to mean, while free software is better established and easier to explain in the marketplace. You only have to look at some of Apple's, Microsoft's or Sun's "open source" releases to see that it adds nothing to our value. That fact is largely ignored by both your article and those of the OSI. "Open source" is a corrupted term being used by proprietarists to confuse the issues and must be discarded.

Why should software be free? Simply, we must build on each other's work to have an efficient development model. The method of the past -- ignoring all past work in a field, often by legal compulsion -- just isn't going to allow us to progress at the speed we could. Purely opening the source code relies on developers to follow this because of some altruistic/ socialistic desire to make money for the company that owns the code. There will be some, but I don't find that a particularly fair development model, with the companies getting rich off of the work of non-employees. Free software allows developers to make money from their development work more easily, as they can sell their own work and package it with the work of those who went before. So, I think the question is "why should anyone work on open source?".

Nothing like mentioning that you haven't noticed any PHP advocacy to bring a cohort of foaming proponents forwards.

Quick responses

deekayen: Debian doesn't install sendmail by default. That's a pretty major distribution to overlook. Also, PHP is marketed as simple to learn and good to expose to the outside world from day one. C does neither. Big difference.

Waldo: Yeah, right(!) Then again, I think most of today's sliced bread is over-hyped over-processed pap too. We must have different ideas of what is good.

rasmus: I agree with you that PHP is a triumph of hype over substance, being pushed into places it was never designed for. Scheme has so little syntax that it is actually easier to pick up, but most of the texts currently available are targeted at Comp Sci freshers. That will change. And, for what it's worth, I didn't complain about PHP's lack of lambda, so maybe you want to watch your attributions.

Insecure?

Up until some insecure PHP "k0derz" started answering an allegation I didn't make, I'd only mentioned it in one diary entry here. Now, if I wanted to irritate, I would have said Open Source is dead, long live Free Software.

But I don't, so I shan't.

Followups

async, thanks for the replies. Some of them made me laugh and one of them is actually quite sage. I'll leave you guessing as to which one.

rasmus, huh? No remorse for making it very easy for half-wits to start writing public-facing code without even the most basic study (which I rate alongside leaving the gun cabinet unlocked and the guns loaded while renting the gun room out for an unattended playgroup)? No comment on the linguistic features that are still missing? Just "we have something like lambda now"?

The original bit wasn't directed at PHP, though. I don't recall seeing much PHP advocacy here lately. That said, I see how the harshness of the linked page on PHP (calling it our equivalent of VB) could make it look like that.

I must try to write in a less attention-grabbing manner. That was basically a repost of a rant from elsewhere earlier in the day ;-)

Why do people still publish new HTML 3.2 web sites? It was obsolete four years ago and it's obsolete now.

Why do people keep assuming GNU GPL implies "no commercial programming"?

Why didn't I see how simple web applications could be before?

Why don't I do more useful things and less idle chatter online when I'm not working?

Why do contracts come in the feast-famine cycle at the moment?

Why do people keep using whatever old rubbish was installed on their PC when they bought it, even when I offer to upgrade and support it for free?

Why do people keep advocating the wrong languages in their diaries?

Why?

Hacking is mostly concentrating around scheme not directly related to site-engine just yet, but should be very useful. I've decided that MVC is definitely too slow for a web site and actually factors the code quite badly in many cases. I've implemented something close to PLT Scheme's xexprxml in guile and am using it to hedge my bets. I'm keeping on with the fasttemplate, though, as it's the simplest way to use contributed templates. I'm also considering rewriting my CGI interface to look like PLT's.

The other thing I've got in my head but not yet on disk is the new database query interface. I think it should be possible to wrap everything in this, but I need to get it written out in full.

Finally, I need to package and release my IRC scripts. There are some changes I want to make from my brother's version and I want to do per-channel colouring, as I'm sat in lots of channels with lots of idlers, so I might as well have window-per-server instead of window-per-channel.

Health is apparently bad. I don't exercise as much as I used to and I'm feeling the onset of the cold this year. I need to chill out and do more walking and cycling. Went back to the surgery and was told that my blood pressure is better, but still high. I need to get this under control. With my heart and my teeth, I've just not been taking care recently. Working too little but working too much.

Work is ticking over. I need to do the hacking to give us cool new toys to play with. Hopefully we'll have a new colo box within a couple of weeks and then I can take up the slack capacity with all sorts of fun projects ;-)

I find it somewhat ironic that the term "Open Source", which was created in part to avoid the "freedom"/"cost-free" ambiguity, has developed an ambiguity all of its own with all these various "look but don't touch" source openings. If we're going to have to explain a term to clients, let's explain the older and clearer one.

I know I'm meant to grow out of this, but greve just certified me. Whoo-hoo.

I've been posting in the SourceForge drifting comments today and I must say that the responses of Pat and Chris from VA have done nothing to change my opinion of SF. They are not playing nicely with the others and I desperately hope that we get all alternative hosters and associated sites (eg software directories) involved in supporting a SNG/CoopX XML format as soon as possible. I would love to write a desktop tool to help with the preparation of software release announcements and the like which supports any new XML format for submission to supporting web sites.

Perhaps the reluctance to support it is because SF is VA's current great hope for profit, but if the rest of the world can present them with a universally-recognised format for project information interchange, they'll have to support it. They know which side their bread is buttered.

I'm also disgusted by their "secure because it's obscure" comment to hacker. How dare they try to preserve their market share by spreading FUD. I've seen some of his work and I dare say it's a lot better than the sf code...

I think I should write this at the start of the day, as I never seem to do any hacking in the first hour anyway. So, this is what I did yesterday (Monday).

I made some biiiig changes to the site-engine infrastructure. It's not big and it's not clever, but now it uses one db connection per page and will be easier to move to one per server when we get to running in an app server. The other improvement is a form input validator. Most of the appearences of the "boom screen" (my error handler) are from bad user input, so being able to give them helpful feedback on what's actually wrong is going to be a really good thing. Sadly, this combination means that I need to modify all the data and glue code (Model and Controller code in MVC-speak), but at least it should make it quite a lot simpler.

Frank (as) seems to be back on the site, which is good. He also sounds to be about ready to start Sapphire 2, so I've started throwing my requests in.

My Palm 3 is ill. I blame a hack, but it's eating batteries faster than I can charge them, so I've done a reset and I'm trying not to use it today while I charge a new set, which hurts, especially as I've got a tool to read newsgroups on it. I really must post that on my web site soon.

Other than that, it's work as normal, doing a mix of hacking and trying to track down new project opportunities. Which reminds me: I've some more email to answer...

mwh: I mean it, unless someone has added things like useful interfaces to common widget sets and access to common relational databases to Common Lisp since I last looked. Whatever language you use, you're going to need some "non-standard" libraries to do real work in them. Either that, or it's going to be in constant flux as the things it interfaces to change.

Anyway, I'm happy today. I implemented the cookie handler module I wanted and it was surprisingly easy. It's not sophisticated, but it works. Now, next challenge!

chalst: There are scsh implementations for other schemes, either existing, underway or desired. Guile definitely has scsh features and PLT schemes want them.

Is the lack of a large standard library any big problem? The libraries exist for most things and they usually interface in a similar way or you can wrap them up fairly easily. Guile also seems pretty easy to interface to C, so that's why I think I've seen more libraries using it than other schemes, although PLT offered (and maybe still offer) a guile drop-in replacement. I assume you know about slib, as that could be taken as a "standard library" for many schemes.

The other *languages* you mention are no better for doing practical programming if you just want the standardised subset of them (with the possible exception of python) -- you still have to add things to make them palatable. Lack of a standard library mechanism could be pointed to as a bigger problem, but some of the same concepts seem to be getting acceptance, namely modules with signatures, so maybe we're seeing convergence there, too? slib also has its own ideas on how to solve this, I think.

As to practical? I'm currently having some pain with missing features from scheme when trying to program in less powerful languages. *sigh*

Well, the GA Engine is working and I've set it loose on the cluster. I clearly need to do something to the cluster to let the pure mathematicians soak up idle time, but let the rest of us get on with our work. They've maxed out a couple of nodes right now, so Dr Death will have to pay a visit soon.

The web-site-engine is still waiting for SQL and more docs, but some have started to appear and I'm appealing for beta-testers and more developers to knock down this TODO list.