On Friday, 23 August 2013 at 10:34:08 UTC, Chris wrote:
On Thursday, 22 August 2013 at 20:10:37 UTC, Ramon wrote:
[...]
Probably making myself new enemies I dare to say that gui,
colourful and generally graphics is the area of lowest quality
code. Simplyfying it somewhat and being blunt I'd state:
Chances are that your server will hum along years without
problems. If anything with a gui runs some hours without
crashing and/or filling up stderr, you can consider yourself
lucky.
...
Well, I'm a friend of GUIs simply because with a GUI everyone
can use computers not just tech-savvies, and that's what
computers are there for, aren't they? The problem are not the
GUIs, I think, but the mentality. MVC hardly ever works in real
life due to constraints in framework design or deadlines. Cocoa
if used sensibly is great. But most of the time you don't have
proper MVC because GUI frameworks "seduce" people to do sh*it
like
Oh, I'm not at all anti-GUI "politically". I don't like anything
graphical (incl. X, Photoshop and pretty everything with pixels
and colours) for *pragmatic* reasons.
Actually I *do* see the advantages of a GUI and value them. And I
detest them for being sloppily designed along a set of criteria
DTP guys or artist might consider great but missing simple,
everyday needs. I detest them for usually being implemented in an
unsound way and generously wasting Megabytes and resources and
... (*pushing brake*)
Just look at a modern browser. It happily eats up around 200 -
300 MB Ram and a good part of the CPU's cycles. And that for 1
person.
Now look at a server. It walks and works and dances with 1% to
10% of memory, a fraction of CPU cycles and serves hundreds of
users.
Look at a smartphone ...
It's the "bolt-on" mentality that ruins things, which is partly
due to deadlines. As one guy once said to me (after I had
complained about a quick and dirty implementation) "We have the
choice between doing it right and doing it right NOW!" Ain't no
more to say.
Right you are. But then, this is also true for anyone else.
Pretty every software (in a company) is created with tight
deadlines and "design", priorities, and features dictated by
Marketing and product management (read: marketing/sales).
It's a sad state of affairs but quite probably the most efficient
way to very considerably increase product and code quality within
a very shiort time is to shot some marketing people.(No, Obelix,
you may not kill some graphic artists "while we are at it")
Also, sadly enough, technologies that were never meant to be
for GUIs are being used for GUI design. PHP and JS
(shudder!!!!) Much as I try to keep up a proper MVC pattern,
it's useless. Things will always be dirty, disgusting,
work-arond-y, unsafe, buggy, you name it. And you just stop
giving a sh*t. Ain't no use.
Hey, didn't they tell you? PHP and JS are freedom technologies,
enabling everyone to .... - well, now they actually *do* it and
we know what the Bible was about speaking of hell and unbearable
pain.
Where is Obelix? His attitude ("may I kill some?") might come in
handy ...
And last but not least, a programmer can work for hours on end
implementing a clever algorithm, using unit tests, component
programming etc etc. Nobody will ever notice. If users see a
button that when they press it the screen says "Hello User!",
they are forever happy. What goes on under the hood is "boys
and their toys".
Nope. Unless, of course, Joe and Mary "I'll gladly click on
anything and btw. Mr. Bob is cool" are your reference.
Listen: Your reference is quality, realiability, even elegance
(an excellent indicator), maybe performance and yourself knowing
you did it well. Don't give Joe and Mary any power they wouldn't
know how to use anyway.
And btw: Probably Joe and Mary won't know about or even
understand your work. But they *will* notice that your stuff
works reliably and well.
