[CODE4LIB] Let's go somewhere [was PHP vs. Python...]
Bill, you hit a nail pretty squarely on the head. I believe this decades long fetish with MARC has to go. It was designed to efficiently store data on magtapes and doesn't make any sense in today's world. It's a huge millstone around the neck of Libraryland and it keeps them stuck in that tiny little ghetto. Anything can be a mind-prison, even PHP, Python or Django. They are all arbitrary anyway. And you are correct in pointing out that the natural response of librarians to a problem is to seek consensus in a self-absorbed way. Form committees and all that nonsense which never goes anywhere. They are happy enough going around in circles, like the Nowhere Man making all his nowhere plans for nobody. My hope is that some among us would just undertake these problems ourselves. Outside of the realm of the libraries and the limiting mindsets many of us work in. We've all got ideas. Fire up vi and get busy and make something happen, like a library domain-specific language. Start fresh. There is nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is how the library community goes about such things. Let's go somewhere. Peter Schlumpf www.avantilibrarysystems.com -Original Message- From: Bill Dueber b...@dueber.com Sent: Oct 29, 2010 8:18 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] PHP vs. Python [was: Re: Django] On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Peter Schlumpf pschlu...@earthlink.netwrote: What's wrong with the library world developing its own domain language? EVERYTHING!!! We're already in a world of pain because we have our own data formats and ways of dealing with them, all of which have basically stood idle while 30 years of advances computer science and information architecture have whizzed by us with a giant WHOOSHing sound. Having a bunch of non-experts design and implement a language that's destined from the outset to be stuck in a tiny little ghetto of the programming world is a guaranteed way to live with half- or un-supported code, no decent libraries, and yet another legacy of pain we'd have to support. I'm not picking on programming in particular. It's a dumb-ass move EVERY time a library is presented with a problem for which there are experts and decades of research literature, and it choses to ignore all of that and decide to throw a committee of librarians (or whomever else happens to be in the building at the time) at it based on the vague idea that librarians are just that much smarter (or cheaper) than everyone else (I'm looking at you, usability...) -Bill- -- Bill Dueber Library Systems Programmer University of Michigan Library
Re: [CODE4LIB] Let's go somewhere [was PHP vs. Python...]
What's wrong with the library world developing its own domain language? EVERYTHING!!! We're already in a world of pain because we have our own data formats and ways of dealing with them, all of which have basically stood idle while 30 years of advances computer science and information architecture have whizzed by us with a giant WHOOSHing sound. Having a bunch of non-experts design and implement a language that's destined from the outset to be stuck in a tiny little ghetto of the programming world is a guaranteed way to live with half- or un-supported code, no decent libraries, and yet another legacy of pain we'd have to support. I'm not picking on programming in particular. It's a dumb-ass move EVERY time a library is presented with a problem for which there are experts and decades of research literature, and it choses to ignore all of that and decide to throw a committee of librarians (or whomever else happens to be in the building at the time) at it based on the vague idea that librarians are just that much smarter (or cheaper) than everyone else (I'm looking at you, usability...) then Peter said: My hope is that some among us would just undertake these problems ourselves. Outside of the realm of the libraries and the limiting mindsets many of us work in. We've all got ideas. Fire up vi and get busy and make something happen, like a library domain-specific language. Start fresh. There is nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is how the library community goes about such things. Yes, he hit the nail square on the head. But i think his point is that a huge community of really intelligent people (specifically, not librarians, but generally, not just every isolated pobody with a hair-brain scheme) hit vi and got busy a long time ago. What do you expect to gain from the huge PIA you propose at the cost of sacrificing everything a HUGE community of skilled programmers offers? have fun. -elliot
[CODE4LIB] He's Pro-Django (humour)
He's Pro-Django (sung to the tune of Mr. Bojangles and with abject apologies to Jerry Jeff Walker) I knew a man pro-Django and he proselytized For DRY; It's plugable, reusable, for rapid dev, Give it a try. He praised Python, he praised Python, Which it's written in. He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! I met him in a thread on code4lib, I was So confused. He seemed to me to be a code guru And he was so enthused He talked of code, he talked of code, That's readable (unlike Perl). He said he was pro-Django, and he made his case Throughout the thread. He quoted stats, and better apps, and praised Python, It had appeal. He showed us graphs, he showed us graphs, Took on detractors. He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! He talked to those with coding woes at conferences About the web. He spoke with tears of fifteen years maintaining Perl No commenting at all. Then a Perl web app died, just up and died, After two years he still seethes. He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! He said I code Python at ev'ry chance at hack-a-thons and parse MARC blobs. But most the time I'm working on some Java apps 'Cause I need this job. He sent his post, and as he sent his post I saw someone reply He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! -- Michael (A gray-beard Perl programmer who has resolved to start learning and using Python in 2011) # Michael Doran, Systems Librarian # University of Texas at Arlington # 817-272-5326 office # 817-688-1926 mobile # do...@uta.edu # http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/
Re: [CODE4LIB] He's Pro-Django (humour)
Hooray! On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 5:24 PM, Doran, Michael D do...@uta.edu wrote: He's Pro-Django (sung to the tune of Mr. Bojangles and with abject apologies to Jerry Jeff Walker) I knew a man pro-Django and he proselytized For DRY; It's plugable, reusable, for rapid dev, Give it a try. He praised Python, he praised Python, Which it's written in. He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! I met him in a thread on code4lib, I was So confused. He seemed to me to be a code guru And he was so enthused He talked of code, he talked of code, That's readable (unlike Perl). He said he was pro-Django, and he made his case Throughout the thread. He quoted stats, and better apps, and praised Python, It had appeal. He showed us graphs, he showed us graphs, Took on detractors. He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! He talked to those with coding woes at conferences About the web. He spoke with tears of fifteen years maintaining Perl No commenting at all. Then a Perl web app died, just up and died, After two years he still seethes. He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! He said I code Python at ev'ry chance at hack-a-thons and parse MARC blobs. But most the time I'm working on some Java apps 'Cause I need this job. He sent his post, and as he sent his post I saw someone reply He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! -- Michael (A gray-beard Perl programmer who has resolved to start learning and using Python in 2011) # Michael Doran, Systems Librarian # University of Texas at Arlington # 817-272-5326 office # 817-688-1926 mobile # do...@uta.edu # http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/ -- Luciano Ramalho programador repentista || stand-up programmer Twitter: @luciano
Re: [CODE4LIB] He's Pro-Django (humour)
Bravo!! Well done! I guess I'm not the only one whose mind instantly played that song in his head when first reading about Django. -Original Message- From: Doran, Michael D do...@uta.edu Sent: Oct 30, 2010 2:24 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] He's Pro-Django (humour) He's Pro-Django (sung to the tune of Mr. Bojangles and with abject apologies to Jerry Jeff Walker) I knew a man pro-Django and he proselytized For DRY; It's plugable, reusable, for rapid dev, Give it a try. He praised Python, he praised Python, Which it's written in. He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! I met him in a thread on code4lib, I was So confused. He seemed to me to be a code guru And he was so enthused He talked of code, he talked of code, That's readable (unlike Perl). He said he was pro-Django, and he made his case Throughout the thread. He quoted stats, and better apps, and praised Python, It had appeal. He showed us graphs, he showed us graphs, Took on detractors. He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! He talked to those with coding woes at conferences About the web. He spoke with tears of fifteen years maintaining Perl No commenting at all. Then a Perl web app died, just up and died, After two years he still seethes. He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! He said I code Python at ev'ry chance at hack-a-thons and parse MARC blobs. But most the time I'm working on some Java apps 'Cause I need this job. He sent his post, and as he sent his post I saw someone reply He's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, he's pro-Django, That's his stance! -- Michael (A gray-beard Perl programmer who has resolved to start learning and using Python in 2011) # Michael Doran, Systems Librarian # University of Texas at Arlington # 817-272-5326 office # 817-688-1926 mobile # do...@uta.edu # http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/
