AT&T. Your World, Delivered … to the Government … and the MPAA

via All Things Digital

Are we (programmers, developers, engineers) still really having these debates? Give me a break. Java vs. .NET, Java vs. PHP, .NET vs. PHP, now Ruby on Rails vs. PHP.

The other day, Jeremy, sent me these. They’re a series of videos created by Ruby on Rails fans, basically comparing PHP vs. Rails. I watched the videos and told Jeremy something along the lines of, “they’re funny, but they’re not really a valid comparison of the languages.” I’ll be honest, I’m too lazy to look up his initial response, but at some point he told me, “they’re entirely valid comparisons.”

My main point was that if you only compare based on what the video’s show, PHP is capable of doing everything Rails is, although the videos, if you knew nothing about the two languages, would lead you to believe that wasn’t the case. I conceded the point that at least to some extent, Rails would win when it comes to Migrations. But even that, you can mimic in some way for PHP, but it might not be QUITE as easily done. You can, without much trouble in fact, abstract your database from your code, you can do MVC, you can do OOP (in fact PHP5 has greatly extended OOP in PHP).

Then I allowed myself to be pulled into the language vs. language debate (although he will most likely claim that somehow we weren’t having a language vs. language debate). It was all quite silly … on both sides if I’m being entirely honest.

I like the fact that PHP will let me put together a quick script without having to go through MVC/OOP/etc etc if that’s all I want to do. I like that it doesn’t make assumptions about how I’m going to set things up, I also like that if I want to get very structured, or even apply a framework, I can. He believes that the fact that Rails forces (force is my word, he would most likely say it just makes a certain way so easy why would you choose another) you into a structure is a plus for the language/framework. He even went on to say/imply that a language that didn’t force that was inferior.

Some of the silliness came in to play later. For instance I think some of the helpers and whatnot available in Rails, while lowering the entrance barrier for new programmers, also create lazy programmers that don’t actually know how things are actually being done, or why it is being done that way. It was silly because earlier in the discussion I had argued that just because PHP allows sloppy code to be written, doesn’t mean the language is at fault, the programmer is at fault. I still don’t really back off of either of my points, I guess that line is just a little fuzzy for me. But I will admit that I could see how me arguing it one direction in one instance then flipping could be seen as odd.

Then later he made the comment that one of the problems in our discussions was we were comparing PHP (the language) to Rails (a framework). That being silly because everything up to that point, and past that point was and continued to be comparing PHP to Rails. Somewhere along the lines I asked if we were comparing PHP to Ruby or PHP to Ruby on Rails. Because if we were comparing PHP to Ruby, the videos were just nonsense. If we were comparing to Rails then we’d need to introduce Cake or Code Igniter on the PHP side, which would again make the videos invalid. He, in some fashion, agreed. Not sure why we continued from there, but we did.

He argued that the great thing about working within the framework and doing things the easiest/forced way was good for when picking up projects from others. My opinion is, you can easily setup standards and processes to create maintainable code within your organization regardless of your chosen language. So that leaves us with having to deal with picking up projects from outside developers. If you think that enough development firms are going to pick up one language so that when acquiring projects from another development firm that it will be easier because it’s written in your language, you’re living in a dream world.

Somewhere he brought up that he thinks PHP programmers are eventually going to go the way of the mainframe programmer, using COBOL as an example. Honestly, one day, that will probably be the case, but good grief that is a premature statement. There are organizations that would label PHP as cutting edge (I wouldn’t agree, but regardless, me myself and I are not the majority), not to mention the large number of large sites running PHP (Wikipedia, Digg, Facebook just to name a few), and Yahoo’s involvement in the community. I would say PHP is still growing, if not exploding. It’s hardly the time to be making funeral arrangements.

So anyhow, I think I’m done ranting about this, but needed to throw it out there. Just to be clear, I think Ruby and Ruby on Rails are great. I consider them powerful tools for development and have not and will not ever consider someone silly for wanting to learn them, nor will I think that my tool-set (PHP + framework or no framework) are somehow superior. I know the language vs. language debate is not going to end here and now. It never will. But, GAH! I’m sick of it. Use what you want to use. User experience is what ultimately matters and they’re all capable of providing similar if not exactly alike experiences. Anyone who disagrees with that needs to come out of their cave.

I’d write a response if I wasn’t so tired from moving and having a generally bad week.  Maybe later I’ll see if I can put something together.

I live less then a mile from the DMV they did this at (it’s like the main DMV office not one of those service centers). I can’t believe they let them get away with it.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is on a rampage, launching legal attacks against average Americans from coast to coast. After over 18,000 lawsuits and counting against P2P users, file sharing has continued to increase rapidly. Meanwhile, music fans, like 12 year-old Brianna LaHara, college student Cassi Hunt, and parent of five Cecilia Gonzalez, are being forced to pay thousands of dollars they do not have to settle RIAA-member lawsuits, and many other innocent individuals are being caught in the crossfire.

This irrational crusade is not generating a single penny for the artists that the RIAA claims to protect. The RIAA should be working to create a rational, legal means by which its customers can take advantage of file sharing technology and pay a fair price for the music they love. With artists increasingly turning against the lawsuits, momentum may be shifting in favor of a better way forward.

Copyright law shouldn’t make criminals out of more than 60 million Americans ÇƒÓ tell Congress that it’s time to stop the madness!

We have over 75,000 signatures so far - this is amazing! If we can get 100,000 signatures, we will deliver the petition to the Senate and House Commerce and Judiciary Commitees.

Click here to sign the petition.

merely having a ’shared files folder’ on one’s computer, and thereby ‘making files available for distribution’, is in and of itself a “distribution” and a copyright infringement

[Source Article]

OH … MY … GOD. They have flipped their lid to put it politely. They basically just said that all computer networks, including the internet, are illegal. When are these insane accusations and pathetic cases goint to stop being waged. What is it going to take to make the Recording and Movie industries stop treating their very customers as criminals. *sigh*

Now, I’m willing to cut them a little slack when having to answer non-paying customers support emails. I mean, if the user is getting a free ride, they shouldn’t be complaining much unless a promised feature does not work as designed. But even there, 37Signals doesn’t say it’s going to support free accounts (and I can tell you from personal experience that as a free user I’ve never received a response to a support request even if it was regarding broken behavior in one of their products).

Here is an example of one of the support requests that evidently they weren’t impressed by:

Very long winded
When uploading a file attached to a message shouldn’t you be able to place the file into a category as you can in file management. At the moment it means you have to go into file management after posting the message and file and then edit the file into the category - very long winded.

The horror! How dare a user suggest they make their product more efficient. I don’t see how they could possibly be lumping this request in with the “bad” requests they receive. I’ve been on the receiving end of a helpdesk before and honestly if this was the worst (or even typical) I ever received, I would have been a happy man. Personally my guess is the only reason this put their panties in a bunch was because a user was suggesting that they weren’t being efficient enough, and from what I’ve seen probably generated a “pfft, they think they know how to do this better then us?” response (although luckily they were smart enough not to type that).

37Signals … you’re playing in a land of developers, get used to it. Many of us could create the exact same products you’re making, and do it just as well. What is currently setting you ahead of the pack is your ability to come up with the idea to begin with NOT your ability to build the product or even the decisions to include or exclude particular features.

Honestly, and here comes some full disclosure for you. I’m a former paying customer for their Backpack service. After a bit of a blow-up in their forums, I decided to cancel my subscription and move on mostly due to the condescending nature of their staff. It’s very evident in many of their blog and forum posts that they think they know what we need better then we do. As a developer I’ve been guilty of this before, but thank goodness someone usually slapped me until I came out of it.

Tangent: I was once accused in their forums (not by the staff, but by another user of the service) of having “read too many books on customer worshipping.” When I read that post I seriously thought I must have been kidnapped and taken off to la-la land. What business can afford NOT to worship their customers? I mean sure, if they ask you to do something that is just totally not what you do that’s one thing (like asking McDonald’s to wash your car), but otherwise, you should always treat your customers courteously, listen to all they have to say, and do your best to meet their needs.

Another tangent: Anyone watch Top Chef? 37Signals is to the web community what Stephen is to the other chef’s on that show.

Anyhow, I’ll wrap it up. I’m just disappointed by them.

UPDATE: Well, after Jason Fried decided to comment on this entry, I thought I’d just look around on technorati some and see if maybe I had been taking crazy pills and the post I referenced above by 37Signals is, in fact, not so bad. But, after a simple search on technorati, I realized that I am not the only one that thinks they went too far.

UPDATE 2: My friend Jeremy decided to weigh in a little bit regarding this post of mine, and I particularly like this comment of his:

It’s said that on the internet, nobody knows you’re an asshole, unless you build your business around being one.

If you ask me … 37Signals has been walking really close to the line for awhile now and finally made the mistake of stepping over that line.

UPDATE 3: Yeah, I admit, I’m putting in a fair amount of effort to following this (now slowly) evolving story, but I just found this post over at the Central Desktop Blog about it. I found a point of theirs particularly interesting:

It was interesting at how 37 Signal’s defense was to, essentially, argue semantically about what words were actually written and said as opposed to addressing what the content of the post implied or insinuated.

This is exactly what they were doing and there’s even a shining example down in the comments on this post (see comment from Jason Fried). I’m also glad that they took the time to dig through the 158 comments on the post by 37Signals and found this:

“We’re not ‘ridiculing’ anybody. And if you’re embarrassed at seeing your support message posted publicly than maybe that’s a sign that you should rephrase your support message.”

That comment is just … appalling to hear from a company. The post over at Central Desktop Blog finishes with:

Shame on you 37 Signals. How dare you bite the very hand that feeds you?

This is almost exactly what I was shamed out of their forums for stating (although I had used different words). I’m just so glad to hear I’m evidently not taking crazy pills and some other folks find this type of behavior by a company to be unsavory. If you’ve been following this story, I’d definitely recommend taking the time to read their post.

This along with the “Oops … we were unable to perform the operation” or whatever their cute-sie error message is has become all too common for the past week to week and a half.

It hasn’t come to it yet, but at the current rate of degradation in service, it won’t take long for GMail to be rendered useless for me. I’ve had to go back on my swearing off of IM clients. For now I’m using Meebo (neat IM client by the way) when the GTalk service is failing through GMail for me (oddly, I can still get on GTalk through Meebo’s jabber service just fine).

And for the record, I’ve been having these problems on multiple computers that operate on multiple networks. So I think it’s pretty safe to assume that it is particular to either the entire GMail+GTalk service or my account and not to my computer or my connection.

UPDATE: While trying to get things back up with chat in GMail, I got this. Hmm, maybe it’s time to try out Thunderbird again…

UPDATE: Now I’m really getting pissed. GMail is taking its sweet time in delivering email to me apparently. I’m receiving emails hours after they were originally sent. I’m pretty close to going back to using my own server for email. This kind of unreliability isn’t worth it.

UPDATE: Now a friend has received a “this message has been delayed” response when trying to send me an email. I’ve moved my email account now, so shouldn’t be an issue going forward. Bah, too bad, I really liked gmail, but I can’t deal with this.