Friends don't let friends code CGI
Friday, 18. April 2008, 14:11:05
If you need any reason to shape up and deliver systems that make sense - it's 2008 people. CGI died before I started making my living with anything related with the Internet. And that includes jobs I've had before actually writing any systems like that.
Get out of your habbits, sit down on your lazy behind and learn how to do things. Oddly enough - it's actually easier that way. Your website doesn't have problems because of load, users, hardware or anything simmilar - your website has a problem because you did somehting wrong. And that's normal and that's ok, as long as you learn your lesson.
Some people don't seem to be able to learn. Some people prefer to repeat their mistakes with stubborn determination. Some systems are doomed to suffer the consequences of systematic wrong choices. Those systems get no love and those people have no friends. Because friends don't let friends code CGI - friends let friends go ahead and break their head with somehting new and fun, not somehting old and boring.
It's a wide world out there and surprisingly enough there's always at least one more person that has faced the exact same problems. Quite often they've solved them as well - or had ideas how to solve them, or their rants will give you your idea how to solve them. So make friends with those people, so they can keep you away from the web-systems equivalent of drinking and driving. It might seem a good idea to you at the time, but the road is marked with the tombstones of others that had the same bright idea.
Please - take care of your friends.
Get out of your habbits, sit down on your lazy behind and learn how to do things. Oddly enough - it's actually easier that way. Your website doesn't have problems because of load, users, hardware or anything simmilar - your website has a problem because you did somehting wrong. And that's normal and that's ok, as long as you learn your lesson.
Some people don't seem to be able to learn. Some people prefer to repeat their mistakes with stubborn determination. Some systems are doomed to suffer the consequences of systematic wrong choices. Those systems get no love and those people have no friends. Because friends don't let friends code CGI - friends let friends go ahead and break their head with somehting new and fun, not somehting old and boring.
It's a wide world out there and surprisingly enough there's always at least one more person that has faced the exact same problems. Quite often they've solved them as well - or had ideas how to solve them, or their rants will give you your idea how to solve them. So make friends with those people, so they can keep you away from the web-systems equivalent of drinking and driving. It might seem a good idea to you at the time, but the road is marked with the tombstones of others that had the same bright idea.
Please - take care of your friends.
Old and boring has nothing to do with it. You should choose a language or platform because it is the best technology for the job. It doesn't matter if something else is fun or new.
I don't know if CGI is worth a damn or not. I just don't like the logic you provided as a case against it.
By anonymous user, # 18. April 2008, 15:03:56
What are you even proposing instead of 'CGI'? Writing php or perl? both of those are still CGI, just packaged a little differently. To really get away from the CGI model, you need to be looking at the webserver being part of your project, eg. J2EE, Rails, Seaside, etc.
Over those, CGI does have some advantages (well, assuming true CGI, not fastcgi), in that because the processes are transitive, there is less risk of the whole thing falling over due to some unforseen resource leak - yes, I know you should write your code to not leak resources, however, reality doesn't work that way all the time
By anonymous user, # 18. April 2008, 18:00:27
But no, I wasn't reffering to simply "writing in language X", as you said - it's the same story, different packaging. The general mindset of that type of development is what bothers me, not the actual implementation. I should have perhaps said "CGI-style", reffering to specific concepts of code mis-architechture and anti-patterns.
I'm sorry - there's quite a few cases where something is "best" or not for a job like that. You should choose whatever fits you best at the time and gets you to delivery.
And I like, personally, to do things because I'm having fun doing them. Not otherwise.
By TheAtilla, # 20. April 2008, 09:35:18