Subject:
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LUGNET's code [was: Random thought of the day]
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.general
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Date:
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Tue, 19 Jul 2005 02:34:09 GMT
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Viewed:
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4041 times
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In lugnet.admin.general, Jan-Albert van Ree wrote:
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Gary Istok wrote:
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Suzanne, after reading your website comments, I can see the strain that
this has had on your personal life.
Now for the tough question.... is Todd willing to give up the code to
Lugnet?
If so, then there may be hope for the future of Lugnet. I have heard that
he
has been very protective of the code. But what good is code if it is no
longer executed?
I see that as probably THE main stumbling block for the future of Lugnet.
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Even with the code, specially if all is in PERL, it’s till a daunting task
to maintain it all. There’s (unfortunately IMHO) a reason pretty much every
website under the moon these days uses some “cheap” CMS system with a
simple webboard instead of the superb NNTP/webpost system LUGNET has (with
even mailing lists tied in)
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yes. this touches on what I meant. And let me say, NNTP and the e-mail lists are
extremely important to me.
Todd was teaching himself Perl as he created LUGNET. This is what I’d call
“personal project driven learning.” Anyone who’s done this knows that your
second project tends to come out better than your first!! (think LEGO
Mindstorms)
For those who don’t know much about Perl, it can be amazingly efficient if
written one way, and if written another, can still accomplish the same things,
but in a less elegant way. So there’s a big spectrum of possibility there. It’s
also worth noting that it’s a very powerful language.
LUGNET was built as a community project, and so grew in an organic way. Features
were added as needed, and per the requests of users. Thus some code may have
been written after some other which ideally would have anticipated it. Todd
hoped to go back and clean things up, while also documenting the code so he
could release the whole bit for free. Unfortunately, he (AFAIK) didn’t even
include comments in there. So, for guys even as smart as DaveE and DanB, they
must poke around a bit to determine how Todd went about this or that.
Another issue is the custom technique Todd used for embedding Perl in HTML. He
wasn’t happy with how others were doing it at the time, so devised his own
thing. PML(?) It’s really cool, but not documented either. Oh. And no CSS or
templates either. And “membership-land” and “newsposting-land” are not connected
how one’d hope.
If someone were to come along and swiftly “re-build” LUGNET message boards using
commonly available CMS tools, the forums’ history of posts would probably be
saved okay, and new posting would continue, but NNTP service would no longer be
supported and the web UI would be less elegant. (....I’m sorry to say that
setting up and using a system like phpBB here would be like trying to make a
pizza in an EZ-bake oven.)
That’s what you meant, right Jan-Albert? ;-)
fyi:
http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/perl/perl-vs-php.html
-Suz
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: LUGNET's code [was: Random thought of the day]
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| (...) The code does take some getting used to. Reading Todd's code was sometimes really amazing - you'd see he was planning for things you know he had no idea he will need one day. And whenever solving a new problem, there were always many hooks to (...) (20 years ago, 19-Jul-05, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: LUGNET's code [was: Random thought of the day]
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| Suz wrote: <SNIP big tech history> (...) Exactly, there are enough sites like that out there, to me it's the NNTP that made it unique. As for Dan's reply, I think he's spot on in several things. However it seems certain pieces of what he lists are (...) (20 years ago, 19-Jul-05, to lugnet.admin.general)
| | | Re: LUGNET's code [was: Random thought of the day]
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| (...) Some parts are excessively documented (like the PML engine) and some parts are poorly documented (like the query engine), and the rest falls somewhere in the middle, mostly being scantily documented. (...) PML is just Perl inside of HTML...so (...) (20 years ago, 19-Jul-05, to lugnet.admin.general, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Random thought of the day
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| (...) Even with the code, specially if all is in PERL, it's till a daunting task to maintain it all. There's (unfortunately IMHO) a reason pretty much every website under the moon these days uses some "cheap" CMS system with a simple webboard (...) (20 years ago, 18-Jul-05, to lugnet.admin.general)
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