Clic!Dev, ‘Tate, and many more projects!

Oh, no. Again, someone had something to say about open-source and again it seems that they only had a giant brush for the job.
OK, let’s go. Point by point. Note that I choose to also discuss frameworks despite Myle’s disclaimer, since their redeeming value seems to be that they comes as black boxes, therefore “you can still control your code.” Allow me to mention that you can do more than this. I would like, however, to apologize in advance for not coming up with more examples but I have to work on ClicDev…

“Unless your developers has[sic] spent A LOT of time working with the application, they aren’t going to know the code”

Well, true. There is always a learning curve involved. But this does not apply to open-source alone. Buy a commercial library and you will have to learn its ins and outs as well.

“Making core changes to a system is just asking for trouble”

Ok, so not about open-source either. Here is what I do not understand: if you pick a package for the task and end up modifying its core, are you sure that you picked wisely?

“Skinning pre-built applications sucks. Trying to modify some else’s CSS is worse than someone else PHP”

Obviously, I am not familiar with Myle’s past project experience, but this is where good practices usually save the day. Do not pick a package if their code is, indeed, “spaghetti”-style. Professionals - keep - their - stylesheets - clean.
Same goes for PHP, of course. Yes, the language is simple enough that it is very easy to make a mess of it. Just be picky when selecting a framework or an application. Price cannot be the only factor.

“Open source developers are very narrow minded […] you end up with a application that has everything that opens and shuts, but that doesn’t really open or shut very well.”

Well, thanks
What’s that about not doing the job very well? Are you referring to Linux, Apache, Drupal, Darwin or any other clunky loser that “doesn’t really work?”

“As soon as you modify software, forget about updating it.”

Well, I see two possible scenario here:
1. You download some open-source piece of software. You modify it and submit your modifications back to the open-source community and your code is integrated. No problem, right?
2. Either your submission is rejected or you prefer to keep your code closed. In that case, surely you will have started by preserving all the original code using a source control tool such as SVN, Perforce, GIT, etc. Any modification you make to that code is now part of a changelist. When you upgrade to a new version of the original open-source program, you easily reconcile your code with it using branch integration, right?

“I am yet to see a decent module system for anything but the most basic feature.”

And I do not know where to begin with this one. Maybe with some complex Wordpress modules that require no code modification, since you mention it?
Or the somewhat similar drop-ins system used by nextBBS?

“The documentation will never be up to date.”

I guess you were not impressed by Code Igniter, Drupal or Struts? (I pick whatever code I think of arbitrarily here… )

“Open source apps are hacked not engineered.”

Well, I will not even bother adding new links here. Just revisit some of the links I already posted. Where on earth do you get that kind of idea?

“If the project doesn’t have a clear leader who has a vision and is ruthless in implementing it, you are going to end up with a mess.”

Hey! I kind of agree with you - as one can find out reading some of my older posts. I do not know about “ruthless” but clear direction is key. However, why, again, misrepresent OSS this way? Do you have any statistics on the number of projects that one would seriously consider using for in-house development? Can you tell me, of those, which ones are purely “designed by committee” and which ones have clear leadership? I would wager that the latter are predominant - again, read my old posts, I already commented on failed “design by committee” projects.

“Support. You don’t get any.”

Again: What?
No support, as in “no support when using ExtJS?” Or “no support when deploying Drupal?”

If anyone wants to add something in the comments, I will gladly incorporate it in this post.

OK. Isn’t anyone going to put a bit of perspective on he whole Sarah Lacy thing?
Look, guys. Drop it. Seriously.

There isn’t a “Lacygate”. Stop postfixing everything you do not like with “-gate”. Now, Allen Stern wants Lacy to apologize.
I, too, was in the room, Allen - mind if I call you Allen?. And I did not walk out of the whole thing red in the face, looking for justice.
I merely felt that there was some joke between Lacy and Zuckerberg and I was not in on the joke. That’s OK, I thought. I’ll get some value from the interview as they move on. Granted, that never happened. Now, I will never be able to tell whether that didn’t happen because this was one of those “zero calories” interviews or because of the heckling.

I do not remember the exact timeline but I am fairly certain that she did not “run to Twitter” to tell us to screw off. I actually believe that writing this presupposes a cognizance of Twitter that she did not, at the time, master.
There is not doubt she reacted badly, but I find it a bit odd, to claim to have lived through this thing as a wronged customer. It was clearly announced that this was *not* going to be a groundbreaking event and, well, it wasn’t. I went to SXSW to learn things and network with other professionals - and party, but don’t tell my boss. Mission accomplished. Everything else should be treated like small potatoes. Because it is. Or it should be.

I uploaded a few photos to Flickr…click below to view my ‘SXSW 2008′ set.

Leaving tomorrow for Austin, TX. I will be SXSW’ing thru Wednesday 12th.
If you wish to get together for a real-life chat or what not, send me an email: sxsw2008 [at] voilaweb [dot] com

Cheers!

It is something that I had to think about in my day job, because my team is migrating to PHP for web development and I believe that we simply do not have enough time for them to learn JavaScript’s intricacies, I needed to be the one person who would have to wrestle JavaScript when problems happened. I therefore needed a way to insulate them from the gory details, which is why I created ExtPHP.
As you may have guessed from subtle hints, such as this entry’s 12-feet tall header, ExtPHP creates a PHP wrapper for ExtJS.

I noticed, at dzone.com, that the last time someone created a wrapper for JavaScript, many readers complained about how intrusive his approach was. Well, be assured that ExtPHP does not foil ExtJS’ non-intrusive take. Of course, with ExtJS itself, it’s up to the developer to decide what kind of style they wish to adopt, and ExtPHP follows suit.

I guess the introduction I wrote in ExtPHP’s documentation explains fairly clearly what the idea is: “ExtPHP is a wrapper for ExtJS. This is version 0.1, so I expect that a lot of things can be improved upon and your feedback is greatly appreciated. ExtPHP can be used to write both intrusive and non-intrusive Javascript, just like ExtJS itself. Use it responsibly. One of the many advantages of this design is that unknown/misspelled/misused methods are detected in your PHP editor rather than forcing you to debug your JavaScript code in your web browser. ”

Documentation? Indeed, I took some time to write a much-needed PDF document. Let me know how I can improve it, I am sure that you will find it lacking - because it is.

Anyway, I am releasing this as a “Technology Preview” and I will greatly appreciate your help beta-testing it.

Cheers.

Yup. I am completely, arbitrarily, crowning them “best service” in my book.
So, you may ask, what amazing feature are they offering, thus justifying my edict?
After all, my previous favourites were xdrive.com and box.com, both piling on announcements of sexy new features, such as an AIR desktop or widgets.
Well, here it is, in all its glory: more free storage space. That’s all. Where xdrive offers 5GB, they, no-doubt, did the math and realized that with storage space becoming an ultra-cheap commodity, they could give their users 50GB free.
So, that’s it. The killer feature: more.
Oh, and, icing on the cake, their web interface doesn’t suck. A mandatory requirement that some free providers seem to forget.
OK, now I’ve listed the whole package.

Of course there are some concerns that I hope they address soon: their “about us” page is quite laconic and they do not seem, like many other Web2.0 outfits, to have thought of a business plan yet. Well, their site offers ads for paid storage services -that so happen not to be theirs. Weird.