Open Stack

I was just going to let this thread die, because it's clear that we're 
just approaching this from different philosophical viewpoints, and I 
think that we need _both_ viewpoints expressed in the community. Trying 
to change each other's mind would be as pointless as it is futile ;)

That said, it turns out there is still one point that I need to make...

On 26/03/14 05:54, Stan Lagun wrote:
>         And let users build environments of any
>         complexity from small components while providing reasonable
>         default so
>         that one-click deployment would also be possible. And such
>         system to be
>         useful the design process need to be guided and driven by UI. System
>         must know what combination of components are possible and what
>         are not
>         and not let user create Microsoft IIS hosted on Fedora.
>
>
>     If I may go all editorial on you again, this sounds like the same
>     thing we've been hearing since the 1970s: "When everything is object
>     oriented, non-technical users will be able to program just by
>     plugging together existing chunks of code." Except it hasn't ever
>     worked. 35+ years. No results.
>
>
> Agree. I know it sounds like marketing bullshit. I never believed myself
> this would work for programming. It never worked because OOP approach
> doesn't save you from writing code.

This is unfair to marketing.

It never worked because writing the perfect object that could be used in 
every conceivable situation is considerably more expensive and requires 
*more* understanding of how it works than writing/adapting the one you 
need for each given situation.

I submit that the exact same situation is the case here.

What is really missing from this conversation is a detailed analysis of 
who exactly is going to develop and use these applications, and their 
economic incentives for doing so. (If this has happened, I didn't see it 
in this thread.) Or, in other words, marketing.

Basically you're saying that the developer is providing a pre-packaged 
application that has to work in any conceivable environment, where its 
actual components are not known to the developer. The testing burden of 
that is enormous - O(2^n) in the number of options - while the benefit 
over bundling the dependencies is at best incremental, even ignoring the 
downside that the application will probably be broken for most users. If 
I were a developer, I just don't understand why I would sign up for this.


I shall now return to making calculators for people who are currently 
counting on their fingers :)

cheers,
Zane.