‘That application is so stupid’

Just as Patrick Lightbody recants his ill-guided charge, Geert Bevin — also involved with a Java web-framework, this time RIFE — picks up the torch and tries his best to scorch the earth anew:

About tadalist, that application is so stupid that I'm wondering how the hell it could have taken him 600 lines to write it. Also, the hugely hiped 'killer application' of RoR, Basecamp, is a total fraud imho. The screenshots look nice, and are nicely presented. So I did make an account and started using it. And honestly, everything they say is true, it sets itself apart in simplicity. Not difficult to write that in a few weeks.

It's incredible how much vile bile that lies within the Java community. I'm beginning to understand why many of the defectors I've talked to are so happy about the Ruby and Rails communities. Oh well, back to the stupid, fraud applications.

I stand by my statement, if RoR is so incredibly wonderful as the hype positions it, I don't see why it took 600 lines of Ruby (a terde language) code to write Tadalist. I started writing it myself with some other technologies to count lines too (let's play the linecount game). We'll see how it goes.
And as far as Basecamp goes, I describe my real experience when I was impressed by the Ruby on Rails videos. I was really hugely disappointed by Basecamp. Sorry for you that honest criticism on these hyped wonder applications look like bile to you, to me it looks like you just can't stand someone not shouting along in the same direction.

> It's incredible how much vile bile that lies within the Java community.

Wow. This statement is quite offensive.

I understand how someone can get personal about his project, but you really need to handle criticism - beeing justified or not - better and not flip out because of every post someone does in their personal blog.

You can shout that Basecamp it a fraud as much as you like. Fact of the matter is that a lot of people love it and it received glaring reviews. So yes, it is hyped, rails is hyped. You know why they're hyped? Because people love them. Get over it.

I totally agree with Swizzle.

You are being quite offensive.

I think that would be better focus on Rails than answering every contrary thinking about Rails or Ruby.

I think geert's comment on stupidity may be quite offensive too, but maybe there is an overreaction .

Spread the meme that we're so happy using our tools that we don't feel the hasrshness in critics :)

Criticism is a great gift when delivered with the intention of improvement and moving forward. Name calling and fraud accusations are just insults. I've found that insults loose their sting when exposed widely enough in order to reflect back on the sender.

And regarding the Java community. The "vile bile" that lies within is thankfully not a reflection of the Java community at large. Or even majority. Lots of clever people around, lots of meaningful criticism and push-back available.

But it's certainly the home of a minority of people for whom insults seems to be an acceptable way of dealing with change. I think that's a sad deficiency. Perhaps enviable when you reach the mass adoption of Java, but I would at least try to distance me from the senders if I was part of that community — instead of berating the victims for taking note.

>You really need to handle criticism

"that application is so stupid" and "Basecamp, is a total fraud imho", that's not criticism , that's offensive flaming.

I never saw David being offensive at all, even when he doesn't like something. Those guys are.

Is java is bad for your karma? ;)

Oops.

You should read:
Is java bad for your karma? ;)

I called nobody names.
Get over it, a basic todo list is a stupid application. There's not much intellect needed to come with, nor to implement it. If you find it clever, then I'm sorry for you.
Maybe many people like basecamp. But to me, as someone that used the screenshots as a reference to show the direction in which I wanted one of our own apps to go, trying it out made me feel like being tricked by clever marketing ... and *imho* it felt like a fraud. Sorry to make you feel incomfortable to not rave about it like all the others, deal with it. I didn't like it.

... and don't rip a couple of words out of context, calling it offensive flaming and taking it personal. If you don't want to have people not chanting along with you, don't plaster its greatness all over the web.

okay. to set a couple of things straight:

1) if you talk or judge things, please at least get some information about it and give it a try. obviously you didn't check out tada and basecamp well enough. to still pass such quick judgement on is simply childish. did you ever use ruby at all?

to say that tada is a basic todo list app is pretty funny. shows that you have no idea what you are talking about. you obviously didn't check it out well enough.

to be honest i really think i know pretty well what kind of guy you are. the more complex a app is the cooler it is for you. more features are better. if that's your opinion, whatever. but just please leave us out of that crap. i saw enough mp3 players which have 324234 features, but still don't do their core functionally well enough.

2) i'm really excited to see your java todo app writtin with not more than 1000 lines of code. when will it be ready? i mean, after all such stupid todo-list apps are so easy to do, no? =)

Amazing ... that's all I can say. Learn to read, I tried them both, liked Basecamp before trying it, and didn't like it afterwards. Now, please tell me where I said something specifically about RoR, apart from the positive remark about Active Record and the fact that Ruby inside html doesn't impress me much.
And you're the one slandering, pretending to know which person I am. What exactly did you personally try of my work to back up those statements?

David, perhaps you could insert a few more facts into the discussion, to help take it out of the realm of emotion?

Like the application took 500 lines, but how long did it take to build? And what are the features, exactly?

Once we have that, then I would say it would be valid to suggest that Geert and Patrick implement the same thing, and we can compare lines and time.

I would personally expect the "3 times the lines, 3 times the time" general result at http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/~prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf to hold true, but I'd love to see that expectation tested.

Learn to read, I tried them both, liked Basecamp before trying it, and didn't like it afterwards.

Perhaps the inherent flaw in your blog post is that you are making statements such as Basecamp is "a total fraud" and Tadalist is "so stupid that I'm wondering how the hell it could have taken him 600 lines to write it" which you fail to qualify with any presentation of facts. Tell us what is stupid about tadalist? Tell us what is a "fraud" about Basecamp? What were these supposed errors you encountered? Why were you disappointed? What did you expect, and which expectations specifically were not met when you actually tried it as opposed to the presentation you watched?

As a heads up, when you make patently offensive remarks, it's generally a good idea to back those up, otherwise all you are doing is spewing vitriolic trash.

There is no flaw in my blog post. I DIDN'T LIKE BASECAMP and was disappointed, after trying for a while. I found that is was too limited for my project management needs. When people shout that they love it, do you ask them for detailed analysis? I don't think so.
And Tada is stupid in a way that it's trivial and not particularly clever. If you do think it is, then I guess this discussion is over and leave you marveling at it's cleverness and the 'amazing' technology behind it.

I guess the reason there is so much vile and hatred in the Java community is caused by them being exposed to Java all day, having to medle with configuration files, XML and what not, just to put together a simple application...I'd really like to have the balls to get out of my lame Java job in a corporate, FEAR-driven environment, and work for myself with Ruby and Rails, even when everyone around me call it a pipe-dream...I can't stand Java anymore...Maybe that is even the reason I am considering a field change...Get out of software development altogether...Sigh...

Anyone who takes someone else's work and calls it stupid without any solid criticism is not worth listening to. Why is he spending so much time here defending his rediculous statements anyway? Why does he care that much?

He's hasn't listed a single concrete criticism other than childish remarks. I'd like to hear some actual measurable or testable negative criticisms. At least that way they could be rebutted/fixed/addressed. Who benefits otherwise?

Saying something is "stupid" says a lot more about the speaker than the thing he is speaking about.

"Maybe many people like basecamp. But to me, as someone that used the screenshots as a reference to show the direction in which I wanted one of our own apps to go, trying it out made me feel like being tricked by clever marketing ... "

So when your customers and users seemed to like it, and wanted something like it, you assumed they also "felt tricked?"

This is one of the primary failings of software builders: when customers are able to articulate what they want and need, the builders assume they are naive and misinformed, and that fewer, better functions cannot possibly more desirable than more, obscure ones.

Hello Geert, do you even have a tadalist account? I don't think you do or you would know that tadalist is made up of:

- user management
- rss feeds
- icons that change shape with respect to the size of the todo list
- allowing people to share their lists with a select, invited group of people
- allowing people to share their lists with the general public
- heavy use of XMLHttpRequest for the UI

I have $50 that says you can't fit all of that in 600 lines of Java code, and still have an intuitive interface to show for it.

Geert, you said:

"What is important (to me) is that I will be able to maintain that application for years and years"

It would seem like you have no experience with Ruby at all. You seem to be judging it very much like Perl is judged, as quick, but unmaintainable. This is not the case with Ruby. Reading Ruby is no more difficult than reading a novel.

return true unless username == "Geert"

Ruby gets at the heart of maintainable code. You generally only have to look at the documentation once in order to learn a library by heart. Rails takes the simplicity of Ruby even further by having a place for every piece... a.k.a. a fully stacked framework. Please take a look at a Rails app that I created http://s5presents.com/s5presents-1.0.tgz for an example.

One of the only solid criticisms that I have heard from you is that you don't like having ruby code in a template. If you knew ruby, you would know that this is not a major issue since this is very readable:

A day in the month is

However, even though it is simple, maybe you still don't like it. That's fine, the Rails framework doesn't compel you to use the eRuby (ruby within HTML) templating system. In fact, there are templating systems much like JSP for Ruby to make people like you happy.

The main reason most programmers want templating systems to be a washed down version of a programming language is to remove the logic from the presentation. However, as David pointed out in one of his great presentations, the only reason there is any urge to put logic in a template is because you can't figure out where to put the logic otherwise. This is not the case with Rails. Figuring out where to put logic is a very simple task, and it takes no more work to put it where it belongs than within the templates. As a matter of fact, in Rails, it is harder to put logic in the template since you have to add signs.

I bet you didn't know this Geert. Nor did you care to take the time to learn these interesting facts. These are some of the reasons that within 5 months of development, Rails has more than 10,000 people using it, many of them coming from Java and loving it.

Woops, the code didn't show up. The phrase "A day in the month is" should look like this:

<% for day in month %>
A day in the month is <%= day %>
<% end %>

Dear Geert, what exactly is your experience with web development anyhow? From all I can tell from your site (http://www.uwyn.com/), you have done a C++ console development library, a software development testing framework, a Javascript library for creating dynamic designs, a desktop file manager, and contributed to Gentoo. All this is great, but what do you have to show for web development? Or maybe you are just all talk (why wouldn't I be surprised?).

Of course you can chose not to use the eRuby templating system, just as I can write a Java app and not chose to use one library or another. You can even chose not to use Java and all and write parts of the logic in .... Python or ... Ruby and run it on the JVM.
And no I didn't know the details about Rails' template system, nor did I write any detailed criticism against Rails, I just said that what I saw didn't impress me. Jezus, I wrote that as one sentence in a reply to a post that compared languages on line count and that irritated me ... get a life.
Btw, I don't like JSP either.

"Anyone who takes someone else's work and calls it stupid without any solid criticism is not worth listening to."
I said the application was stupid. Certainly stupid if you compare its linecount to the configuration of complex J2EE apps. I never said that the work performed was stupid or implied that the author of it was stupid or ... any other words you want to try to put into my mouth.

"Why is he spending so much time here defending his rediculous statements anyway? Why does he care that much?"
Because I had to wait 5 hours today without anything to do and it killed time nicely to post here through my mobile.

Also Geert, I saw before you deleted the comment on your own blog, that you were arguing that database back-ends are a stupid design for web development. How brilliant, how insightful. If only Google, Yahoo, Apple, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Ebay, PayPal, Sun, Livejournal, the US Government etc. etc. would get with the times and stop using that dataed technology we call a database for web development. Anyone who argues this is out of touch with the web development and does not deserve to be listened to... unless you have something to show for it. Do you? Put your source code where you mouth.

"Hello Geert, do you even have a tadalist account? I don't think you do or you would know that tadalist is made up of:"
Yes I have a tadalist account and yes I knew these features. It's still a todo list.

Sorry if I deleted your comment by accident, getting 30+ comment spams / hours at the moment doesn't solve much. I need to change blog apps, but haven't had time yet. Please post your comment again, I didn't mean to delete it.

Man, I never said that database back-ends are a stupid design for web development. I said:
"driving a web application from a database structure is totally backwards" and
"you should use domain objects with appropriate meta-data"

Of course all this is stored in a database ... seesh.

You didn't delete my comment, you deleted your own were you were arguing against databases as a viable backend for web development.

"Dear Geert, what exactly is your experience with web development anyhow?"
Just read the blurp on the homepage, it has references to some things.

huh, I deleted non of my own comments

"So when your customers and users seemed to like it, and wanted something like it, you assumed they also "felt tricked?""

Weird, I don't see where I ever said anything about customers and users. Stop making things up.

Often people who attack without criticism, like Geert, do so out of inner pain. Geert created a Java web framework called RIFE. I have no idea what kind of quality it is, but when you google RIFE java, the first reference is:

http://keithdevens.com/weblog/archive/2004/Sep/29/RIFE

"RIFE (via Erik) is a Java web application server. I was going to say negative things, but I'll abstain before I look more deeply into it. In the Java world, maybe it is better than everything else out there... who knows. Rails probably beats the pants off it."

That has got to hurt, but be a man. Don't take out your frustration on the Rails community.

Hey Lucas, did you read the comments to that post?

... and I have nothing against the Rails community. What did I ever say against Rails? I merely said that I didn't like the templating method I saw and that I thought that Active Records was interesting. You guys need to get out and stop making things up and taking everything personally.

Thanks Lucas. It helps to see where Geert is coming from.

Thanks to Geert also for letting us know what you think about the rails community and its projects.

I'd say this should conclude this exchange

"RIFE (via Erik) is a Java web application server. I was going to say negative things, but I'll abstain before I look more deeply into it. In the Java world, maybe it is better than everything else out there... who knows. Rails probably beats the pants off it."
That says more about Keith than about me, he's clearly heavily biased and that's his right, and he never even looked at RIFE. If I were anything like you guys I would have been all over him calling it slander, etc etc ... but I didn't. I didn't even mind. Just asked a long time afterwards if he even took the time to look and he admits he never did ... funny no? And you say that he represents the Rails community, make your own conclusions ...

well, i'm still exited to see your tada-in-java-clone =)

when will it be ready? i mean, it's so simple and stupid. easy to do, no?

You'll see it, when I have a moment to spare. It wont take long, but I'm already on a tight schedule. I expect to be able to free a day or so in the coming 2 weeks.

Man, what's going on here? Is it really necessary to even respond to this guy's critisms? He's not impressed with Tadalist, so now the _whole_ Java community is full of bile? Come on now - the man's entitled to his opinion. And while I'm a fan of Ruby and Rails, I have to admit that I agree about Tadalist not being mind-blowingly impressive.

But so what? Does every dissenting opinion have to be ripped to shreds here? Sure, Rails is nice, but overhyping and arrogance aren't going to get Rails any more users. Let Rails hype itself - if it's good (as I agree it is), then don't get all nasty about someone expressing a differing opinion. As someone else pointed out, use the time it took to post this self-righteous bullshit to analyze his criticisms, decide which parts (if any) are useful and which parts are irrelevant, and improve Rails with the knowledge.

Grow up.

I agree. I very much like Rails and even I'm developing with Rails right now, but I think David you should over-hyping it. To much of hype is as bad as too little. It won't do any good to Rails and to Ruby in particular.

I agree. I very much like Rails and even I'm developing with Rails right now, but I think David you should over-hyping it. Too much of hype is as bad as too little. It won't do any good to Rails and to Ruby in particular.

I think David thinks he's the Messiah.

If David hadn't over-hyped since the beginning you would be coding in Java, still.
No, half the guys that criticize Ruby and Rails don't know them. The other half wants to criticize anything that's not tangible so they can not be called liars.

Man, don't take this stuff seriously. Be proud that you've done awesome, thoughtful work. And get back to it. :)

Dave

Once I dreamt I had a robot who was made out of watermelons. He had as skin that green rind that's both dark green and light green. And he didn't care if I helped myself to his abdomen.

He just said, "No, I don't mind. Please."

He had a job helping cars figure out where to go. I got him his own cat.

The worst part was when I woke up and realized all the web framework flame wars going on. Man, what a headache.

David not being offensive? Do this on Google:
site:loudthinking.com java