Chad Myers' Blog (Los Techies) - Latest Comments

Re: Domains available

GoDaddy.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:19:12 -0000

Hey Chad, a couple of developers at Go Daddy sent this post my way. I'm disappointed to hear you're moving away, but want to offer to help with any of your Go Daddy services, ease the transition or just take some of your feedback - from you or any other of the Los Techies bloggers.

- James (@godaddy on Twitter)

Re: Domains available

Chad Myers — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 14:37:33 -0000

It's not just ideological purity, it's actually quite practical. When we first started our project using ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta, we needed to tweak something in the way a route was determined, in another controller how some of the model binding worked, and overall how the result of controller action was passed to a view (we wanted to do one-model-in, one-model-out).

Most of these things were handled in rather long methods in the base Controller class. If you wanted to tweak one line of code, you necessarily had to override a 300-line method which constituted 50% of the functionality of MVC's model binding (or something like that).

By the time we had changed just those three things (something we used to refer to as Opinionated MVC -- google for some videos of talks we gave), we had replaced more than 75% of ASP.NET MVC (by one reckoning).

I hope things have gotten better in MVC3 and now MVC4, but I imagine the fundamental problems are still there and it is still difficult to override something small without necessarily having to override something big.

Re: Domains available

Adam Rackis — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:15:44 -0000

Hi Chad. Would you mind clarifying one thing from your web frameworks post
http://lostechies.com/chadmyer...

After reading your post I do now realize that the base Controller class in asp.net mvc is a violation of SRP, but I'm not sure I understand why that matters. It seems like just a convenient, simple base class that MS is giving me that supports most if not all of the things I would need my controller to do—render a view, render a parital view, render an action, etc etc.

I can understand why *I* shouldn't write a huge class that does multiple things, since that'll make maintenance harder down the road. But what specific maintenance problems can I honestly expect from this base controller class that MS wrote? Or is this just ideological purity?

Re: Domains available

Gleb — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 03:41:06 -0000

Hello Chad
I'd like whackcoder

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Joey — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:28:26 -0000

That is a reflection of your inner psyche not the graphic. You could just have easily interpreted the logo as an industry (nerds are cool in IT) compliment to the Mexican-American contribution to the industry. You could also have interpreted it as a sexual innuendo, call to arms for PETA or anything else! Interpretation is your right as a person, just as expression is the right of the person who owns this blog.

Your avatar could easily be interpreted (give someone the idea) that you promote Nazi-esque values and attempt to glorify the life of criminals (mugshot photo) and crime overall. BTW, do think there is anyone out there that was offended by our use of the term "retarded"? You may not care about that particular group of people or if they take offense, but then why would anyone care what you think?

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Joey — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:10:05 -0000

Incredible what "Politically Correct" has come to when people troll blogs looking for logos to label racism. Reminds me of when Rasheed Wallace called the NBA a bunch of slave owners. He was making 12 million a year at the time. I am sure that all the souls that suffered at the hands of slave owners, all the families that were ripped apart, the generations of people plunged into poverty to this day felt vindicated when a millionaire athlete compared his inability to make $13 million a year playing a game to their plight. He knew EXACTLY how they felt, what they had gone through.

Calling the logo racist is disrespectful to the millions of people that have suffered at the hands of racism. How many people have died in the last 100 years through wars raged over racist notions? And your charge to rectify this is to go and critique graphics? Wow I guess all of the evil in the world better look out there is a fat troll on a couch somewhere fighting for justice!

How much you do you make while sitting in front of a computer sipping non-diet soda ruminating over what this particular logo will mean to the family who dares everything to cross a border in the middle of the night at the hope of a better life making less than minimum wage. Although they would love to take up the 'cause' with you, unfortunately they are trying to survive and do not have the time to troll.

Pointing out a logo as racism is a slap in the face of everyone who attempts to truly address racism or inequality wherever it exists. You trivialize what so many people have gone through, what so many people are GOING through right now by casually pointing out logos as racist.

I would like to forward your contact information to some people in Uganda, Mexico, Tibet, Northern Iraq, Turkey, Darfur, Southern India, to let them know that they are not alone in their plight, but that there is also a fatass in the U.S. that is going through the EXACT same thing and he is not going to take it anymore!

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Guest — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:52:34 -0000

Right, and there sure was no bitterness in your post!!

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Ivan Maček — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:44:12 -0000

Chad, thanks for great article that sums important things about concepts around MVC.
I agree with everything you said.

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Chad Myers — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:01:17 -0000

I disagree with this: "OO is way different in Ruby/Javascript" - it is fundamentally the same. Sure, you've got things like Ducktyping, Modules, etc in Ruby, but the fundamentals are still there and the fundamental principles still apply.

I don't get your comment about "inbreed" [sic]. Sounds like you've got some bitterness about something and you're taking it out in my blog.

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

mike suarez — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:12:13 -0000

not really ... i consider Carlos Mencia quite racist ... being from a minority shouldn't give u a free card to do what others outside can't ... so in general i could care less if Benito Juarez was the founder

i have a higher tolerance to racism that an average ... the theme of the logo n' name doesn't really bug me ... but if i am to pick yes/no i would call it racist based on the fact that it is a stereotyped mexican/texan lingo which has nothing to do with the actual content or style of the content published in the site

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

mike suarez — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:18:06 -0000

u r avoiding the fact that OO is way different in Ruby/Javascript ... so the big point of inheritance is not that relevant ... SRP is still quite relevant ... DI as in StructureMap convention whatever is irrelevant ... testing and mocking is quite different ... u simply don't use or know those language that much

yeah everybody is gonna make messes in any platform ... i could go on n' on ... but mostly i've been pissed at this post since the first day because it keeps damaging the .Net community ... MS doesn't care and ALT.Net imploded ... all that's left is an inbreed community in Austin ... think about that

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Chad Myers — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:02:27 -0000

Most of the original LT folks were Hispanic from San Antonio, if I recall correctly.

Would it change your opinion at all to know that the name, logo, mascot, etc were all chosen and designed by people of Hispanic origin?

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

msuarz — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:59:03 -0000

yo llevo buen tiempo siguiendo este blog y nunca he visto nada q de la idea de un 'Hispanic culture/vibe' ... just saying ... it does looks a bit racist to me ... only it doesn't really bug me

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

hugoestr — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:27:35 -0000

Hey, if you haven't gotten around explaining why you don't like controllers, that is fair.

I see now that part of the problem is violation OOP principles. And you are right, a lot can happen there.

Okay, now I have the proper perspective to look at the documentation of fubuMVC to see how you solve these problems.

Thank so much, and I will look forward to that article in the future.

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Chad Myers — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:19:29 -0000

1.) This point makes no sense. Maybe your definition of "OO" and/or "Traditional OO" is mistaken. If you mean "C++-style OO", then I would agree with you. Unfortunately that's what many people mean when they say OO and they're wrong. To quote Alan Kay: "I made up the term 'object-oriented', and I can tell you I didn't have C++ in mind"

Many people in Java and C# program with a C++ mindset (heavy inheritance, lots of big nasty classes, etc). So yeah, that's very wrong and I rail against that notion heavily and often on this blog.

2.) So poorly implemented composition means composition is wrong? That also makes no sense. What if you had a framework that made composition natural and easy and flowing?

3.) I don't understand this. I don't think you understand what behaviors are or what I mean by "conventions". Fubu has dozens of different types of conventions and leverages static typing heavily as a tool (and not as a crutch). Rails has a few conventions that are baked in and based on the file system or strings. Fubu has a rich model from which to develop elaborate conventions for all sorts of things, not just view location or controller discovery, but form builder/generation (something that sucks in dynamic type systems like in Rails or Django), HTML fragment generation, model binding, validation, etc.

4.) I have tried the nice approach, no one listens. Programmers only listen when you're a bombastic troll jerk, this post has proven that definitively to me.

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Chad Myers — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:12:59 -0000

Not retarded, just silly. Nerd, Mexican, and Donkey are true. It goes with the "Los Techies" Mexicana vibe. LT was founded by folks in San Antonio which has a strong Hispanic culture and vibe.

So if people consider exhibiting Hispanic culture is "racist" somehow, then I'm sorry that they have such a white washed, bleached concept of culture and society that they are offended by the mere exhibition of cultural display.

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Víctor Martínez — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:55:05 -0000

1) Traditional OO does not apply to ruby, ruby software is not designed/architected as everything else. Ruby has new paradigms funded completely on the dynamism of the language. Everything you know about OO is obsolete. Partially the same applies to C#. Do you think people is writing software the same way they write them in Java? They are actually pushing forward the possibilities of the language and deprecating old-school way of doing the things.

2) Object instantiation hurts. Composition is not always a good choice even if its "theoretically the correct way". Zend Framework partially fits your "way to go" and it's a pain in the ass to use it. Everything is so "modular" that you even need to glue the damn router and the front controller into your app. So before writting a single line of your app you already have 500+ lines of "framework configuration".

3) Your conception of "convention over configuration" is clearly wrong. Mapping all the "behaviors" to Fubu "controller classes" is not a convention, it's clearly configuration even if it's not XML-based.

4) Generally, people are not paradigm talibans. If you want to create something new, be creative and engage people instead of being a jerk.

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Víctor Martínez — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:19:59 -0000

well the idea I get from the graphic is: "retarded nerd mexican donkey "

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Chad Myers — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:55:41 -0000

@hugoestr Unfortunately I can't think of a blog post that spells it all out clearly. Apparently I have my work cut out for me.

It's been a process of discovery the past few years, messing with MVC frameworks and seeing the problems that arise. We've discussed the controller-less action concept on the mailing list and have reached a shared understanding. But we've (I've) failed to communicate this well outside of our circle. I apologize.

The root of the argument lies in the concept of "Composition vs. Inheritance" - If you're thinking compositionally, then the ideas of a "Controller" base class, and a class with lots of unrelated methods doing a lot of unrelated things, becomes abhorrent (as it should).

Many controller action methods do far too much: input validation, model binding, model validation, business logic, some persistence, and then deciding what to do next (render view, redirect, etc).

These are far too many responsibilities for one action method, and then when you have 3-4 actions per controller, you have a big mess.

Thank you for inspiring me to write a post on this subject.

I wrote a post about Composition vs. Inheritance awhile ago which you may find interesting:
(note is has a little in there assuming static typing and IoC containers, you can just skip over that part, the rest should apply to any OO language/framework)

http://lostechies.com/chadmyer...

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Chad Myers — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:49:24 -0000

It's not schadenfreude. I don't glee in problems in the Rails community. I'm tired of ignorant Rails people telling me how great and wonderful things are and spitting on me when I tell them that inheritance designs are seriously problematic and that AR-style data layers are seriously problematic for serious/considerable projects.

To you and me and most intelligent Rails folks, this is common sense, but yet I get made fun of and called names since I once used a .NET compiler.

I'm glad to hear people in the Rails community speak up, especially when they're saying things that I feel very strongly about :)

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

Chad Myers — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:47:05 -0000

@Giles Ok, then let me distill it for you and remove all the bluster, hyperbole, and purposeful antagonism? :)

Inheritance = bad (except in very small doses, and not in the core of your framework and not required for consumers of your framework)

OO principles matter in any OO-ish language. If you're doing OO-ish programming (even in a lang that isn't strictly OO, like JavaScript), then follow core OO principles. Just because it's easier to work around the principles in Ruby, JavaScript, etc. doesn't make it right.

Composition is a key component for success in any framework, especially web frameworks. Rails does a mediocre job of this which is sad since Ruby has really amazing and awesome OO composition possibilities baked into the language. In short, Rails could be SO much better, it's frustrating to me that they purposely chose poor design choices in a few areas.

ActiveRecord-style ORMs/data-layers (and I mean the original Fowler PoEE "ActiveRecord" pattern, not necessarily Rails' implementation of it) should be used very carefully and only for small CRUD situations. It's frustrating to me that this is the default, encouraged route in Rails. This is the whole "falling into the pit of success or failure" As Rails' adoption grows, you'll get more and more people who don't know what the hell they're doing and will make a mess of things with AR.

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

hugoestr — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:37:38 -0000

Okay, Chad, so it seems that there isn't an example out there of well written fubuMVC. If you are using it within a company of clients, that makes sense.

Could you at least link me to a post where you flesh out your argument against controllers and why your way is better? I may end up agreeing; I just don't know yet.

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

m4bwav — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:20:37 -0000

Some great zingers, Rails people are sexist arrogant bastards, with some exceptions. <ducks></ducks>

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

jbogard — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:36:08 -0000

Racist header graphic? What's racist about it? It was created by one of the founders of Los Techies, Joe Ocampo, a Mexican-American from San Antonio.

And his name is Pablo!

Re: Sweet, sweet vindication

NorwegianThirtySomething — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 06:07:56 -0000

Well, he does, obviously. :) And probably others too.