thinking about developer happiness at JA-SIG
Posted on 28. Apr, 2008 by matt in Conferences, Fedora, Matt's Adventures and Musings
Five years ago developers spent a lot of time speaking SQL when they talked about writing a database-driven app. Since then, we have enjoyed the arrival of modern webapp frameworks with good ORM. Now developers spend very little time talking about SQL. Instead, they talk about higher level problems and application-specific challenges. In other words, we are able to spend developer resources in more potent ways. This has played a major role in the recent upsurge of innovative, user-driven apps.
Right now I’m sitting in Christopher Brown’s JA-SIG presentation about writing a Fedora App in ColdFusion. Christopher has done valiant work. He’s a trailblazer. More importantly, he has a functioning application that is now in active use. However, I can’t help but feel like we’ve backpedaled five years in terms of developer experience. Christopher’s slides are dominated by Fedora-specific structures and the terminology from Fedora’s APIs. I feel like I’m back in SQL land. Being forced to think about this boilerplate code is an unnecessary burden for developers. It prevents them from fully taking advantage of Fedora’s power.
Now that we’ve had RubyFedora in hand for a few weeks and have been playing with ActiveFedora for a while, it’s really encouraging to be reminded what the alternative is. I’m so eager to set free developers like Christopher, to let them forget about the boilerplate code, so that instead they can invent new ways of helping users do crazy stuff with their digital content.
You know, the thing about SQL is, that there is virtually nothing that can replace it.
Does anyone know if a substitute exists for sql? I mean besides MS SQL and Oracle and all that jazz. Thanks.
Happiness is a state of mind that really depends how we see the situations in our lives each day. you can have all the riches in the world but still see it as a lonely place.:*,