One of my co-workers sent me this article from the folks over at 37signals (makers of Ruby on Rails) on why enterprise software sucks. The hypothesis is that it sucks because the decision makers aren’t the ones who end up being the end users. While that may be true, I think this is an oversimplification. Continue reading…
Monthly Archives: October 2007
One other interesting talk at Ontario Linux Fest was hearing Jon “maddog” Hall give a keynote. I remember Maddog giving a talk at Real World Linux back in 2004; in fact, I even wrote about it. Maddog’s been around the block many times, which is why I was surprised to hear him give a keynote on how the LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) and Linux-based thin clients are going to save the world. I’m overstating that a bit, but I feel I have to vehemently rebut. My thesis is: We’ve been on thin clients before, they were called VT100 green screens, and nobody really wants to go back – damn the peripheral factors.
A few weekends ago, I got up at the crack of dawn and headed out to the first (annual, I hope) Ontario Linux Fest. The admission price of $40 clearly signalled that this was a grassroots gathering of Linux hobbyists, but I’m sure many of those in attendance were also professional developers and/or system administrators. Although some of the talks were more show-and-tell that I would have hoped, I had to keep in mind the target audience, and I still learned a few things, particularly regarding the optimization of high traffic websites – thanks to Khalid Baheyeldin for his talk on this topic.
