Joyent

Are Lines of Code really a measure of either success, productivity or popularity?

Via this and that, I found myself reading PHP Eats Rails for Breakfast

The title PHP Eats Rails for Breakfast and subtitle Despite the buzz around sexy new frameworks like Rails and Django, PHP is more dominant than ever initially commits the same fallacy that others have and that is to compare frameworks (Rails and Django) with programming languages. And then the suggestion becomes that one can interchangeably use Rails and Ruby, Django and Python.

New projects in their analyses were open source projects. And despite the popularity and open source availability of Rails and Django, they’re both relatively young and I can’t think of many open source and substantial applications written in both (all of our’s for example are closed source).

But the telling graph there is actually the last: more than 15% of “New Projects” are being written in Ruby. This counts “projects” not “net” lines of code.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but if 20 PHP projects do what most PHP projects have done and that is build out a custom “framework” that’s splayed out in /lib/ and /include/ directories, then they’re naturally going to have much more code than 20 Rails projects that are all taking advantage of the ~75,000 LOCs that’s present in the Rails framework.

What’s gets counted in a valid comparison then?

Would a 5000 LOC Rails application be equivalent to an 80,000 LOC PHP (non-framework using) application?

Do we get picky and only count the part of Rails or Django that actually gets “used”?

So when we have an application like Beast (svn, example forum) that implements a forum in about 500 lines of code.

How do we compare that to feature-comparable application in another language?

Rails is also a bit unique is that most people you see around only started coding in Ruby because of the Rails framework, and there aren’t many other examples of a single framework being so dominant within a language’s community.

I simply think the basic finding that’s in the title is just there to get some notice. I don’t quite have Gruber’s Jackass Stamp but if I did … someone might get stamped.

So what do you think?

Are they simply full of schnitzel or am I missing something?

Then in an Age of (Web) Frameworks, is there a relationship between LOCs and success, productivity or popularity?

How do frameworks impact typical metrics used by managers?

And it’s funny because we’ve had the same conversation internally where I’ll watch commits go by and then email someone and ask, “Is that feature really just 9 lines in our app?”

From Super Secret to Super Yacht

We’ve all been casually following the drama at Hewlett Packard. Seems the Chairwoman of the board of directors hired private investigators to find out whether a director of the company was leaking information about Carly Fiorina’s departure from the company. The methods were/are suspect. Fine. A director of the company, Thomas Perkins of Kleiner Perkins fame, resigned from the board of Hewlett Packard outraged over the methods used. Also fine. Good for Mr. Perkins. But in the coverage (page 4, the editor’s note) of the incident it comes to light that Mr. Perkins just completed a $100 million superyacht. I think that’s interesting.

Yeah, my inner Marx is acting up. Or maybe my inner Chesterton, more like it. Some will say Mr. Perkins is getting his well deserved due. His curriculum vitae is certainly impressive. But is any proxy-penis really worth $100 million. Really? Pereunt et imputantur, my friends. We act and the acts are accounted to us.

Single Rider Volunteer

I went to Disney World in Orlando, Florida with my family this past week. It wasn’t really a vacation, honestly. That’s my daughter Elizabeth frightened by the aggressive attention of Minnie Mouse, the love-interest mouse of Mickey that wanders the various resort breakfasts bringing a little piece of the “Happiest Celebration on Earth” tableside. I was silently happy when my other daughter Margaret screamed in horror as Goofy tried to give her a hug. I say it wasn’t a vacation because, for the start-up guy or gal, a vacation is something like Corpse Pose with a bit of vodka mixed in. Now, for those of us with children, we know the opportunities for Corpse Pose with a bit of vodka are far and few, and that’s OK. More than OK, frankly, even though our spouses may disagree about the far and few (that is, how often we indulge). The wonderful thing about the chaos of a family, are the opportunities to learn.

You see, for all of Disney’s “Main Street USA”, a world of the perfect now (set in the perfect past) combined with the potentialities of “Fantasyland”, “Tomorrowland”, “Libertyland”, and “Frontierland” one gets the sense that rather than soaking in the August steam-rooms of mid-peninsula Florida, in fact one has wandered into a Wed 2.0 conference. But even as with any invitation-only conference, Disney World also has a lesson to teach. And the first chapter begins when one is in the middle of standing in a long-line for something called “Everest Expedition” that has announced, up front, the wait will be 90 minutes…for a 2 minute ride. The children are far too small to accompany one on the “Everest Expedition” and one has just about had enough of Disney’s utopian vision of the United Nations called “It’s a Small World” where, in the end, every culture is wrapped in white swaddling clothes belting out a menacing chorus that is more power-wish than reality. The children are far too small to go on “Everest Expedition” but, then, it is 100 degrees outside with a heat index of 110 degrees, so its hard to justify making them wait while one enjoys the ride. It’s so hot, later that evening I’ll read even Pat Robertson has come to believe there may be something called “Global Warming”. What’s one to do? Why am I here? Why did I come here? Isn’t one due some thrill in life/vacation? In the words of the rock band Queen: “Show must go on…I face it with a grin, I’ve never given in, on-with-THE-SHOW!...I have to find the WILL-TO-carry-on…”

Many of the more popular rides at Disney World have what is called a “Single Rider Volunteer” line. In this line, one can propel oneself up to actually getting onto something like “Everest Expedition” in 10 minutes or so rather than the advertised 90 minutes (and rising). The Single Rider is combined with odd-numbered groups of people at the point when the Disney ride handlers assign people slots to board the ride itself. For example, a group of three, who have stood through the 90 minute wait, might be combined, at the discretion of the Disney ride handler with a single person from the Single Rider Volunteer line to make up the four riders required for the compartment of the ride (though, to be exact, the “Everest Expedition” is a roller coaster comprised of two-person compartments). Note: while I may choose to take the Single Rider Volunteer line with a friend, Disney promises that we won’t be seated together. We will, in fact, without a doubt, be all Single Riders.

This is where the philosophical muse appears. How could it be otherwise as I stare up from a fake base station beneath a fake Everest towering above a fake savannah in a fake Asia in a welcome-to-the-happiest-celebration-on-earth Disney’s Animal Kingdom? The question occured to me: why would anyone want to wait through the entire line to board “Everest Expedition” when, using the single rider option, that person could, in theory ride the train many more times in the same period of time, or move on to other attractions? First, I think people are willing to wait the (so much) extra time so that they can have a shared experience. While this explanation may seem obvious, if we consider that most Single Rider volunteers tend to get onto the ride rather quickly and so “friends” would only delay the shared experience by a few minutes (if they weren’t seated in different compartments of the same turn of the ride), in fact waiting for all that time means the true shared experience is, well, waiting for all that time followed by a slice of cherry, sliced so-so thin called “Everest Expedition”.

The philosophical muse is a funny muse. She doesn’t seem to want to make conclusions from the evidentiary propositions. While I might be able to share the experience of the ride shifted only by a few minutes, as the muse pointed out, it was true that, in the end, I was destined to be a Single Rider Volunteer. And, building on this observation, while the crowds suffered the full 90 minutes for the shared experience, a truly shared experience, weren’t we all destined for Single Rider status in the end? You see, as tenuous as it may be, with my family baking under the Floridian sun, and however much I wanted them to be with me, I was destined, like the mass of humanity don’t you see?, to be a Single Rider. Ask not for whom the ride-handler calls, she calls for me. I am a Single Rider.

That’s why I have to ask: is the ride worth it? Damn(!) a tech-company blog post about death? Where is Ray Kurzweil when we need him?

And like that the muse left me. Surely she had other people to instruct. The ride was over: it was moderately exciting. My family was there at the exit expiring under the sun. We walked to the Anandpur refreshment stand and enjoyed Minute Maid™ frozen lemonades. 320 calories. Who needs a diaper?

Mexican Coke

By way of Jason Kottke, I came up this article by Tom Ragan in the Santa Cruz Sentinel: “Mexican Coke: The ‘Real Thing?’”

It’s popping up just about everywhere in Latino communities across the United States: Mexican-made Coca-Cola in those old glass bottles, somewhat of an anomaly in the age of the plastic liter and twist-off cap.

Slightly worn and a bit gritty from all the coming and going, the 12-ounce bottles, which sell for roughly $1.25 a pop, are being bought up and sucked dry at record clips in cities across the country with large Latino populations.

The article proffers two explanations for this surge in the popularity of imported Coke. The first is that it’s served in old-fashioned tall glass bottles. The second is that it’s sweetened with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.

Ragan spoke to Coca-Cola Company spokesman Mart Martin (I am not making that name up), and Ragan tried his best to pin the craze entirely on the bottles

“We believe that the appeal of Mexican Coke is as much about nostalgia as it is about anything,” says Martin. “It’s like getting a piece of home in a bottle. You can’t deny the fact that it’s in a tall glass bottle, something you just can’t find in most parts of the United States.”

But it’s the “same exact product,” and Mexican bottlers are buying the ingredients straight from the company, says Martin.

“It’s not like they’re stirring it up in some backyard,” he adds. “Coke is Coke is Coke.”

The company, however, rarely elaborates on Coke’s ingredients, and the secret formula is actually in a vault in a bank in Atlanta. Instead, the company line all along has been that there is “no perceptible taste difference” between Mexican Coke and the American-made Classic Coke.

The old-fashioned bottles certainly have some nostalgic appeal, but it’s the difference in sweeteners that is fueling this craze. The idea that they’re the “same product” or that there’s “no perceptible taste difference” is hogwash.

I first tried Coke made with real cane sugar a few years ago while on vacation in the Dominican Republic. The difference wasn’t merely perceptible, it was shocking. The first few sips were more unsettling than pleasing, producing a dichotomous sensation of “this tastes like Coke/this does not taste like Coke” at the same time. By the end of the first bottle, though, I wanted more. The only thing that kept me from rotting away all my teeth during that week was that our resort’s “free beverages” policy also included beer.

For Coca Cola to claim these two beverages are the “same” even though they use entirely different sweeteners is preposterous. It’s not like sweetener is just a trace element in the Coke recipe—they’re second only to carbonated water in the ingredients list.

The simple truth is that cane sugar tastes much better than high-fructose corn syrup, but high-fructose corn syrup is way cheaper than sugar. Or at least it is here in the U.S. thanks to government corn subsidies.

My Video Ipod Story

Back in January, staring at a sheaf of plane and train tickets, imagining long stretches of unconnected tedium that lay ahead en route from A to B, I decided to buy a video Ipod. No way in hell I was going to like, sit there and not have constant access to digital entertainment, and certainly no way in hell I’d be so last-millennium and super-un-agile as to haul around a bunch of bulky web page prototypes with which to fill the seconds.

The day before I left I lobbed a bunch of TV shows and movies at this wonderful thing, synced up the ipod with the desktop computer, and tucked it into the carryon. All set.

On the train up to Paris I was three quarters of the way through the first movie, just coming to terms with how silly it feels to hold a device eight inches from your face and still strain to see anything, when the battery ran out. Grnk. Once in Paris, I plugged the Ipod into my laptop for a recharge, handily forgetting that it had its preferences set to ‘automatically updates songs and playlists’, which it went ahead and did, taking the laptop’s empty Itunes library as its cue to wipe itself clean. Double Grnk.

So: screen ridiculously small, battery doesn’t last long enough to watch anything, extraordinary vigilance required to prevent mass file deletion when moving from one computer to another, lucite case will scratch if you so much as breathe on it, clickwheel requires about an ounce too much pressure to work.

I’m just sayin’.

Dale’s Pale Ale

My taste in beer runs decidedly toward hoppy ales: IPAs, ESBs, and American pale ales. And so I took note when, last summer, The New York Times commissioned a panel of four beer connoisseurs to sample and rate 24 top American pale ales.

Their winner was one I hadn’t heard of: Dale’s Pale Ale, brewed by Oskar Blues in Lyons, Colorado. Most strikingly, Dale’s Pale Ale is available only in cans. Cans I say.

Canned beer, I had always believed, was for college students and mustachioed NASCAR fans. I don’t recall having a single can of beer since before I turned 21. And yet here was a panel of beer experts raving about a pale ale delivered only by can.

Eric Asimov, the Times wine critic who commissioned the panel, went so far as to speculate that Dale’s Pale Ale came out on top not despite being canned (all of the other 23 beers were, not surprisingly, bottled), but because it’s canned:

As in every tasting of beer and ale, the biggest problem we encountered was with freshness. Mr. Carroll expressed shock at the number of ales that showed signs of damage from exposure to high heat or direct light. For all the he-man, macho attributes foisted on beer by marketing, it is surprisingly fragile and needs to be handled delicately. That means it needs to be refrigerated as much as possible and protected from direct light. Mr. Sullivan suggested that if you are selecting beer from one of those perpetually lighted coolers, choose bottles from the back, where they are at least partly protected.

In our tasting, ales from well-regarded brewers like Stoudt’s, Dogfish Head, Bear Republic and even some that made our list showed signs of poor handling. One possible solution to the light problem, at least, was staring us in the face right after the tasting, when the identities of all the brews were revealed. Our No. 1, Dale’s Pale Ale, came in a can.

A can! Not long ago, cans represented all that was wrong with the assembly-line American beer industry. No craft brewer worth a copper brew kettle would even consider putting his precious ale in a can. But times have changed, and some brewers say that cans are lighter and easier to recycle than bottles, and offer complete protection against light.

Sufficiently intrigued, I had to try some.

Dale’s Pale Ale is not exactly easy to find on store shelves; lucky for me, I live two blocks away from The Foodery, a rather unassuming little bodega here in Philadelphia at the corner of 10th and Lombard. The Foodery, you see, carries over 500 varieties of beer — the best from all over the world. (There’s not much food at The Foodery, but “The Beerery” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.)

If Dale’s Pale Ale is so good, surely, I thought, they stock it at The Foodery. And, indeed, they do — in the bottom row of the cooler at the far corner of the store.

The result: Dale’s Pale Ale is, without question, my favorite beer, ever. The slogan on the cans reads “A huge voluminously hopped mutha of a pale ale”, and they’re not lying. I’ve been drinking it regularly for the last six months, interspersed with many of my other favorites, and Dale’s Pale Ale continues to impress, can after can.

I’m convinced that their use of cans is a big reason why. I’ve never once had a bad or even mediocre can of Dale’s; it’s never skunked and always fresh, despite the fact that it’s shipped across the continent from Colorado. Plenty of other beers that I enjoy tremendously on the West coast just don’t travel well. And even for beer brewed locally (like, say, the Philadelphia’s own Yard’s Brewing Company, whose excellent Philadelphia Pale Ale placed fifth in The Times showdown) I occasionally encounter a skunked bottle. I often suspect bad seals on the bottle caps — not a problem with cans.

Beer is fragile, and, like produce, the fresher it is, the better it tastes. This is why it’s so much fun to drink at a brewpub, where the beer is brewed right on the premises.

It seems obvious that good beer comes in brown bottles instead of cans not because bottling results in better-tasting beer, but simply because all the other good beers come in bottles too.

On their web site, Oskar Blues addresses this directly:

For years the craft beer trade — us included — considered the brown bottle the best package for real beer.

[…]

Cans are lightweight and almost unbreakable. They’re also easily broken down when emptied, they’re weightless in the backpack, cooler or trash bag, and chill faster than bottles.

Simply put, cans are the best package for bringing beer to wherever beer fiends go.

They also eliminate light damage to our precious beer. (Excessive exposure to light causes a condition called “lightstruck”, which makes beer taste skunky.) Cans also reduce the risk of oxidation to our beers and keep Dale’s Pale Ale fresher than bottles can.

The straight dope: Cans are the best friend a beer and a caring brewery can have.

This is the point where, if I wanted to hit you over the head with a lesson to be learned, I could conclude with a preachy lesson about how preconceptions can keep you from trying good ideas that are staring you in the face — i.e. by pointing out that if not for The Times’s glowing review, I never would have tried Dale’s Pale Ale, and in fact never would have even considered it, simply because it’s canned, thereby missing out on what has become my very favorite beer; and that not only was my anti-can bigotry unfounded, but the fact that it’s canned is in fact almost certainly a significant reason why I like it so much — but I don’t, so I won’t.