How do you think the forums rewrite is going?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > How do you think the forums rewrite is going?

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The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Hammerite posted:

is this a paid coder or someone doing it for spaceships? i know choochocockles was paid but i had the impression it's been volunteers since then

nah its some new guy doing it in elixir and he basically handwaved away everyone's questions about how he was going to stick to a schedule when he isn't doing it in public and no one can hold him accountable. and now he's 10xd himself past his own deadline.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 14:38

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 21:40

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

the only people willing to put the effort into trying to clone sa are people so sad and bitter that the only thing they have left is coming together for the specific purpose of hating and attacking sa.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2017 22:42

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

do you think he realized that this guy is going to take 2 years to deliver a barely functional forum and once he does he's just going to avoid him for months anytime he's asked for changes, just like radium did? like, this is literally team barry deux as far as i can tell.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 22:27

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Gazpacho posted:

there's still plenty of jelsoft code so it can't just be published, but many examples were posted in QCS and thye left no doubt as to radium's sociopathic tendencies

one thing that was mentioned: certain columns in the database contain integers divided into bit fields that control various features, and sometimes one bit position is assigned to represent a logical combination of conditions represented by other bits in the same column

radium was, at least in the later years, the sort of coder who works entirely in the moment, as if the project (and software engineering in general) has no past worth understanding, nor future worth planning for. because apparently he wasn't a coder in the first place, more of an administration/ops guy who gained coder cred by hacking in some caches to reduce the server load

they weren't ints, they were actual strings of 1s and 0s that he was simply calling bitfields.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 01:52

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

like, the only downside of just moving to a different commercial forums package was that some of the hacked-on features might not be portable. but since they're constantly complaining that half these features are broken and barely work im not sure that's such a loss. buying other people avatars and rendering a fart cloud over the gaschamber are fun and all, but they're hardly critical to the overall fun of the forums and that stuff can be slowly added on over time by someone who is not bugfuck insane.

instead we're making a bespoke platform straight down the rabbit hole that created the current forums.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 16:09

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Gazpacho posted:

some of those hacked-on features are business-critical though, namely the upgrades (the ones that work)

except if you believe the admins' posting they genuinely believe the poorly functioning technology of the forums is preventing them from growing their userbase. if that is a genuine belief on their part then it's to their benefit to get better technology now and worry about the other stuff later. there's no one to buy your upgrades if no one is registering because the tech is bad.

not that i buy that the lack of registering is because of the tech, but they've said it multiple times.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 16:57

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Gazpacho posted:

rewrite the forums in mumps

you do not want to know what goes into web-facing mumps, let me tell you.

just rewrite this poo poo in asp.net mvc and be done with it.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 19:27

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Gazpacho posted:

i do now

try sanitizing inputs when this is your only method for parsing strings: http://docs.intersystems.com/latest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?KEY=GCOS_operators#GCOS_operators_pattern

note that only the "?" operator is in the ANSI standard so the other methods they mention can't be used if you want your code to be portable. i have seen a pattern that fills 3 screens that attempts to detect whether the input is executable mumps code.

and you have to do this validation in mumps, obviously, because you can't trust client validation wasn't hosed with.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 21:25

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

akadajet posted:

MUMPS is killing US veterans and this article is aiding and abetting!![edit]
Goddamnit, this article is written POV, probably by some clowns who know only MUMPS and are desparately afraid that their stinking, rotten, filthy little jobs, delaying care to military veterans with their goddamn outdated technology, might be lost. Men and women are returning burned and blasted to poo poo and sit and rot in hallways for "paperwork" to catch up with them.

Where does this paperwork come from? Why is it late?

This article DOES make it clear where it comes from and why it is late. A bunch of contemptible little programmers who care only about their cozy comfortable jobs actually believe the ABSURD claims in this article.

I've removed one such claim: it was logically contradictory, and the person, probably a MUMPS hotshot, who posted it didn't see the logical contradiction because he or she is STUPID. It literally claimed that "structured programming" reduces development time AND that it makes programs difficult to debug.

Hey, Ace. Hey Hot Dog, what the HELL do you think you're claiming?! That you're done developing when you stop typing the code?

My uncle, a personal physician of Lyndon Johnson, is probably DEAD because of MUMPS. He died alone in a military hospital at the age of 78 because Job One in an organization with dysfunctional-dogshit computer systems is the fascinating "intellectual challenge" that paperwork presents, which health "care" bureaucrats seem today to prefer to looking after men and women who've served their country.

As I have posted, last month the OIG of the Veterans Administration has reported serious problems of the type that emerge from clownish data systems celebrated by buffoons for their wonderful GoTo statements, their fascinating limits on string length, and overall, their replacement of transparency by an opacity, that allows data processing bureaucrats, most of whom with serious addictions, usually to food, to sit on their fat asses "thinking" about stupid things.

The article violates wikipedia NPOV and it needs to be rewritten from top to bottom. NPOV is NOT NOT NOT agreement with the local boys who colonize an article. MUMPS is a dysfunctional system: this is FACT.

lol, where is this from? the VA's emr is called VISTA and is written in MUMPS. you are legally entitled to download your own copy of its source code. it's terrible. we bid for the VA's new scheduling system and got it but it hasn't been rolled out yet. but thanks to that one dailyWTF article or whatever people all think mumps is the name of the actual medical software rather than a language some terrible software is implemented in.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 21:45

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

akadajet posted:

the wikipedia talk page on mumps

lmbo

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 21:49

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Gazpacho posted:

ok the system is terrible but how would you compare it to other MUMPS-based systems

well, the products i know of that use MUMPS are these, ordered from least bad to most bad

epic
cerner millenium
meditech (an even crazier dialect of MUMPS called MAGIC)
intersystems' bespoke system whose name changes every 6 months
pretty sure 3m's emr that they're killing runs on mumps
VISTA
crazy in-house developed poo poo running on hospital mainframes from the 60s.

most of these products are bad, but none of them are dangerously bad the way VISTA is. ive supported all of them in the past and most of the badness in the others is outdated ui paradigms, obtuse workflows, etc. VISTA straight up kills people. last i checked it barely attempts to look for medication interactions, its scheduling is basically just a FIFO queue, etc.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 21:59

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Gazpacho posted:

what does this mean? whitespace is syntactic in mumps. single spaces separate statements, double spaces or newlines separate expressions. so you can't just have random extra whitespaces between identifiers or something, but if he's just complaining that he can't write something like "func( arg 1 , arg 2, arg 3)" i don't know what he's on about.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 22:26

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

LeftistMuslimObama posted:

what does this mean? whitespace is syntactic in mumps. single spaces separate statements, double spaces or newlines separate expressions. so you can't just have random extra whitespaces between identifiers or something, but if he's just complaining that he can't write something like "func( arg 1 , arg 2, arg 3)" i don't know what he's on about.

to clarify the difference between single and double spaces

code:

; this is a vanilla for loop. there's a single space between the for because the control statement 
; is an argument to the for expression and the do is its second argument indicating to 
; execute the nested scope defined by the "."-prefixed lines as the loop body
for i=1:1:10 do
. w "On Iteration "_i

; this is a for loop iterating over subscripts of a b-tree. there's a double space between the for and the set
; because the set is its own expression and the assignment statement sub=$o(...) is the argument to set.
; for loops execute everything on the line they're on until a quit condition is hit.
for  set sub=$o(btree(sub)) quit:sub="" do
. w "Looking at subscript "_sub

it's like that because the first mumps interpreter was extremely primitive (it was running in native assembly on a 60s mainframe, remember) so using spaces to define certain syntactical units makes the parsing much easier. yeah, it's different from most modern languages, but i don't think that's inherently bad.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 22:33

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Gazpacho posted:

lol you're gone

is it any worse than python having syntactic indentation? it's a weird design choice but also understandable given the origins of the language and it certainly doesn't force you to write bad code.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 22:39

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

qntm posted:

whyyyy would you ever want to detect this

I know the answer will be bad

to prevent code injection attacks. same reason you'd want to detect javascript or sql in your inputs, except the only kind of code a mumps server can execute is mumps so that's all you need to sanitize for on the server side. mumps has two equivalents of eval() and obviously you need to confirm your input isn't malicious before you use those.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 23:03

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

vodkat posted:

yes because with python any half decent editor can reformat your code automatically to sort out any syntactic indentation confusion or errors, whereas in MUMPS this would probably break your code in a million different ways

there are two actively maintained mumps ides that will fix your syntax for you. and, like i said, it's a design decision driven by the needs of a 1960s mainframe. remember that it was revolutionary that c had a compiler that could self-host. mumps was written in pdp-7 assembly.

im literally not trying to argue it's the best or even a good way to do things. just that it doesn't force you to write terrible code and most of the things people blame on mumps are really bad developers and lazy vendors.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 01:19

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

My Linux Rig posted:

I'll rewrite the forums

first order of business: putting the forums on the block chain

replace toxx clauses with smart contracts

# ¿ Feb 7, 2017 01:26

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

here, ive started a mumps based back end api for the forums. ive tried to keep the flavor of the original code where possible

code:

getPostsGlobalName() q $na(^poo poo)

;NOTE: Update this whenever forum names are changed!
getForumID(forumName) q $s(forumName="YOSPOS":219,forumName="GBS":1) ;and so on

;NOTE: list must be dotted reference
getThreadList(forumID,list) n curThread,posts
 s posts=$$getPostsGlobalName()
 f  s curThread=$o(@posts@(forumID,curThread)) q:curThread="" d
 . s list(curThread)=@posts@(forumID,curThread,"NAME")
 q

;NOTE: postLIst must be dotted reference
getPostsFromThread(forumID,threadID,postList) n curPost,posts
 s posts=$$getPostsGlobalName()
 f  s curPost=$o(@posts@(forumID,threadID,curPost) q:curPost="" d
 . m postList=@posts@(forumID,threadID,curPost)

postInThread(forumID,threadID,text,user,timestamp) n postID,posts
 s posts=$$getPostsGlobalName()
 s postID=$o(@posts@(forumID,threadID,postID),-1)+1
 s @posts@(forumID,threadID,postID,"text")=text
 s @posts@(forumID,threadID,postID,"user")=user
 s @posts@(forumID,threadID,postID,"timestamp")=timestamp
 q

i have now written a more complete forums than elixir guy

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 21:19

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

The Management posted:

highlighted the problem area. some idiot promised to write a new forum for free and solve every migration problem, which sounds much better than paying money for something that works and then paying someone else more money to do stupid things you think it should do.

no he's paying the guy.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2017 20:29

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

The Management posted:

what did you think the fundraiser was all about? he has wild dreams of this guy writing him the next great forums software that he can then sell to other forums such as

# ¿ Feb 23, 2017 20:45

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

lol

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 23:42

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

hifi posted:

lowtax already spends zero dollars on the forums apps so instead of that we're going to get a new semi anonymous admin to program something in their language of choice (mumps)

lol, i do not need all the extra offsite attention that comes with being an admin on these forums. plus im one of those pesky pc skeleton warriors rich hates

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 02:02

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Smythe posted:

Goldmine

havent you been paying attention the forums are the opposite of that

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 02:25

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

The Management posted:

this is so much more funny in light of

i sincerely hope he was smart enough to arrange payment-on-delivery this time.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 03:29

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

TerminalRaptor posted:

did he disappear, or was he ever there to begin with?

there was a screenshot of like 6 hyperlinks on a page with no styling whatsoever which he claimed was proof that he was 80% done with the backend.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 04:06

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

CrazyLittle posted:

new forums were supposed to use markdown but also still be compatible with old bbcode and sa custom smilies

lmbo

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 06:53

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

im really getting a lot of laughs out of these forums announcements where he tries to pretend it's 1999 again and everyone is dying for a mood house sequel.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2017 05:33

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Sagebrush posted:

Bitwise math is very cool and good when you're working in a resource constrained system like a microcontroller, but not being a database guy I don't know if it makes any significant difference on big servers

almost never. the cycles you waste doing the bitwise stuff is generally slower than just having boolean flags or whatever. the i/o isn't a problem because it will likely be fetched and cached at the same time if your architecture doesn't suck.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 19:36

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Perplx posted:

i thought it was all about disk space, a boolean is a byte on disk
under the best(worst?) case scenario bit packing will cut your storage by 87.5%

yeah, but think about the overall storage volume you're dedicating to settings vs data. if it's not a drop in the bucket there's something really wrong. 87.5% of .5% of your storage is nothing, so just throw a bit more disk at it.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2017 19:59

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

the archives is like 95% garbage poo poo posts and what isn't is in the goldmines. the only reason anyone would reasonably see losing the archives as a show-stopper is if they wanted to be able to dig through people's post histories for more wank material for the offsites.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2017 14:27

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

seriously though, just "lose" the drive with the archive on it in a trash compactor or something. anything worth rereading is goldmined and the rest of that stuff is just a spank bank for monstrous internet assholes

# ¿ Mar 7, 2017 21:38

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

most folks i talk to like the forums in spite of lowtax rather than because of him. the most visible forum has a toxic culture that drives away new registrations and lowtax comes back in a tone deaf rage to remind us that "gay" and "tranny" are funny words and the sjw mods were ruining his site. it's not 1997 anymore but his sense of humor never moved past there and he'd be better of leaving the site to zdr and a few others to run.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 00:56

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

SmokaDustbowl posted:

most posters don't expect repercussions form their posts

ironically, the only people who had any repercussions were people who asked poo poo posters to not be so homophobic

# ¿ May 1, 2017 01:06

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

pram posted:

the site is dying because its slow and boring not because lowtax checks in every 5 months

that too. about the only reason i even hang around is a couple decent programming threads and the lp forum.

part of why it's boring is that we've all grown up but the culture has been kinda stagnant. i don't find the same poo poo funny as when i registered as a teenager in 05. sa is half the same poo poo from back then and half weird meta humor and it's no good. i hang around for the serious subs that are still good but that's not exactly a sales pitch for a younger crowd.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 01:19

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

SmokaDustbowl posted:

it's not dying, they just need to finally get rid of whatever the gently caress GBS is now and focus on games forum

yeah this is what I mean. when your average open minded millennial sees our main forum full of "I'm gay lol a tranny boob thread" they get turned off and go somewhere else.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 01:22

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Sagebrush posted:

if/when the forums go away i will genuinely miss Cycle Asylum, DIY, and the idiot spare time projects/oscilloscope threads here in yospos. there are a few other electronics forums that are okay (EEVBlog and PJRC are alright) but most are just as you described, while general DIY or machining forums are a crapfest of ancient know-it-all grognards and illiterate morons, and just forget about any other motorcycle community online being even remotely positive.

also i think it would be great if GBS was just erased entirely and not replaced. remember when people were banned for not being on-topic? there's a subforum now for basically every topic you might want to discuss, and each subforum usually also has a general chat thread where the people that topic appeals to hang out and chat. anything that doesn't fit at least marginally in one of the other forums (and i say keep FYAD and BYOB) isn't worth having.

SA *could* be a great community but yeaaaaah, GBS as the front page is not doing it.

oh, and on that subject, make the front page just that feature that highlights good threads and posts from the last week or so.

ai is so much better than other car forums it's not funny. slow, but much lower on hawt tunerz bs.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 02:10

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

be a moderator

no don't they will doxx your dog

# ¿ May 1, 2017 02:24

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Rex-Goliath posted:

it'll fracture and the individual splinters will eventually burn out independently as they won't be able to sustain themselves with SA's pull so don't worry too much about that

i've accepted the fact that if this place goes my internet usage will go down by like 95%

the only offsites that seem to survive are horrifying pits of bitterness and nastiness. not sure how to prevent that. when sa goes offline there will probably not be a place like the pos again.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 02:51

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Sweevo posted:

this, but also maybe start cracking down on the people who immediately poo poo on every single thread because everything has to be a pissing competition over who can care the least and how loudly they can tell everyone about it

it took me a long time to deprogram myself from the goon "hate everything reflexively" and my life is a lot better since i did. it's ironic detachment that lost its irony.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 15:28

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 21:40

The MUMPSorceress: Jan 6, 2012; ^SHTPSTS; Gary’s Answer

Zamujasa posted:

in a theoretical world where gbs finally got deleted forever, what would the top forum be

byob?

axe gbs and rotate the top forum once a month.

also looking at the forums list for the first time in ages, i wouldn't be surprised if poo poo like FYAD's current subtitle drives away younger people who might otherwise register.

# ¿ May 1, 2017 18:51

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > How do you think the forums rewrite is going?

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