I can't believe my recent blog article is getting so amazingly hammered. I've been trying to respond to criticisms and questions, but I'm quickly getting overwhelmed. So... I have no idea what I'm going to do about it other than keep plugging away. It's kind of fun to fan the flames. :-)
Even though Slashdot doesn't seem to want to pick up the story, I found out that OSNews picked it up. The people over there have been generally unkind, and have decided to ignore the intelligent points of my article and instead use their forums for an all out flamefest. The few actual criticisms seem mostly based on things I either didn't say, or a desire to plug their ears, ignore any points that are made, and hope it goes away. I have no idea why they do this. Are OSNews discussions always this... I don't know... useless?
Outside of OSNews, one of the things that I've noticed is that a lot of people seem to be skimming over the articles and losing the details. They then go on to criticize without double checking. A few examples:
- Is it a good idea to tie MySQL (or other major DB Engine) to the file system? How does that effect maintenance? (For the record, I used SQL tables as a metaphor. The DBFS should be a complete file system. Using something like Berkeley DB to store the data in a file on the DBFS is probably the easiest solution, but is hardly the same thing as bringing a large database online.)
- AppFolders aren't abstract enough. The user can still see inside the folder. (These people seem to miss the HUGE sections on wrapping the AppFolders into disk images.)
- Have you seen technology XYZ? It already does some of this. (Yes, I have seen it. That's why there's a link to it at the bottom of the article.) ;-)
Now I realize that the language could use some cleaning up in a few places (especially the last article which was a bit rushed), but is it possible that something else is impacting people's ability to read clearly? For example, does the blog color scheme cause anyone here problems? I've been considering changing it, but I'm none too happy with most of blogger.com's offerings. I may have to create a custom template. :-/
Welp, back to the grindstone. (With a little sleep in between.)