Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

This for the Internet app nerds among the readers…

The student teams in 6.171, the software engineering class that I’m teaching this semester at MIT, are required to document their servers.  By the end of the term, they are supposed to have something more or less like http://philip.greenspun.com/doc/ (doc dir for my personal Web site; rather bloated because it is based on a toolkit that is much more powerful than the features I’m using).  I would have expected them to write their documents in HTML.  One team has chosen to do their documentation in LaTex output to PDF.  I personally hate it when information is only available in PDF, but can’t really say why.  They don’t need equations or anything fancy.  HTML would suit them fine, but they apparently find it easier to write in LaTex.

I always think that if a Web developer can’t write HTML by hand in his or her sleep that he or she probably isn’t very good.  So the use of Microsoft Word or some other tool to author is a telltale sign of incompetence.  Is this just prejudice?  On what grounds can I tell these folks that a Web site should be documented in HTML?

[Fun experiment:  Do a Google search for “latex” and compare the pages returned with the ads on the side…]

[Update after a few days of reflection:  I think I finally figured it out.  The first and most obvious answer is that documentation for Web systems need a lot of hyperlinks, and therefore HTML is better than PDF.  The deeper answer is that the students don’t realize that they are supposed to be software engineers and not students.  The student turns in a paper.  It will never be updated.  LaTex is great for that, as it was designed for journal papers that were never updated, except maybe by the author.  Internet applications are fluid, however, and they get updated frequently, which requires corresponding frequent updates to the documentation.  The students who decided to use LaTex are implementing their service in Microsoft ASP.NET.  Eventually it will be taken over by some Microsoft certified programmer.  Even supposing that they provide the LaTex source (right now they just have the PDF on the server), what are the chances that this person will have heard of LaTex or know how to use it?  By contrast, if you document a Web service in HTML, you know that whoever takes it over will be able to edit it because nobody ignorant of HTML would be touching a Web service.  (Of course, if the HTML was originally authored in Microsoft Word, the person needing to edit it would curse you because there would be so much extraneous garbage to wade through.)

So… LaTex/PDF good for a student turning in an assignment.  Hand-authored HTML good for documentation that you expect some future programmer to take over and edit.]

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The departure of Larry Summers from Harvard should encourage us all to spend a moment giving thanks that big organizations are generally commanded by bland, uncreative, risk-averse folks.  If big universities were typically home to hard-charging, plain-speaking, creative men and women like Larry Summers, new and small schools such as University of Phoenix would never stand a chance.  The same goes for big corporations.  The only thing that saves entrepreneurs from irrelevance is the fact that so many steady and boring executives clog the hallways at the Fortune 500.

Why are people near the top of big organizations typically so risk-averse?  They’ve got a lot to lose.  If you’re making a big salary, enjoy big prestige, and have all the perks, you want to make sure above all that you don’t blow it by taking a risk.  This is why most stock mutual funds don’t perform that differently from the S&P 500; the managers want to make sure that they don’t do so poorly that they get fired or that investors make substantial withdrawals.  They won’t place big bets, even ones that they think are very likely to succeed, because any big bet entails some risk of dramatic underperformance relative to the index and therefore the end of the personal gravy train.

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I was saddened to hear that Larry Summers had resigned as Harvard president.  Some friends and I had been wondering how large a donation it was going to take to get Larry to change his name to “Professor Dumbledore” and the name of the school to “Hogwarts”.  Now it may never come to pass 🙁

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Shimon Rura and I have developed a JavaScript (Ajax)-based slide show program.  You can test it out at http://philip.greenspun.com/photography/exhibits/slide-shows and the comments in the code explain how to adapt it for use on another site.  Unlike some other programs that we have seen, this one downloads all of the images in the background so that changing from slide to slide is instantaneous for the user, with no time spent looking at an “image loading” screen.  The thumbnail feature seems kind of nice too.  That is done with browser-resized images.  We’re looking for design experts who want to write skins for this system.  Basically we need some styles and buttons (the ones you see were done in GIMP in a few minutes by Shimon and don’t work very well with MSIE).  Credit will be given.  Comments would be appreciated on any aspect of the program and its interface.

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A friend at Boston Children’s Hospital wants to establish an online community for 400-1000 people who are either working at the hospital or are parents of children with a specific disorder.  He basically wants a discussion forum, but with state-of-the-art features for moderation, spam-proofing, and karma-assignment.  His main concern is quickly identifying people who are negative contributors and getting rid of them or changing their behavior.  Is there a good free and open source software package that he can simply install and run?  drupal.org perhaps?

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For my aviation nerd friends: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/avidyne-versus-garmin (a comparison of the Avidyne and Garmin G1000 glass cockpits).

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Folks:  We’re teaching 6.171 again this semester and need some examples of online communities.  We would appreciate comments containing URLs of interesting online communities to check out and cite as success stories for the class (don’t bother citing slashdot or other well-known ones).  I’m particularly interested in online communities in which people are identified and authenticated with their real name and city (Amazon has this going to some extent in their reader reviews).

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I’ve finished a draft of http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ (originally sketched for some of my friends who were early employees of Google).  Comments/corrections would be appreciated, either in this Weblog or via email.  I would especially appreciate suggestions of relevant books and movies (see the end).

Thanks!

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In http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/30/gates-proposes-cellphones-as-alternative-to-olpc/ there is a story about Bill Gates proposing that people plug their cell phones (running quality Windows XP Mobile, of course) into a keyboard and TV and, voila, instant home computer.  Sounds as though Microsoft may be gradually coming around to  http://philip.greenspun.com/business/mobile-phone-as-home-computer 

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Upon returning from Hawaii, I discover that it was mostly around 60 degrees every day here in Boston during my absence.  People were walking around in T-shirts in January in Boston.  The newspaper carries stories of violent Islamic groups winning elections over in the Middle East (no surprise to the author of http://philip.greenspun.com/politics/israel/, but apparently a shock to other folks) and stories about our continued failure to keep Iraq under control.

George W. Bush has spent a lot of time talking about Iraq (earlier in this Weblog, I had suggested that he should never have spoken about it, but delegated the entire procedure of removing Saddam to a subordinate) and how Arabs, given the chance to vote, would put aside their hatred of the West.  His administration has also gone out on a limb saying that burning so much “dinosaur blood” into CO2 hasn’t warmed up the Earth.  A Bostonian who spent January in a T-shirt reading the newspaper is going to have some trouble believing our Great Leader.

So… the question is, what are some safe, yet significant, topics for George W. to be talking about?

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