HTS Needs to Stop Sucking

[Brendan2011]

But I digress... Just so you're aware, much of the Recode devs have FULL ROOT access to the boxes they're working on. Further, the project is very transparent, as the code is freely available, marginally documented, and visible to anyone who just simply asks. How is this opaque and holding things with a steel grip?

I would be quite surprised if they did not have full root access to the boxes they are working on, seeing as how they are working on their own boxes. The project is not very transparent, as evidenced by the lack of updates, and the code is certainly not freely available, nor is it open to anyone who simply asks. Furthermore, my steel grip comment was not referencing the transparency of code anyway.

The reason we were on our own boxes was due to an issue with PHP on Kage's box that I resolved a few days ago. Also, about the recodes transparency, everything I do/am doing is public... in a way. We recently got the DNS set up for http://blog.hackthissite.org/.

HTS never changes, eh?
Still drama, a lack of active devs, and Monica sticking her hand in the dev cookie jar past her bedtime.
Like I said before, I'd love to help out around here again, but only as an official dev this time. Years ago HTS milked me for missions and didn't really give anything back. (Although Monica did give me a spiffy title which was appreciated)
I was contacted by Bren2010 about coding some missions, but I'd like to hear the opinions of ALL of the devs as well.

Uh, from what I heard, you applied for developer several times and were rejected repeatedly.

He did, due to "a certain HTS staff members opinions about [him]." However, a certain HTS staff member's opinion is irrelevant to me asking him to code some new missions and saying he's helping with the recode (as it would not be a lie).

-- Thu Jan 20, 2011 7:39 pm --

btw, are we people entitled to ask whether the new code is based on MVC? If yes, which framework? Zend?

Uh dude, they've written their own shoddy MVC system. You have no idea....

You are right. You do have no idea. How stupid of Thetan code his own MVC framework that has all the same features as a normal MVC and still loads in 0.007 seconds on average (faster than CodeIgniter by a mile). And his shoddy MVC framework, Blue Elephant, is so lightweight it even withstands Siege on fucking Apache and hardly ever misses a single request (still returning in unbelievable time). Not to mention that he wrote, optimized, benchmarked, and audited every line instead of relying on the knowledge of strangers to make sure the code was secure and efficient.

What trash. Lets dump months of work and install Joomla and phpBB3. After all, it's better for the community.

[sanddbox]

We recently got the DNS set up for http://blog.hackthissite.org/.

Yet there has not been an effort to document the recode, nor has that blog been made public. It's a pity, because it looks great.

HTS never changes, eh?
Still drama, a lack of active devs, and Monica sticking her hand in the dev cookie jar past her bedtime.
Like I said before, I'd love to help out around here again, but only as an official dev this time. Years ago HTS milked me for missions and didn't really give anything back. (Although Monica did give me a spiffy title which was appreciated)
I was contacted by Bren2010 about coding some missions, but I'd like to hear the opinions of ALL of the devs as well.

Uh, from what I heard, you applied for developer several times and were rejected repeatedly.

[mutantsrus]

HTS never changes, eh?
Still drama, a lack of active devs, and Monica sticking her hand in the dev cookie jar past her bedtime.
Like I said before, I'd love to help out around here again, but only as an official dev this time. Years ago HTS milked me for missions and didn't really give anything back. (Although Monica did give me a spiffy title which was appreciated)
I was contacted by Bren2010 about coding some missions, but I'd like to hear the opinions of ALL of the devs as well.

Uh, from what I heard, you applied for developer several times and were rejected repeatedly.

He did, due to "a certain HTS staff members opinions about [him]." However, a certain HTS staff member's opinion is irrelevant to me asking him to code some new missions and saying he's helping with the recode (as it would not be a lie).

From what I remember, I only ever officially applied once. I was instructed by Comperr to do the dev test in JS, which I did. Not only did I do it in JS, I did it all inline, yet I was rejected. Fair enough, I was a n00b back then and wasn't too good at PHP. Much MUCH later, I asked about devving (at this point several of my missions had arleady been added to the site) but was informed by Monica that I'd never ever be a dev because of the views Silent Shadow held of me. His opinions were soley based on some of my behavior on the forums and in a few articles. Note that I was 13 or 14 at the time I said those things and it had been over 3 years since then. It's not fair to continue to hold such things against me, nor is it conducive to progress. Now, at the ripe old age of 18, I feel it's not asking too much to let go of the past.
Why is it that my missions are good enough to be taken and used for the site, yet I'm not deserving of a dev title? I've contributed more to this site than many devs have and would like to contribute more, but I refuse to let the past repeat itself.

[sanddbox]

Then apply again and we'll consider it. Using this thread to criticize us for not hiring you is poor form, especially when you yourself admit that you behaved immaturely in the past.

[Wells]

-- Thu Jan 20, 2011 7:39 pm --

btw, are we people entitled to ask whether the new code is based on MVC? If yes, which framework? Zend?

Uh dude, they've written their own shoddy MVC system. You have no idea....

You are right. You do have no idea. How stupid of Thetan code his own MVC framework that has all the same features as a normal MVC and still loads in 0.007 seconds on average (faster than CodeIgniter by a mile). And his shoddy MVC framework, Blue Elephant, is so lightweight it even withstands Siege on fucking Apache and hardly ever misses a single request (still returning in unbelievable time). Not to mention that he wrote, optimized, benchmarked, and audited every line instead of relying on the knowledge of strangers to make sure the code was secure and efficient.

What trash. Lets dump months of work and install Joomla and phpBB3. After all, it's better for the community.

It does not have all the same features as a normal MVC framework. You are constructing URLs with code like this:

Code: Select all

<a href="<?php echo $GLOBALS['config']['site']['baseURL']; ?>acl/edit/<?php echo $role['name']; ?>">

This is a joke. You have no proper routing system for handling URLs which is a vital thing to have. That's just one small detail.

But the main point is, you don't need to code this all yourself. Codeigniter is pretty much the most light-weight and fastest framework out there. It's there and ready to go and anything it doesn't have you can add to it. Request speed is mostly insignificant once you can handle 50 requests a second.

You're making the same mistakes that all young coders make. You're focusing on totally the wrong thing. Too much on low level features and performance that we don't need. And you say Thetan coded, benchmarked, audited, etc. Thetan is one guy, and I trust an opensource product developed by a many paid professionals (it is developed mostly by a software company) more than I trust Thetan's code. Codeigniter is tried and tested, and is used by many people. This means the design has solidified and its flexible enough to suit a number of needs.

Lets dump months of work and install Joomla and phpBB3. After all, it's better for the community.

Yes, let's. Because it's not like this custom-made framework is finished and will let you code stuff really efficiently straight away. It's a half-baked solution which is going to continue to need attention and man hours, man-hours which are better spent on creating actual content and end-user features.

You also have no efficient database access layer or ORM. What are you going to do in this area? Because if you are going to code all your model objects and implement the accessors and properties and database mapping yourself then you are making another mistake.

-- Fri Jan 21, 2011 9:33 am --

http://blog.hackthissite.org/
http://plz.rewt.me:82/worksheet.html

Kage and bren2010, you really have to answer this: why are you writing your own blog engine? It's worse than I thought. You are writing a blog engine. That's so far away from what HTS needs it's not even funny anymore. There are literally thousands of blog systems you can use. You really don't need some kind of 'integration' with the site which I'm guessing you will say. All you need is a wordpress site with a few staff accounts added.

I'm actually stunned at this point.

And of course we have the problem that nobody will post anything to them. Why don't you let people post news items on the main site for a start? Just turn that into your developer's blog for the time being. If the main site started having news posts on the home page titled "Developer Blog #1 - Missions system started" then nobody is going to complain. You either use what you already have, or you get one of the many existing blog platforms and use that. You don't start coding your own blog engine when there are an infinite number of more important things to be doing.

[Kage]

When it comes to meetings and lectures and pretty much anything else, IRC is the worst communication medium you could possibly choose.

Forums and mailing lists and google groups are where real progress is made. People can respond from different time zones, they can take their time and prepare well-thought-out responses. IRC should never be used to get anything important organized.

Hmm, perhaps you're right. A discussion page rather than a live chat does have some good merits. I might give that a shot, although I do like having everyone immediately present to discuss pressing issues as well.

I'm in the staff channels 4-6 hours a day. If you get a message from me and I log offline before you respond, contact me later. The last time (and first time) I talked to you in private message was December 2nd, and it was an 8-line conversation. If you don't like the file type (which I can understand), send me a message asking to change it rather than ignoring me.

I said quite clearly that the lack of financial transparency is a problem (in fact, it's in my list of proposed changes). I am not in any way accusing you of stealing money, but I am saying that we have no way to know that you are not. This is why financial transparency is a much.

Comparing HTS to a company is absolutely ridiculous. Professional developers get paid and thus will accept ridiculous rules and bureaucracy. Here, developers labor for free; as such, it is important they have what they need to develop unhindered.

I would be quite surprised if they did not have full root access to the boxes they are working on, seeing as how they are working on their own boxes. The project is not very transparent, as evidenced by the lack of updates, and the code is certainly not freely available, nor is it open to anyone who simply asks. Furthermore, my steel grip comment was not referencing the transparency of code anyway.

Did you tell him you were waiting for code to upload, or did you simply not respond?

In order of quoted paragraphs:

1) You're not in any of the ones we're actively discussing projects in, at least not when I'm present (which is frequent and random between 9am and 10pm EST). If there's a time you want to specifically meet with me, let me know, you have methods to contact me. And Dec 2nd? Dude, we talked 4 or 5 days ago.

2) Actually, you just did accuse me of stealing. If we opt for financial transparency, I want HTS to become a registered 401C first, otherwise disclosing our finances publicly isn't the wisest of ideas. I have no problem being candid and honest, but disclosing our financial records without any legal backing isn't wise. Also, for what it's worth, HTS's income qualifies as taxable on my income, and I pay those taxes. Obviously, I'm stealing fucktons of cash from HTS.

3) Just because HTS devs don't get paid does not mean I'm gonna throw everyone root access and say "Have a fucking blast." Everyone has what they need to develop just fine, people just bitch incessantly because they're not given all the access they want. If they need it, they have it or can figure a clever solution to make it happen. Just because someone is a forums dev and asks for access to the entire code repo does not mean they need it and are going to get it. And when they hear this, ohhh do they bitch about it. No one is or was ever inhibited, they just don't wanna do shit if they don't get their way, and don't want to do any thinking to get info they need. Again, given these problems, those people ought not to be devs at all.

4) When Bren returns from idle, this is something I'm likely to fix later. I'd like to get Redmine operational, which will solve several issues you and others have about transparency, update tracking, documentation, wikis, and discussion forums.

5) I've never gotten code from him, he knows I haven't and am still waiting on it (he bitches about this frequently, and I frequently remind him "send me something or shut up"), but likely I'll get blamed for it it somehow anyway.

Kage and bren2010, you really have to answer this: why are you writing your own blog engine? It's worse than I thought. You are writing a blog engine. That's so far away from what HTS needs it's not even funny anymore. There are literally thousands of blog systems you can use. You really don't need some kind of 'integration' with the site which I'm guessing you will say. All you need is a wordpress site with a few staff accounts added.

I'm actually stunned at this point.

And of course we have the problem that nobody will post anything to them. Why don't you let people post news items on the main site for a start? Just turn that into your developer's blog for the time being. If the main site started having news posts on the home page titled "Developer Blog #1 - Missions system started" then nobody is going to complain. You either use what you already have, or you get one of the many existing blog platforms and use that. You don't start coding your own blog engine when there are an infinite number of more important things to be doing.

Actually, the blog system should be done, and I'll slap Bren if he's still focusing on that over more important issues. In reality, all it ought to really be is a news post or article post system with commenting enabled. Anything more and we're duplicating resources unnecessarily. The blog system is for staff to post frequently about the current state of affairs within HackThisSite. It is meant to offer another layer of transparency to HTS by allowing users the opportunity to see what we're doing at the moment.

[Wells]

News: HackThisSite v5 Development Started
Posted 21st January 2011
Bren2010

Hi there everyone! As you may know we are planning to begin development of a new version of HackThisSite. Some of the feedback we have heard is that you would like more updates in the form of news or blog posts, detailing our progress as this development continues.

Because of this feedback we have decided to postpone development of the main site while we write a revolutionary new blogging engine that will allow our developers to keep you updated on our progress. This new engine sports page-load times as low as 0.007 seconds, that's just 7 milliseconds ! Some of the other planned features include:

• A new customized comment system rather than the free Disqus service. We have not yet decided why ours will be better, but rest assured every single line will be reviewed, audited and benchmarked to give you the best security and performance possible.
• Pagination - when there are too many blog posts to fit on the home page, our exciting new pagination algorithm will automatically generate links to other pages so you can continue to read what our developers have been posting to the site.

We hope you are as excitead as we are about this new development and hope to have this blogging engine feature-complete by August of this year. After that we can immediately begin work on the main recode effort.

Thanks, and stay tuned!

---

PS: I see a "Blog" link next to people's names here on the forums. Couldn't we just use that?

[Defience]

.....and hope to have this blogging engine feature-complete by August of this year. After that we can immediately begin work on the main recode effort.

kiyoura, xelix, droptable, MrBear, thedotmaster, Bren2010, (To Be Announced).

[Kage]

.....and hope to have this blogging engine feature-complete by August of this year. After that we can immediately begin work on the main recode effort.

kiyoura, xelix, droptable, MrBear, thedotmaster, Bren2010, (To Be Announced).

Ohai, sarcasm, meet Defience.

[Defience]

Kage.....Wells is obviously all for HTS using codeigniter and he's made some interesting arguments as to why. I am curious as to what you feel the cons are of it and why it's better that we build from the ground up.