Cobalt buys Chilli!soft 167
A number of folks have written to us regarding the purchase of Chilli!soft by Colbalt Networks. It seems that Cobalt is interested in Chilli's implementation of ASP for Linux for their own server appliances.
Uh, yeah, pass the bong, dude. (Score:1)
PERL/Tk = Visual Basic
PHP = ASP
Well, in a word . . . No. Perl/Tk is not Visual Basic. It's an entirely different language, with an entirely different (and much more difficult to use) GUI library, and NO IDE, NO visual development, no nothing. It's not even close. Furthermore, there's no COM. COM matters to these people. It's a very powerful architecture and they have a significant investment in it.
PHP isn't ASP for the same reasons (especially COM; see above). The customers I'm talking about do not want to learn a new language. If you want their business, give them what they want. If you don't, that's fine, but don't pretend that you're doing anything but deliberately handing over the entire market to Microsoft -- and merely out of boneheadedness. The average user will not learn to do things your way. You can compete effectively, or get marginalized. Your choice.
Configuring linux boxen *is* easy.
Fact: Setting up Apache with PHP is ten times as hard as setting up IIS with ASP. Again, your choice: Compete or die.
Re:This is a Good Thing (Score:1)
Ah, so now all the Linux idiots are ASP experts... (Score:1)
I've read through countless articles now by obviously defunct idiots, probably with absolutely no experience in this field, extolling the benefits of PHP, Python, blah blah blah. ASP is crap, everything else rulez d00dz! The classic, patronizing "We know how to install Redhat [or at least we pretend] so we're smart!" line is that it's the dummies who use ASP, while all the real geniuses use PHP, et. all.
History has shown me time and time again, and I am in a position to know, that the idiots that make these claims have no skills. These people are the bottom feeders of the software development world that manage to get nothing done while they advertise the next silver bullet that the Linux/open source movement has proposed that'll save the day! It's all a defensive gesture because they're so busy wasting oxygen that they have to defend their existence somehow : They see the light!
Meanwhile, all those "dumb" M$ croonies are busy putting out page after page of productive solutions for clients. ASP is not an all encompassing solution : It was never meant to be! From a basic foundation ASP is merely a scripting plug in (any language, include PerlScript, BTW, can fall under the ASP umbrella), plus a core set of objects that exist under any of those languages : Objects to find out states from the server, get put and post variables, write out information, etc. This is a SIMPLE technology, and it is meant to be. The power comes through the instantiation of COM/OLE Automation objects via ASP scripting : I don't fuck around with some wanky all encompassing language if I need to do something hardcore -> I pull out Visual C++ 6, or even Delphi, and crank out an OLE Automation object (or an ISAPI module but that's a whole different story). Voila, suddenly ASP is infinitely extendable! ASP has full object awareness, and has _NO_ limits. All you experts that are apparently grossly unaware of that need to shut your fat, completely ignorant mouths because the shit that comes out is offensive. And for the next yokel that spouts out about the superiority of PHP, etc, learn that some of us work for solutions, not to circle jerk with a bunch of our open source buddies.
Bye bye now ya hear.
Heh (Score:1)
does seem to attract an unusually high percentage of pretenders (even by IT standards!).
Heh: "even by IT standards". I hear you so loud and so clear it hurts . . .
And if the hypothesis about VB programmers' fear of exploration postulated above is even remotely correct, the vast majority of VB developers will either shy away from or horribly misunderstand the new features.
Most likely "horribly misunderstand". Those people will use whatever Daddy Gates tells them to use, and they'll praise it to the high heavens. Understanding it is a different matter entirely; they generally have a rather dim grasp even of the features VB has already.
VB Programmers' Resistance to Other Languages (Score:1)
> but VB, why haven't they learned anything but
> VB? If they have learned another language,
> they're not playing with VB any more.
Whoah! I spent last summer working in a VB-only development shop (Guido forgive me, but I was stuck in the boondocks and desperate for a summer job) and now that I think about it this statement rings true with EVERY LAST ONE OF MY FELLOW "PROGRAMMERS". I'm not about to imply that everyone who uses VB is an drooling oaf, but it does seem to attract an unusually high percentage of pretenders (even by IT standards!).
I can't even begin to articulate how frustrating it was to attempt to point out to these clowns how much more languages like Java or Python (not to mention C++, but it's inappropriate for RAD IMHO) have to offer. They simply would not listen.
As far as I can tell, M$ is just playing catchup to other languages with VB7's new features. And if the hypothesis about VB programmers' fear of exploration postulated above is even remotely correct, the vast majority of VB developers will either shy away from or horribly misunderstand the new features.
It'll be interesting to see how all the VB lemmings handle the indomitable rise of Linux. I'd like to think that the powers that be will take advantage of the era of transition to force VB programmers to switch to a jewel like Python + a great IDE, but a more likely outcome (given the above hypothesis) is that some VB port will emerge (other than Instant Basic for Java, which apparently didn't make an appreciable impact).
Re:Like it or not . . . (Score:1)
> develop GUI-less apps (e.g. Windows NT
> services) in VB.
I'm well aware of that. I should have phrased my indictment of VB more clearly.
>
As I maintain in the post entitled "VB Programmers' Resistance to Other Languages", I don't see any VB7 feature that hasn't existed in real languages for years. Of course, that won't prevent Microsoft's worshipful hordes of VB slugs from ooing and ahhing (after VB7 emerges) about what a unique combination of ease and power their language offers. I suspect that although average VB developers won't take advantage of most of the new features, they'll use the new features as justification for their pathological fear of anything non-VB.
Re:Like it or not . . . (Score:1)
Python preserves VB's RAD abilities without stooping to impure/obsolete language design (witness VB's awkward arrays with their host of accompanying keywords versus Python's elegant lists).
I believe that the only serious obstacle to Python becoming cross-platform-VB-done-right is its lack of a refined IDE (Python will probably never overcome VB on Windows because of M$ marketing/FUD, but look at the Linux opportunity!).
What do you think?
Re:Like it or not . . . (Score:1)
Mmm... (Score:1)
Oh. Sorry. Am I the only person who thinks that "Chilli!Soft" is a really dumb name? They should be happy about being bought by a reputable company. (read: with a marketable name...)
I guess I just lose it when they start talking about that "integrating Chili!Soft Active Server Pages technology". I'd never buy Microsoft chili on the web; I'm sure it'd taste like ASP!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Hmm, Python . . . however . . . (Score:1)
>if it's completely useless. It does have some very nice uses, although
>it'll never be my programming language of choice.
>This is an elitist attitude, and THIS is what will keep people from
>even WANTING to learn another language. (The attitude of 'well you're
>to stupid to learn anything but VB')
These people *ARE* too stupid to learn anything but VB. If they weren't they wouldn't be using VB....
Link goes to a blank page (Score:1)
Chilisoft is for Linux, not Windows (Score:1)
Basically, it means that you can let your users use Frontpage without worrying about what's supported and what isn't.
ASP yes, but IIS? (Score:1)
Anyone feel like working on that?
*of course, a browser-independant system would be preferable
Re:going for the intranet? (Score:1)
There's one underway. But it'll be a while. (Score:1)
Re:ASP? Why Bother? (Score:1)
Re:Consider brain replacement. (Score:1)
And since when did sheer numbers have anything to do with quality?
Uh, that would be since the original poster implied that Apache must be good since it has a 60% share.
Congratulations on having my earlier post fly completely over your head.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Re:Why do so many people repeat this pravda? (Score:1)
Nice flame!
Heh, I really hope you didn't take it the wrong way. There aren't all too many ways of saying, "I don't think you know what you're talking about" in a delicate way, but I hope you can see why I had my doubts from what I quoted. Your reply helped to clear things up. If you've ever stumbled upon my user info, you'd see that I'm no stranger to being moderated down for flaming the bloody hell out of people talking garbage around here, and I'm sure I won't be a stranger to it in the future either, but I didn't think you had any malicious intent in what you wrote, so I really was trying to get my point across without stirring things up (As was the case with that seemingly nice British guy who also replied to me in this thread). Again, I hope you didn't feel truly flamed, I was just trying for a little heat around the edges. :)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Re:Consider brain surgery. (Score:1)
First of all, Apache is an awesome web browser. 60% of the web sites are served using Apache.
Of course, Linux has a userbase of maybe around 3% of computer users. I'll leave it to the original poster to decide what that says about Linux's "awesomeness" or lack of it.
Consistency, my dear Slashdotters, consistency.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Re:Not Visual Basic, just ASP (Score:1)
VB != VBScript.
Re:Not Visual Basic, just ASP (Score:1)
Oh well. Looks like it does support VBScript.
Look Ma! I'm a Unix progammer now...
Re:Yikes, expensive (Score:1)
I'd happily pay cash for any piece of decent software. Programmers have to eat, pay rent, wear clothes, etc. just like any other people.
The big question is, will it become open source?
You pay the $1,000 (or whatever it happens to be) and you get the source code along with it (with some appropriate license agreement like SCSL)
That's what matters most.
Oh, BTW, although it does ASP, it doesn't do ActiveX which is the big hurdle. ASP is easy, it can be parsed through a perl filter to turn it into PHP. ActiveX is the problem - some things need those COM objects!
Licensing (Score:1)
Uhhhh... no.
It's under what (I guess) is called the WINE License [winehq.com] which is a lot closer to the BSD license [opensource.org] than the GPL [gnu.org].
And no, there's no provision (as far as I can tell) that stipulates that all files you link into an original work have to be open. Derived works have to be, but not the original, as long as it's linked in, not included in the source code. So linking closed-source VBScript/JScript would be ok. Of course, this is only my interpretation and IANAL (duh).
--
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
- Sean
Re:It's interesting to see /. get scooped... (Score:1)
But we already have free ASP! (Score:1)
http://www.nodeworks.com/asp/
Re:Like it or not . . . (Score:1)
IIS may be popular, but GUI based configuration should be an option, not the sole choice.
The Apache/CGI/PHP platform may not appeal to business folks, but it does appeal to techies and sysadmins who love it's simple text based structure. Encapsulation of business logic in text files, easily accessible by ASP/Perl/Python/tcl/C/C++/Java/Pascal/PHP/Pike/Obj ective C/Javascript, turns them on. This is where IIS/ASP really drags the rear.
Re:Yikes, expensive (Score:1)
When I worked for ChiliSoft (just an internship in QA) I spent a lot of time thinking about this.
Chili!Soft's primary target has been corporations who want to use VB/VBScript monkeys to churn out pages, then serve up set pages on rock-solid unix servers. The cost difference between good developers that know things like PHP, Perl, or Python and dime-a-dozen VB junkies is enough to make the cost of Chili!ASP negligable.
Chili!Soft is not claiming that ASP is the best technology, they only recognize that
Would I buy Chili!ASP for a home machine? No. Would I choose to use Chili!ASP if I was starting a web project from scratch? No - I would probably use zope [zope.org]. Would I encourage a company with web aps in ASP (or a large exisiting VB team) to switch from Windows+IIS to *nix+Apache+Chili!ASP? Definitely!
Re:The Big Question (Score:1)
Chili!ASP has been on unix systems for a while. Solaris and AIX were first, back in 98./p?
Re:Yikes, expensive (Score:1)
I never claimed that ASP is all about VB, or even that all VB programmers are on the level of trained monkeys. It is possible to do serious work with ASP, and I am sure some people do this. However, this is the norm, not the rule.
Most ASP development is done by cheap, marginally skilled VBScript developers glueing together technology that is beyond their true comperehension. It is possible for a skilled programmer to use VB as one of the tools in his toolbox, but such a programmer would be very exceptional in the VB crowd.
The main facts of my original statement remain.
I said nothing in my original post about, and I do not personally believe that, MS technologies are inferior to all linux has to offer.
I never even claimed that all linux options are superior to ASP. I did mention Zope [zope.org], but that is not a linux-only technology (Zope works on windows just fine). You shouldn't be so quick to make harsh accusations and call names, unless your purpose was to troll (I choose to assume you aren't a troll, just unbelievably thin-skinned, self-rightous, immature, and paranoid enough to invent attacks that I never made.)
If you had actually read as far as my sig, you would have noticed that VB developers aren't the only ones I piss off.
I wonder.... (Score:1)
Re:This is a Good Thing (Score:1)
Re:Chilisoft is for Linux, not Windows (Score:1)
Which by itself is not particularly useful. What makes ASP compelling is its ability to instantiate COM components. Hence you can implement your middle tier in C++ or Java, then call those components from ASP without writing extra code.
I don't see how the COM calling conventions are going to be made to work under non-MS operating systems. ASP by itself is not particularly useful.
Basically, it means that you can let your users use Frontpage without worrying about what's supported and what isn't.
Irrelevant. ASP and FrontPage are different. All the snazzy stuff in FrontPage is enabled by the FrontPage Server Extensions, which have been available for Apache for several years
Re:Like it or not . . . (Score:1)
Not strictly true; it is quite possible to develop GUI-less apps (e.g. Windows NT services) in VB.
Unfortunately, VB's sedimentary feature accumulation has destroyed its potential for soundness and beauty; the language is a mess.
Agreed. Although with VB7 it looks like the VB developers are going back to the drawing board and reworking some of the cruft in the language (e.g. exception handling).
Re:Like it or not . . . (Score:1)
The primary difference between IIS + ASP and (e.g.) Apache + ASP (via Chilisoft) is that IIS supports COM component instantiation from within ASP. This means that you can write a GUI app using Visual C++ or another dev tool and, so long as you've separated out the GUI from the implementation in your object design, you can instantiate your middle tier objects (via COM) directly from within ASP. Essentially, you can replace the Win32 GUI layer in your app with an HTML GUI layer provided by IIS without having to rewrite any of the core business logic.
For businesses with an existing OO/Win32 investment, IIS + ASP can make a lot of sense. ASP by itself, without COM, doesn't offer anything more than Apache + modperl.
Re:Hmm, Python . . . however . . . (Score:1)
Writing a large-scale, multi-tier business app in VB requires the same skills and knowledge as it does in any other language. I think you do VB developers a disservice with your comments.
Re:Almost there (Score:1)
[goes hunting]
Ah, yes. According to http://www.chilisoft.com/chiliasp/ar chdiag.htm [chilisoft.com], they've not only implemented Active Data Objects (ADO), but also the other base objects that come with ASP on IIS (FileSystem, TextStream, etc). That's cool. And the backend db looks to be pluggable, from that diagram; Oracle, MySQL and DB2 are mentioned.
With regard to instantiating other COM objects; according to http://www.chilisoft.com/chiliasp/ aspfaq.htm#com [chilisoft.com], no, it's not possible on native UNIX (figures). But a COM to Java bridge is available, so you can instantiate Java servlets as COM objects in your ASP scripts, and DCOM is also available, so you can continue to instantiate Win32 COM objects, just off of a remote Windows NT server!
Very cool!
Re:Hmmn? (Score:1)
Perhaps Cobalt decided to buy Chilli!Soft before Micro$oft did.
--
I gave my boss a reality check. It bounced.
Re:Hmm, Python . . . however . . . (Score:1)
This is an elitist attitude, and THIS is what will keep people from even WANTING to learn another language. (The attitude of 'well you're to stupid to learn anything but VB')
The Big Question (Score:1)
Also, is this an attempt to diversify so as to have some eggs in the MSFT basket?
More than just Linux, it's hoopy. (Score:1)
[OT] By the by, I'm in favor of reviving hoopy as a word myself. Good show.
Windows user speaks out... (Score:1)
And on a another note, i tried using ChilliASP with a different web server for a while, but it's not fully functional, it does includes before and evaluation, so that pretty much forced me back to iis
Re:Not Visual Basic, just ASP (Score:1)
I know it does JavaScript. But, I think the vast majority of ASP pages are scripted using VBScript. None of those pages will be able to be served up by Chili!Soft ASP unless someone starts porting the VBScript engine as well.
Not Visual Basic, just ASP (Score:1)
Re:Like it or not . . . (Score:1)
Just my
That's what I love about them high-school girls. I get older, they stay the same age... yes they do.
--Wooderson 1976
Re:It's interesting to see /. get scooped... (Score:1)
Interesting little bit of offtopic info... (Score:1)
What did I do with it? Brought it to Emmett over at the Slashdot booth, who promptly destroyed it. Then Emmett and some of the Slashdot crew, myself and a friend then walked over to Chilli!Soft's booth and promptly returned thier software which was in many many pieces.
Not pullin your leg.
http://geeksinnewyork.n3.net [n3.net]
That is our homepage for the trip, we've got pictures of Emmett trying to slice the CD with my lock blade knife.
Got to admit, the company has b*lls for giving out M$ software at a Linux Conference.
Webmin (Score:1)
Test based configuration isn't the only choice. You can also use webmin [webmin.com], which is a Web based configuration tool that lets you configure many system components (sendmail, bind, samba, ... and also apache) using a user-friendly browser frontend
Whats wrong with ASP anyway? (Score:1)
Its easy!
I mean really... lets say your person X who has to build a website for your small company. Your not a programmer at all, have very little experience with scripting languages, and in general aren't all that technical.
You look at some sample perl code, and your mind baffles.
You look at some sample asp code, and assuming they used vbscript (which like 90% of asp programmers do, but the choice is nice), its actually readable, even if you don't know what it does. Vbscript is very nonthreatening to a newbie user, because it bears at least a passing resemblance to english itself.
So, what are you going to go with?
Then later you decide you want to add a small databse to this small company site. Well, low and behold, you whip up what you want in MS Access, stick it on the server, and follow some very basic and easy to follow instructions at any ASP help site. Presto, you now have an online database which can serve a small company pretty well.
Then lets say in a couple months thats kind of overloaded... you add an MS SQL server in. You change your DSN around to point to the SQL Server, and if your adding dates into your database, change the delimiter. Done, the script now uses the SQL Server instead of the Access DB (ADO/ODBC are great for that).
Do you see where I'm going with this? Its significantly easier for someone who doesn't actually want to spend hours and hours dedicating themselves to learning how to do it to use ASP. Thats the market MS wanted to go after, and they did an excellent job of it.
If somebody can bring that definate ease of use advantage (and don't tell me its not there, I just went through this a couple months ago personally and I know for a fact its true) to Linux, thats great. Now if only they could do it for less then $1000, but maybe this acquision will lower the price somewhat?
So come on guys, don't rag on it because its an MS technology, they actually did a very good job of making it pretty painless to get a scripted site up and running.
oh really? oops, my bad. thanks for the correction (Score:1)
Re:Hmm, Python . . . however . . . (Score:1)
VB - 60%
TSQL/PL-SQL/Informix 4GL - 15%
C++ - 15%
C - 5%
Java - 5%
Perl - ~0%
Fortran - ~0%
68K assembler - ~0%
Why? Because this is what my employers pay me to write. And why do they pay me to write VB? Because (with a few exceptions) I can build the same functionality in VB about twice as fast as in C++ and at very little cost in terms of performance.
As all the 3733T Linux gods out there will find once they leave school, those of us making a living in the Real World end up doing what the client pays for because otherwise we don't eat. Comprende?
BTW - one great advantage of VB which no-one's mentioned here yet is that it's possible (with a bit of lateral thinking) to come up with far filthier hacks than are available in most any other language
--
Cheers
Re:I think that's changed (Score:1)
It's great if you're able to buy fully into the whole ColdFusion lifestyle, but if you need to step outside the bounds Allaire set - even for an instant - you're SOL.
--
Cheers
Re:So prove it . . . (Score:1)
Consider, for a second, that I may be in a country and an employment space different to your own. I contract: that means that (win one) I earn a reasonable living and (win two) I get to take four months holiday a year.
The downside (fundamentally) is that I only get paid if I'm writing code: no code - no cash - no food. It's not difficult to understand.
Now I take it from your blinkered worldview that you're a resident of the US of A: since I have no intention of uprooting my entire life to go and live surrounded by a bunch of slackjawed Yanks, the state of your job market and your economy is entirely irrelevant to my getting a job in my economy: I get probably two or three C/C++ jobs a week coming through against 30 to 50 VB ones. The only big C/C++ shops over here that are hiring contractors are the financial institutions and here, as a contractor, I'm hampered by a lack of a background in financials.
You sound like a Cobol programmer, quite frankly.
On the other hand, we recently interviewed somebody with about the same skill set you describe. He advertised himself as a C++ programmer: "Oh, I spend about 10% of my time at work in C++. It's my favorite language." So we gave him our entry-level pop quiz on C++. After he spent an hour struggling to come up with wrong answers to a five-minute quiz, we began to doubt that he'd ever written a line of C++ code in his life. That's not the only time I've seen VB programmers lie outrageously. In fact, in every case where I've been able to check their claims against reality, they've been full of shit. VB seems to attract people who don't really give a damn about programming; they just want to get a respectable job and make a quick buck. They're con artists, for the most part.
That said, at the moment, what I do is come in here every day and write C++ code, since that's what the job I'm doing at the moment requires (I'm writing a NT service that builds and serves .SWF files on the fly from details held in a relational database) - you're welcome to come and peer over my shoulder at the code to verify that it's real genuine C++ with classes and overloaded operators and semicolons and all...
If you're so certain that I wouldn't know a vtable from a iterator, mail me your C++ pop quiz: who knows, I may even be able to read it (assuming I can hold my finger to the screen long enough and avoid drooling on the keyboard)
As all the highly productive VB "programmers" out there would find if they ever got a job where minimal competence was expected of them, those of us who earn our salaries don't have much patience with "filthy hacks". Comprende?
Finally, you're assuming I put "filthy hacks" in my production code: this, sir, is an insult to anyone who ever submitted an entry for the IOCCC and I expect you to retract it immediately. Or do you just find the concept of programming for pleasure (even in VB) alien?
--
Cheers
Re:Hmmn? (Score:1)
Re:Hmmn? (Score:1)
going for the intranet? (Score:1)
Re:Hmmn? (Score:1)
Re:ASP yes, but IIS? (Score:1)
How about mod_auth_smb [tuwien.ac.at]?
If you are running apache on Win32 then you can use mod_ntlm [ozemail.com.au]
Re:InterDev for Linux? (Score:1)
ASP is nothing without those tools and the whole platform.
If you wanna support ASP, people are gonna ask for FP/InterDev support as well; and by then you're locked to MS' protocols (and we know what happens then).
Re:Ah, so now all the Linux idiots are ASP experts (Score:1)
I convinced my bosses that I could have their solution ready by the time it would take to have their NT machines rebooted for the 10th time (ie. installed the software).
Ok not all true but almost.
ASP is only good for very shortterm solutions, like guestbooks. I would never use it though.
Big solutions get very bloated very fast in ASP.
Not to mention impossible to extend.
Sure blame the developers, but you know that's the people that thinks ASP is the solution for everything. And that's the people that buy it.
And that's the people that show that ASP = VB.
While I continusly update and improve that site our IT-department raises projects of major proportions when they realize that they need this kind of site for the whole business.
I *know* that they will finally ask us how we did it, simply because we have a working solution that we *can* extend.
Too bad someone managed to unplug the machine by mistake, the 300+ day uptime got lost.
No, it's not one line of PHP, it's made with Roxen [roxen.com].
Go on do your "productive solutions for clients",
I do mine for servers and even MS has realized that's where the data is going to be.
Re:I wonder if they are going to open source it. (Score:1)
a little insight from when i worked there (Score:1)
The only food for 2 miles is a little deli in the building across the way., the place is literally the size of my bedroom and constantly has huge lines. But the food is good.
Oh also there was a service called "Roma Deli" (or something like that) that would stop by everyday around 12pm, all it was is this hot 20 something chick with a ice-cooler. The sandwiches we're overpriced and usually under par. Also the marketing guys would constantly hit on her.
I only worked there for about 2 months because the project I was under was this "rebel group" the CTO (and founder) was putting together. After about 5 weeks we find out he's leaving, apparently the CEO thought we're weren't getting any VC money because of him. And our most of group gets laid off.
This really blew for two new hires that just came on, one from Canada who left his family for the job, not to mention a gig with Coral. It didn't matter for me, for one I hated my job, and second I was on contract.
The IT "group" is this 20 something linux guy. There are some VERY smart people there. At one time we had a "brain puzzle" thing on the white board. Questions that really kill people at interviews, these guys got it FAST. Very smart.
The sad thing is the management just blew. I remember the first company meeting. Basically the CEO said, "ok, we have lots of money, but we need to start making some if we want some more.. so what we're going to do is become a "solutions provider, really give added-value benefit to the ISP virtual market, etc.. etc...". the next meeting it was more like. "ok, we have about enough money for another month. So what we're going to do is push for the linux ASP and try to get some "channel partners" with redhat and other distros".
I don't know what happened after that. But it seemed like a bunch of people we're jumping ship, the moral was pretty low. it seems like it's a good example of bad management killing good ideas and talent.
-Jon
Re:Lifted Directly From Chilisoft's Site (Score:1)
According to netcraft the
"Web Server Usage Ranked by Percentage of Top 100 Shopping Sites" you get.
IIS/ASP = 52%
Netscape = 22%
Apache = 21%
Other = 5%.
got this out of the last MicroNews, Microsoft's internal rag.
Re:Yikes, expensive (Score:1)
It's not for linux hobbyists. Maybe with this buyout things will change. I hope they do.
-Jon
ASP on Linux (Score:1)
Has anyone considered starting a free implementation? Are there licensing concerns with ASP? I cant imagine it would be too hard, considering we already have ASP->PHP, so the standard is probably well understood..
How hard would it be to create a 'wrapper' of sorts, which would run ASP stuff on PHP?
This is the problem with closed stuff on free OSs. If it is worth doing, someone will do it for free sooner or later, rendering your product worthless... Check VMware in a couple of years once FreeMWare (or whatever they are called now) have comparable functionality. I wouldnt be buying shares anytime soon....
No chili and no grits :) (Score:1)
I would assume the word chili comes from chile, which is spanish for peppers (does anybody knows?)
Orlando
Hmm, Python . . . however . . . (Score:2)
VB's sedimentary feature accumulation has destroyed its potential for soundness and beauty; the language is a mess.
VB never had any potential for soundness or beauty. If you decide to build a motorcycle, and you start with a bathtub, no good will ever come of it. Of course, they've made it much, much worse than it ever had to be -- you've got that right! But I don't agree that it could ever, under any circumstances, been anything but a momentarily interesting toy. It ain't Delphi.
I believe that the only serious obstacle to Python becoming cross-platform-VB-done-right is its lack of a refined IDE
I agree. People should probably start emailing Borland while Kylix is still in flux. They should be going for something like pluggable any-damn-language-you-like instead of just Pascal'n'C++. That could be a very Good Thing.
The problem is that even Python with a Delphish IDE would never be that much of a selling point to the VB crowd, because they're afraid of anything but VB. They simply refuse to learn other languages. The abysmal anthropoid cretinism of their attitude is obvious to you and me, but not to them and they're the ones who are keep MS on top of the industry. You should also take a brief moment to conteplate the sheer howling horror of trying to explain Python's indenting to a VB "programmer". Half of them left-justify all their code. I don't think more than one out of ten has the intellect necessary to understand that feature of Python. In practice, they'd get bizarre and unexplained (to them, I mean) behavior from their code, and get more and more angry, and ultimately beat the computer to death with a rock. You're drastically overestimating the intelligence of VB idiots if you think they are even capable of learning a useful programming language. They're not.
Re:Why do so many people repeat this pravda? (Score:2)
Re:I think that's changed (Score:2)
Re:Why do so many people repeat this pravda? (Score:2)
A professional programmer is more likely to write code which has been planned out and written with reliability and ease of maintainance than a novice. They're also a lot more likely to understand things like testing input bounds, error handling and the like (ever break a website by entering a ' in a field?).
Re:Why do so many people repeat this pravda? (Score:2)
Why do so many people repeat this pravda? (Score:2)
There's also considerable debate over just how easy ASP is. I've heard marketing types claim that but have never seen any justification for it. It's only easier if you already know VB and have Windows development experience with COM. Most of the people I know who've used both would consider ColdFusion much easier to start with, particularly if you have an HTML background. A coworker of mine mentioned that one of the web development classes he'd taken was supposed to cover both ColdFusion and ASP; by the end of the first week ASP was dropped by unanimous consent as everyone thought it was much harder and couldn't see a reason to use it. I've heard numerous similar comments about PHP vs ASP. VBscript is a mess and both JScript and VBScript are feature-poor languages. Does anyone want to spend time fighting their environment instead of building their application?
Ever try to send an email? It's one simple command in PHP or ColdFusion. It's several lines of ASP, assuming you have CDONTS or similar installed in the first place. Want to handle an uploaded file in a form? Very simple in PHP or ColdFusion, very complicated and non-intuitive in ASP. (No, I don't consider evaluating, purchasing, installing and using a 3rd-party COM object intuitive, particularly for a novice.)
Don't forget the documentation you'll need isn't in one place, either - there are separate sections for VBScript/JScript, ADO, CDONTS and everything else. A depressingly high percentage of the examples in Microsoft's documentation are just plain wrong to boot. How are newbies supposed to know where to find the documentation they need, much less judge whether it is correct? Note that neither of the common tasks I mentioned above is covered anywhere a novice ASP user would know to check, so they'll have to hope it's covered in a book or spend some time searching the web. In contrast, someone with a text editor and either www.php.net or the Cold Fusion docs would be able to develop page using only that information.
Re:Uh, yeah, pass the bong, dude. (Score:2)
(RedHat you ask? Of course a novice would use RedHat. If you want to complain, remember that I was being nice and assuming that NT was being installed with the defaults on generic hardware with the drivers on the Windows CD and that you weren't doing *any* IIS configuration, particularly not with things like virtual servers where it's very easy to get IIS into a state where it ignores its configuration data and displays error messages that have nothing to do with the actual problem.)
I think that's changed (Score:2)
Re:Ah, so now all the Linux idiots are ASP experts (Score:2)
It's a good scripting model, live with it. In fact, I can write a COM object in Perl and call its methods from ASP. Fun fun fun.
Correction: More than just Linux (Score:2)
And this [chillisoft.com] is what it does.
Sounds pretty hoopy. Let's hope Cobalt do decide to give back to the community that's put them where they are now and open-source it.
Re:InterDev for Linux? (Score:2)
Re:Like it or not . . . (Score:2)
Very true, although apache+php offers more or less the same solution as <insert webserver> + ASP.
At the end of the day, competing with Microsoft means providing Visual Basic, or something so much like it that the end user can't tell the difference. Productivity counts. They want to be able to knock together something professional in an afternoon without being overly technical, and ASP -- again, whether you like it or not -- lets them do that. If we can offer fully-functional ASP and IIS on Linux, we can start to clean up the last pockets of resistance.
PERL/Tk = Visual Basic
PHP = ASP
Those are my thoughts on that matter. Configuring linux boxen *is* easy. It used to be not so, but really, it's just a matter of
./configure
make
make install
nowadays. It's just not that hard anymore.
All that being said, I am in favor of ASP for linux because choice is a Good Thing.
This is a Good Thing (Score:2)
Linux ODBC Drivers (Score:2)
The application, if you're curious, is to integrate a Windows-based accounting program with a mySQL-based e-commerce site.
I'd like to hear reviews before I start using a commercial product, and it looks like that's what most of the other drivers are. So does anyone have experience with ODBC clients under Linux, and which one would you recommend? Ideally, it would have a similar API to mySQL, since I'm so used to that.
Many thanks for any thoughts.
D
----
not necessarily good for Linux (Score:2)
If Cobalt keeps ChiliSoft's software proprietary and makes it available only with their own products, that limits the overall availability of that kind of software. It would have been better for ChiliSoft to remain a separate company and sell their product to anybody using Linux.
If Cobalt open sources or keeps selling ChiliSoft's ASP software to others, it's altogether good. That would make it easier for more people to move to Linux from Windows. If open sourced, people could also implement the ASP features that are missing from the product themselves.
I hope the latter will happen, and I think it would be in the interest of Cobalt anyway. Anybody who is going to deploy a large web site based on ASP is going to need something like Cobalt hardware. By growing the market, they can grow their own revenues.
Of course, in the big scheme of things, ASP is not all that great (neither are JSP or similar approaches to dynamic page generation). So, in the long run, I hope this sort of software will just go away completely.
Yikes, expensive (Score:2)
I went to the Chili!Soft home page and was dismayed to find a hefty $1000 pricetag on the technology (you can get it for half off right now, for Linux -- still pricey).
Well, a license for NT Server is about that price these days, and you get IIS at no cost with that license. That includes the bona-fide ASP capabilities.
So what's so great about Chili!Soft ASP?
I mean, look what you can get for Linux instead of ASP:
PHP3
PHP4
Emb_perl
Mason (my fave!)
Not to mention good ol' CGI and some mod_perl.
These don't cost a dime and give you all the functionality of ASP.
Chili!Soft's main claim is that, with their ASP, you can use MS dev tools to develop web sites on multiple platforms. I say pbthbthbthhthbthb to that. Is that worth a grand?
Re:Why do so many people repeat this pravda? (Score:2)
Hi, I've noticed a number of posts from you on this topic criticizing ASP solutions, but these three little lines of yours should give anyone serious doubts about your credibility in this area:
In other words, if you really think that ASP pages can only be scripted with JScript or VBScript, as opposed to Perl or Python or something else, there's no way that you can have much knowledge about ASP.Not that I'm slagging PHP, I use it as well, and for the things it does, it does them very well. (At least PHP3 does. PHP4 shows promise, but I'm not too happy with it in real world usage. Of course, it's still in beta, so that's not entirely unexpected.) However, seeing someone repeatedly make seemingly authoritative posts on something with which they aren't very familiar just rubs me the wrong way. Not trying to be overly harsh, but I wanted to point this out.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Re:Why do so many people repeat this pravda? (Score:2)
The only way to get to the features of the OS is by using VBScript.
This is exactly what I was talking about with the previous poster. What you said is completely untrue. Every, and I mean every, OS feature that you can access with VBScript can be accessed with JavaScript or Perl or Python, among others -- they're free to use the Windows Scripting Host model just as VBScript does. It's been like this for years, which makes me think that your company didn't do a very good job of hiring if they were looking for an NT admin who was familiar with its features. I'm sorry for the bluntness -- I'm sure you have other skill sets at which you're a lot better than you are with NT -- but that's just the way I see it.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Re:Hmmn? (Score:2)
Except there's a little problem with your scenario. Cobalt has a market cap of a piddly $1.36 billon, meaning Bill Gates could buy them with the spare change found in his couch. COBT owning Chili!Soft won't stop Microsoft from buying COBT itself if they want ownership of Chili!Soft's work.
The real reason behind companies like Cobalt (and especially VA Linux) buying up all these other companies, just like Microsoft has done, is not rocket science -- it's proof that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. No matter how much they'll try to sucker you into believing otherwise, and no matter how often you'll let them succeed in doing just that (see Sun Microsystems), the goal remains the same: They all want to be the next Microsoft.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Forgot to mention one thing (Score:2)
1) I would rather strong standing linux fromthe start companies buy these guys up instead of some Microsoft wannabe (only in business practice and ethics).
2) They are just trying to supplement thier income and help turn a profit like any other business. The opensource software business model has NOT had a chance to prove itself. At least this way there is a guaranteed source of income for these companies in these commercial offerings.
3) It's a value added resource. Not a power pack with time restricted digital audio and a few themes).
Re:This is a Good Thing (Score:2)
http://www.devx.com/free/products/pgReview.asp?
Basically, on NT this means you can use ASP on (almost) any web server, rather than just IIS. On a different OS, you'd have to recompile the COM objects (can you *really* do this?) for say, Linux and then use 'em there, behind the ASPs running on the Chillisoft engine. I guess you could access remote COM objects this way too, but I don't know if this is highly performant; most ASP/COM stuff I've seen is on one box.
Of course, like most of the people posting on this topic, I've never used Chillisoft's product either .
-pbk
InterDev for Linux? (Score:2)
Lifted Directly From Chilisoft's Site (Score:2)
Based on Microsoft's Active Server Pages technology, the de facto standard for Web applications .
That's an odd statement. Isn't Perl/CGI used much more prevalently than ASP ?
COM on Unix (Score:2)
I wonder if they are going to open source it. (Score:2)
Re:It's interesting to see /. get scooped... (Score:2)
remember, this is slashdot. he must be GNU here.
Re:Like it or not . . . (Score:2)
If we can offer fully-functional ASP and IIS on Linux, we can start to clean up the last pockets of resistance.
And while whe're at it, why stop at full functionality? Why stop at reimplementing micros~1 applications and not use their tactics? Why not embrace & extend our GPLled versions and put in some nice new features?
If the extensions are any good, micros~1 will be forced to implement them...
-><-
Grand Reverence Zan Zu, AB, DD, KSC
Like it or not . . . (Score:3)
ASP (not to mention IIS) for Linux is important. It's all very well to hold the volume hosting market, but we need to get into the small companies that keep a web server in the closet and don't have a full-time sysadmin. That's where NT is holding their 24% (or whatever) of the market, and the only way we can go after them there is to provide the same features with greater reliability.
At the end of the day, competing with Microsoft means providing Visual Basic, or something so much like it that the end user can't tell the difference. Productivity counts. They want to be able to knock together something professional in an afternoon without being overly technical, and ASP -- again, whether you like it or not -- lets them do that. If we can offer fully-functional ASP and IIS on Linux, we can start to clean up the last pockets of resistance.
Re:Yikes, expensive (Score:3)
>considerations when thinking seriously about a Linux solution in a business.
Not in a business of any size. "Slightly Cheaper" might enter into it, but actual large-scale sites that might be making these decisions will be buying support contracts and heavy-hitting hardware and cooling systems and racks and on and on. The OS cost is just gravy around the edges.
>I went to the Chili!Soft home page and was dismayed to find a hefty $1000 pricetag on the
>technology (you can get it for half off right now, for Linux -- still pricey).
$1000 is not hefty for server software. Consider a large site with a farm of front-end servers, application servers, database servers, image servers -- a Yahoo or an eBay, say -- and start doing the math. You're likely going to pay more than that $1000 per box per month just to colocate it somewhere with adequate bandwidth.
>Well, a license for NT Server is about that price these days, and you get IIS at no cost with that
>license. That includes the bona-fide ASP capabilities.
Chili!Soft licensed the actual ASP engine from Microsoft. It's just as bona-fide.
>I mean, look what you can get for Linux instead of ASP:
All of those things are cool technologies, and some are in use at some pretty heavy-hitting sites. But ASP is also a very cool technology, and allows for VERY rapid development of dynamic content.
Also, unless you're going to be a Linux shop from end to end, most of your developers are likely to work on Windows boxes. (Not you, not me, but remember, we're talking about eBay-sized sites, here.) One benefit to using ASP is that you can have each developer working on a local instance of IIS on their Windows box, doing site development without impacting anyone else, then pushing final copies of the site, as-is, to a Chili!Soft-enabled farm of Linux or Solaris boxes to avoid uptime and stability issues.
>These don't cost a dime
Just to repeat the point I'm trying to make, Chili!Soft's target market is not www.mypersonalsite.com -- if $1000 makes you flinch, you're not playing in the league these folks are talking to.
>and give you all the functionality of ASP.
I _might_ give you PHP4 on that one. Otherwise, no. Read up on ASP -- it's very very cool.
>Chili!Soft's main claim is that, with their ASP, you can use MS dev tools to develop web sites on >multiple platforms. I say pbthbthbthhthbthb to that. Is that worth a grand?
Yes. See above scenario. MS' Dev tools are nice, nice enough to merit using them to build a site. When you're talking Internet Time, poking at CGI scripts with vi is just not going to cut it -- time-to-market is everything, and ASP allows for quick, solid development. Having it available on Unix/Linux flavors, with the actual licensed-from-MS engine, is a Very Cool Thing indeed.
--
Yeah. Great PHP RAD tools. Not. (Score:3)
And PHP3 is still woefully two-tier. Where are the fully-supported APIs for talking to transaction servers or CORBA and COM objects? And why write your core logic in a language different from your outer layer, as you end up doing with PHP? At least with ASP you can leverage VB skills one a few layers.
Even JSP (which is especially nifty at the 3-tier game) has RAD tools bublling up. There's the JSP version of Drumbeat and IBM's WebSphere Studio. AFAIK, both only generate code certified for WebSphere, but that's more than there is for PHP.
Nice move (Score:3)
Re:Hmm, Python . . . however . . . (Score:3)
---
The purchase is an insult! (Score:3)
http://www.cobalt.com/about/pres s/2000/000323.html [cobalt.com]
I was an Systems Engineer for a Cobalt reseller for about a year. I no longer work for the reseller, but have still been a fan of the products. After quitting my old job, I have actively been helping people out on the Cobalt users list, and still admin some Cobalt servers. I've been one of their strongest supporters... until they started getting into this whole Chilisoft ASP business
A couple of months back they announced that they would be offering support for the Chilisoft ASP product, I got pretty upset about the whole deal. To follow the thread, click here
Basically my argument is that there is an excellent opensource project called PHP [php.net] that pretty much does everything that ASP can do (and in most cases does it better, easier, etc.) that they are largely ignoring. They don't even offer a supported installation of PHP on their equipment. Its classified as 'experimental'. So rather than contribute developers to PHP and support the project, or even support it, they are going with a third party hack of a hack by Microsoft! What gives!?
I realize that Cobalt gear is targeted to companies currently deploying Microsoft technologies. But to skip over a very popular and worthy open-source solution in favor of a closed-source solution that is helping M$ technology market and mind share is an insult to the community their products are based upon.
So the only way for me to continue support Cobalt's products and their users, Cobalt will have to:
- Open Source the Chilisoft ASP Package
- Offer PHP *supported* & *out of the box*
If it doesn't happen, I'm going to no longer be a Cobalt advocate. I'd rather spend my money with a company like VA Linux that is actively promoting and giving back to the Open Source community. Hell, some could argue that even Sun has contributed more back to the community.-kris
Incidently, I did an informal survey not to long ago and lost the actual results, but I figured about 25-30% of Cobalt customers are using PHP on their machines currently in its 'unsupported' state. Imagine the penetration if they offered a supported out-of-the box solution? It would be a great boost to the PHP install & user base.
Almost there (Score:4)
If I were Cobalt, I'd start bundling two more things: a high performance JSP/Servlet implementation and management interface (Resin + a web front end), and a serious database. MySQL is nice if you're writing code from the ground up that can work around its lack of SQL standards compliance and other features, but it can be difficult to port code from other DBs to it. Once InterBase 6.0 is out for real, Cobalt will have a full presentation(ASP/JSP) and backend (InterBase) solution with near-zero administration (IB was made for exactly this sort of use).
I think that sounds like a pretty damn cool solution-in-a-box, much more sophisticated and maintainable than the current server appliances.
--JRZ
The Correct Link (Score:4)