All applications suck
Seriously, I don’t know what is wrong with me. I just can’t seem to find any usable software package lately. Either they all suck, or I’m being too demanding or impatient. Probably both, there’s a lot of crappy software out there—which includes my own. Most software depends on either a specific database system, a specific programming language, or has far too many dependencies (have a look at slash or scoop for example, gah).
Last monday I ran into a fixed limit in the X protocol, I had opened rougly 220 X terminals, at which time I couldn’t open any more because the X protocol somehow allows only 240 client connections. (Yeah I know, I have a habit of not closing them when I’ve done something—have a look at this screenshot to get an idea of what my desktop usually looks like.) Why is there even a limit like this? It probably has something to do with the X protocol being invented when computers were slow and networking bandwidth was limited, and terminals seemed like a good idea, so fixed field lengths were being used. There’s Fresco, but I have never looked at it long enough to tell whether or not it fixes these things.
Isn’t there some kind of way to make these things more generic? I don’t want to install php if I have perl available, I don’t want to install mysql if I already have postgresql installed. Hell, if I wanted to use XML files or Oracle, why not use those? And I certainly don’t like to be forced to use a certain desktop environment—if you’re bored and have some internet bandwidth to waste, try to install konqueror on an otherwise pure GNOME-system.
I often threaten to write my own programming language, my own operating system, and given the time and motivation I’d probably rewrite everything in existance to fix limitations like these.
The latest project I’m working on (kansloos.it) involves selecting a news or weblog package, something that allows me to post short stories, lets users submit stories, and some level of integration with several forums on the same site. I’ve been increasingly frustrated by blosxom, and from talking on IRC I’ve heard a lot of similar sentiments about other weblog packages. Now it tends to go in the direction of writing yet another weblog implementation, which probably also has its own constraints and weird limitations, and it won’t be finished for a while either.
So what am I going to do? I just wrote “write weblog system” on my todo-list…