Okke's blog

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Server vs Clientside - and when javascript comes into play

Well, my job interview didn't turn out as I had hoped. Well, too bad, but there's nothing I can do about it. 'Not enough experience', they said. Well, they're probably right. Another point, they said, was that I'd rather solve a problem serverside then clientside. They're a heavy-clientside (javascript) company, so I didn't really fit in. My view on server- and clientside differed from the company's view, I thought.. I first solve something serverside. Nothing fancy, just working. When I feel like it, I create some 'sugar on top': the javascript to help the page load faster (e.g., ajax) and check the user input to generate user-friendlier error handling. The company is working with javascript-only applications. What they want to create is not possible with server callbacks. I think any userinput will be checked by the server (never trust user input; you could be hacked), but they just trust on javascript. If it doesn't work, the application breaks. And that's ok; it is impossible to work with the application anyway if you don't have JS. Then it hit me: we didn't really have different views on the javascript subject, we just have different uses for it. While I'm creating websites with some extra sugar on top, they are building applications that require javascript. So it's perfectly reasonable for me to rather solve a problem serverside. For them, it's easier to the the same thing clientside. Guess I don't have enough experience still. A bit late, but merry X-mas and (a bit early) a happy new year, folks.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Darn hard to be original

A few weeks ago, I had a luminous idea: what if I had cigarettes with filter on the wrong end? So everyone will think you're smoking filter instead of tabacco. A friend of mine told me it was done. It was not only done already, it was done in a movie. The Fifth Element. Today I had another luminous idea for ruby: "Acts as taggable". I first searched the internet, because it's hard to be orignal nowadays. And it seems I was right. There is a fully working mix-in called 'acts as taggable' already. I'm not original. I'm too late. It's been 'gemified' even. Well, I guess I can't postpone my upcoming testweek at the uni. Too bad. Maybe I'll get a luminous idea while I'm reading a few hundred pages about "AI robotics", but I'm not so sure. [edit]Oh, in the last month I've installed apache at last. And I got it working. All happy now. And I got a job interview as a response to my blog. Yay! Let's hope it works out all right.[/edit]