[geeks] OSX Server

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 @ 08:38 -0500, Patrick Giagnocavo said:

> re:  GNOME
> 
> It is still amateur hour at the GNOME ranch, see:
> 
> http://blogs.sun.com/roller/comments/tpenta/Weblog/dtracing_on_the_train_gnome
> 
> a long posting, but this jumps out towards the bottom:
> 
> """ So basically, it looks like gnome-vfs-daemon is reading the mount
> table of the system every three seconds.

That's hardly their worst sins.

Run a trace on a Gnome application starting up.  Sometimes 99% of the
work done is loading the theme data.

Themes are already expensive, and while I don't mind them too much, they
should at least be efficient.

For example, I've seen the *SAME* theme data files read multiple times
in a single exec.

For that matter, why does each application have to access them at all?
Why isn't this data already in memory somewhere for all apps to get as
needed, since all of them should be using the same data?

That alone would greatly reduce resource consumption.

I see this kind of code logic all the time:

    mkdir("some directory");
    if (that didn't work) {
	assume_directory_already_there();
	...
    }

Not only is the assumption invalid, it wasn't necessary.  It should be
this instead:

    if (directory is not there) {
	mkdir(directory);
    }

...and of course the error check should verify what the problem was.  It
saves time and avoids errors.

There is a lot of that kind of thing in there.

Then you have things like Evolution, which I've been looking at for
mostly curiosities sake.  

It's got a bad case of Windows configuration disease.  It stores
configuration data in multiple locations, some of which I've never been
able to find.  I can delete everything related to that program, but when
I start it up the damn thing still has all my email account information.

Don't these morons know that this is one of the number one defects in
Windows and Windows applications?  Don't they think that maybe, just
maybe, there are times when you need to know where data is to back it up
or get rid of it?

In fact, I worry about the whole gconf thing.  It is better than Windows
registry, but only if they don't start making the same mistakes.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Consulting wouldn't be what it is today
without Microsoft Windows" -- Chris Pinkham]