usebb-development

[UseBB-Development] UseBB in 2009

[Dietrich M. <die...@us...>]

People have started expressing their concerns about UseBB, especialy
version 2 or lack thereof. As written previously, UseBB 2 development
has been in an inactive state for a large period of time.

Since the first inception of the project in October 2003, quite a lot
has changed on the web and in my personal life, work and interests.
The project started as a small experiment and PHP practice and took a
long time to get to the first stable release (1.0.0). Since then ideas
have existed to write a second version of the forum, solving the many
issues and mistakes made in the period I wrote UseBB 1 as a teenager.

Nowadays, I'm nearly 22, completed college and going to university to
complete a bridging programme and gain a Master's degree in Computer
Science. Next to this, I have got a few new hobbies and not to forget
a beautiful girlfriend. Prgramming in my free time has been at a very
low level during the previous years. The Last.fm Simple Stats module
for Drupal has been taken over and its development is now continued
thanks to a few people, though UseBB has mostly remained a single
person project and thus inactive during the past years.

While my free time is quite limited nowadays and my interest in PHP
went down, I still have the idea to complete UseBB 2 in PHP, but can
not give any date when this will be the case. It is certainly true to
state that at this day there are dozens different free forum packages
offering the same. And while UseBB 2 was planned with a different
feature set and possibilities, plans might change to adapt UseBB
better to what the web has become today, with YouTube and Facebook in
many people's daily life, and what people expect from today's web
applications.

The future after UseBB 2 is uncertain and depends on what interest it
will gain with the current and future users and developers. Quite
likely, if it depends on me, UseBB 3 (if any) will not be written in
PHP and thus will leave behind more than seven years of PHP
development experience to develop a new package in a different
programming language, taking the existing project (or a new one,
eventually) out of the PHP forum package forest.

So, what about UseBB for now? UseBB 1 is still there and 1.0.10 will
be released later on. UseBB 2 is in an alpha state and the development
will be picked up again, maybe next summer. UseBB 1 cannot give the
right solution to all forum software questions nowadays and as of this
day should be considered legacy software.

-- 
Dietrich Moerman
UseBB founder and developer

Re: [UseBB-Development] UseBB in 2009

[Canol G. <can...@ya...>]

> From: Dietrich Moerman <die...@us...>

> Nowadays, I'm nearly 22, completed college and going to university to


I'm 24, still like coding forums :)


> complete a bridging programme and gain a Master's degree in Computer
> Science. Next to this, I have got a few new hobbies and not to forget
> a beautiful girlfriend. Prgramming in my free time has been at a very


That's true, coding + girlfriend together means almost all the time you have. I've chosen coding, though :D


> While my free time is quite limited nowadays and my interest in PHP
> went down, I still have the idea to complete UseBB 2 in PHP, but can
> not give any date when this will be the case. It is certainly true to
> state that at this day there are dozens different free forum packages
> offering the same. And while UseBB 2 was planned with a different
> feature set and possibilities, plans might change to adapt UseBB
> better to what the web has become today, with YouTube and Facebook in
> many people's daily life, and what people expect from today's web
> applications.
> 
> The future after UseBB 2 is uncertain and depends on what interest it
> will gain with the current and future users and developers. Quite
> likely, if it depends on me, UseBB 3 (if any) will not be written in
> PHP and thus will leave behind more than seven years of PHP
> development experience to develop a new package in a different
> programming language, taking the existing project (or a new one,
> eventually) out of the PHP forum package forest.
> 


I don't like the design of the PHP language, either. There are lots of more powerful and elegant languages out there, but there is this truth: if you want to actually distribute your web application and like seeing that people actually use it than you _have to_ code it in PHP. Other languages just aren't as widespread as PHP and don't provide an easy solution as PHP, when it comes to web. This is most probably because PHP was designed for the web needs in Rasmus' mind.


> So, what about UseBB for now? UseBB 1 is still there and 1.0.10 will
> be released later on. UseBB 2 is in an alpha state and the development
> will be picked up again, maybe next summer. UseBB 1 cannot give the
> right solution to all forum software questions nowadays and as of this
> day should be considered legacy software.
> 


I'll look forward for any news on UseBB side since I think it is a very well coded and designed board. Also the design decisions made about UseBB 2 sounded pretty good and wonder how will they work.


Canol Gokel



      

Re: [UseBB-Development] UseBB in 2009

[Dietrich M. <die...@us...>]

2009/4/20 Canol Gokel <can...@ya...>:
> I don't like the design of the PHP language, either. There are lots of more powerful and elegant languages out there, but there is this truth: if you want to actually distribute your web application and like seeing that people actually use it than you _have to_ code it in PHP. Other languages just aren't as widespread as PHP and don't provide an easy solution as PHP, when it comes to web. This is most probably because PHP was designed for the web needs in Rasmus' mind.

PHP was a logical choice back in 2003 since it was the only language I
knew decently and wanted to know better. After seven years and much
more experience with programming languages, I usually can't call PHP a
clean language, even though I have loved working with it for many
years as well.

UseBB 2 will remain to be PHP 5 and if successful can be developed
further (in the existing project or in a seperate one). Though if I
would create a third version, it would be something different (e.g.
Python, Ruby, Java). The problem is not that it does not stand out (it
doesn't, but with UseBB 1's possibilities and userbase this can't be a
surprise) but that this might be a chance to start working in a new
environment and start a new "experiment" just as it was the case six
years ago.

--Dietrich

Re: [UseBB-Development] UseBB in 2009

[Cornelius <c....@gm...>]

Dietrich Moerman schrieb:
> 2009/4/20 Canol Gokel <can...@ya...>:
>> I don't like the design of the PHP language, either. There are lots of more powerful and elegant languages out there, but there is this truth: if you want to actually distribute your web application and like seeing that people actually use it than you _have to_ code it in PHP. Other languages just aren't as widespread as PHP and don't provide an easy solution as PHP, when it comes to web. This is most probably because PHP was designed for the web needs in Rasmus' mind.
> 
> PHP was a logical choice back in 2003 since it was the only language I
> knew decently and wanted to know better. After seven years and much
> more experience with programming languages, I usually can't call PHP a
> clean language, even though I have loved working with it for many
> years as well.
> 
> UseBB 2 will remain to be PHP 5 and if successful can be developed
> further (in the existing project or in a seperate one). Though if I
> would create a third version, it would be something different (e.g.
> Python, Ruby, Java). The problem is not that it does not stand out (it
> doesn't, but with UseBB 1's possibilities and userbase this can't be a
> surprise) but that this might be a chance to start working in a new
> environment and start a new "experiment" just as it was the case six
> years ago.
> 
> --Dietrich
> 
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Hi all,
This is my first post here, and I really don't even remember why i 
subscribed here in the first place, but I love programming, too, and 
even without a computer science master I saw that php is just nothing 
good anymore. Though as case study, or 'experiment', I'd love to 
participate in a C++ Bulletin board (or CMS) and benchmark that against 
the big players. C++ offers a clean, OOP way to program software, 
together with lots of librarys avaible for C and C++. If you ever would 
like to do that, just drop me a mail :=)
Cornelius

Re: [UseBB-Development] UseBB in 2009

[Dietrich M. <die...@us...>]

Op 20-apr-09, om 23:36 heeft Cornelius het volgende geschreven:
> Hi all,
> This is my first post here, and I really don't even remember why i
> subscribed here in the first place, but I love programming, too, and
> even without a computer science master I saw that php is just nothing
> good anymore. Though as case study, or 'experiment', I'd love to
> participate in a C++ Bulletin board (or CMS) and benchmark that  
> against
> the big players. C++ offers a clean, OOP way to program software,
> together with lots of librarys avaible for C and C++. If you ever  
> would
> like to do that, just drop me a mail :=)
> Cornelius
I think the chances of UseBB getting written in C++ are very slim,  
since C and C++ are not really web development languages and is  
compiled instead of interpreted. It can run through a HTTP server  
(CGI) but it will need recompilation for every different platform. I  
think this goes a bit too far.

--Dietrich