[2013] Arantor back on SMF Team!

Shawn

  • The Roadie
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Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #15, on October 13th, 2013, 06:01 PM »
I use IPB if I ise paid, maybe xenForo once they get better. VB, ugh.

TE

  • Posts: 286
Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #16, on October 13th, 2013, 06:24 PM »
Quote from Nao on October 13th, 2013, 01:18 AM
...and elk is too young and there are too many cooks in the kitchen IMHO. Thus, they spend most of their time fixing bugs.
Refactoring the whole core to OOP / MVC isn't a simple task and will most likely produce some bugs. Meanwhile we have standardized the action controllers, most of them are free of database queries and use api functions instead for the "low-level" tasks (database queries, file manipulation and so on.)

And we have also added lots of cool new features :cool:  Post by E-Mail, OpenID 2.0, Likes, Spoiler & Footnotes BBC, Gravatars, improved admin and antispam security, drag & drop for sorting boards, custom profile fields and smileys, Video Embedding, Quote to new topic, disregard topics, and much much more..

Don't underestimate ElkArte ;)



Thorsten "TE" Eurich - Former SMF Developer & Converters Guru

Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #17, on October 13th, 2013, 07:12 PM »
Also, do you really think that the other forums are showing all their stuff for no reason?
They are getting more and more input from the community, and not just their little private community.

Yes, there are some reasons not to use something like GitHub, and I for one can not fault you that.
However, saying that one is better than any other, when none of them are truly out there is being too full of oneself and being conceited.

Wait until they are out there, for the general public to use and judge. Then we all will see which is best, in the view of those who count: The users.

Nao

  • Dadman with a boy
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Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #18, on October 19th, 2013, 05:37 PM »
Quote from Antes on October 13th, 2013, 03:39 PM
Development philosophy - just because our developers don't do it in wedge way that doesn't mean its wrong...
Well, considering Pete is slowly turning SMF 2.1 into a clone of Wedge (ahem...), and Elk is taking PRs from it, it's starting to look like in a couple of years, Elk and SMF will be Wedge-like...
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Try vbulletin then it has more features inside it, I'm sure you love it!
If I had a choice, I'd still go for FluxBB. It has 10 times less features, but it sure is fast.

Heck, perhaps my goal for Wedge 2.0 should be to emulate that speed, ah ah...
Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #19, on October 19th, 2013, 05:55 PM »
Quote from TE on October 13th, 2013, 06:24 PM
Refactoring the whole core to OOP / MVC isn't a simple task and will most likely produce some bugs.
And what's the point of going OOP/MVC..?
Wedge uses OOP where it makes sense. Does Elk do that?
As for MVC, to me, it simply looks like the usual SMF file structure is gone, and replaced with tons of files that make no sense to me anymore. If I'm to find some portion of code, I have to do a global search.
Pete argues that more files = better performance, but I don't believe him a bit. What Wedge and SMF load are usually needed at some point in the page's life, so splitting into multiple files wouldn't help performance by more than 5% -- if not an actual loss of performance, I'd say.
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Meanwhile we have standardized the action controllers,
Like what? The action array? Dispatcher.class.php is much messier than Wedge's index.php (to which you still have source code access, BTW. When exactly did you become a developer at a Wedge competitor..?)
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most of them are free of database queries and use api functions instead for the "low-level" tasks (database queries, file manipulation and so on.)
I don't see anything special in there. You'll need to be more specific.
Currently, all I see is Elk taking features from SMF 2.1, and from Wedge (the footnotes tag, SERIOUSLY...?)
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And we have also added lots of cool new features :cool:  Post by E-Mail, OpenID 2.0, Likes, Spoiler & Footnotes BBC, Gravatars, improved admin and antispam security, drag & drop for sorting boards, custom profile fields and smileys, Video Embedding, Quote to new topic, disregard topics, and much much more..
Yes, as I said -- footnotes, ugh. Post by e-mail is actually the only Elk feature I openly congratulated the team for. I don't know if it works, though, but I've always wanted to have such a feature on my own sites, but I didn't know where to start, and some of my 2005 experiments with POP communication were bad. (At the time, I didn't know much about PHP, but it still traumatized me.)
Anyway-- I'm not stealing this one from you guys...
Likes are a Wedge feature. Gravatars, too. Improved anti-spam, too. Drag & drop for boards, yep. Custom stuff? Yup... Video embedding? Aeva invented it. Disregard topics is an easy hack to implement (set the view date to MAX_INT for a given topic), and I'm working on doing a better feature than that, but anyway: not impressed. Open ID, I have no idea if this thing still exists. I think we removed support for that years ago. And none of us cared about rewriting it. Quote to new topic, I don't really see the point of this feature.

Like I said, I'm impressed with Post to e-mail. And that's pretty much all, I'm afraid.
I'm not saying the Elk team did nothing for 2 years. There are tons of commits to account for. They certainly added more features than SMF 2.1, too. I may not be in love with Elk (the software), I may not be in awe with what I see, but I'm perfectly aware that some of your team did a great job with it. Just not as great as what Pete and I did on Wedge for 3 years. You're telling me not to underestimate Elk. I'm guessing the same goes for you.

Because one thing is sure, in my mind -- in terms of innovation and sheer number of new features, none of the other SMF derivatives hold a candle to Wedge. No, I'm not particularly proud of it or anything (anyone investing as many man-hours into the project as I did would have reached the same results), I'm just saying it because that's just the *plain truth*, and I'm realistic when I try to evaluate competitors. Wedge has more features, it's simple math. It doesn't mean you *can't* beat it. In fact, you certainly will, because you have a large team (especially now that I'm alone on the project), and I'll also soon be slowed down by the fact that I go public and will have to deal with support requests. Don't worry about that. But if you're speaking on Wedge.org as an ElkArte developer, don't be surprised that the general idea here is that Elk is inferior to Wedge. Otherwise, I'd be pushing my PRs to Elk, not here.
Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #20, on October 19th, 2013, 06:00 PM »
Quote from BurkeKnight on October 13th, 2013, 07:12 PM
Also, do you really think that the other forums are showing all their stuff for no reason?
What do you mean?
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They are getting more and more input from the community, and not just their little private community.
By little private community, you mean Wedge?
It's not private, is it? Otherwise, why would you be able to post here..?
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Yes, there are some reasons not to use something like GitHub, and I for one can not fault you that.
My biggest concerns are now solved (most notably, I'll be able to still use commit numbers, and I've finally managed to secure both the 'Nao' and 'Wedge' accounts, on the same day), so it's now mainly about being efficient with git, which still is in progress. (I'm going to make a private repo at bitbucket.org first, to test how it's working, then I'll move the repo to GH if it works well.)
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However, saying that one is better than any other, when none of them are truly out there is being too full of oneself and being conceited.
Well, they're all being used on their respective websites, aren't they...?
SMF 2.1 isn't, though, but from what I saw of demo sites, I didn't notice anything special about it. It's technically the least interesting between Wedge, Elk and SMF.
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Wait until they are out there, for the general public to use and judge. Then we all will see which is best, in the view of those who count: The users.
If you're evaluating software quality through its number of users alone, I can tell you which forum system is the best: vBulletin. Ah, ah. Very droll. ::)

forumsearch0r

  • Posts: 118
Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #21, on October 19th, 2013, 11:26 PM »
Quote from Nao on October 19th, 2013, 06:00 PM
If you're evaluating software quality through its number of users alone, I can tell you which forum system is the best: vBulletin. Ah, ah. Very droll. ::)
... with phpBB being a very close second, if not first, now that XenForo is starting to spread well ... so much about quality.

Hm, let me summarize: Arantor doesn't want to be the bad guy, so he decides to merge Wedge's "top features" into SMF, leaving some more "boo-fucking-hoo everyone hates me" wherever he can. Good and consistent decision, pal.

I wonder what they had to do to make him work with them again. Granting unlimited freedom regarding any changes he wants to commit? Not that SMF wasn't dead enough already...

Popcorn, anyone?
Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #22, on October 20th, 2013, 12:17 AM »
Quote from TE on October 13th, 2013, 06:24 PM
And we have also added lots of cool new features :cool:  Post by E-Mail, OpenID 2.0, Likes,  (...)
Yup, I just registered on your board to test that. Got a timeout after returning from my OpenID provider instantly. Now that's a cool feature! I had to use the password-based authentication.

Guess I should fork ElkArte and make it right. Chances are good I'm done before Nao is. :ph34r:
(On the other hand, I'm lazy and already do too much coding in my spare time... :unsure:)

Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #23, on October 20th, 2013, 01:16 AM »
But the main problem with VB, is it's cost.
If instead of being against each other, SMF and forks, should be working together on main issues and features.

Yes, I admit, GitHub is a real pain. I only just recently added my mods and themes to BK Modding's organization account.
I still have not learned much on using it...LOL.


SMF, Elk and others are having theirs open, so people can see what is going on, and even test it out, via download from GitHub. That's what I meant by showing all, and by the larger community.
I mean heck, I've not even been able to look into the admin section of Wedge, so I can't even give much opinion on how it is. Granted, as a user, I do see a lot that I like. If I did not, I would not have signed up here. Just because I'm a team member for SMF, does not mean that I have to use just that for all my sites. I do have plans on trying Wedge with at least one of my sites. :)

forumsearch0r

  • Posts: 118
Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #24, on October 20th, 2013, 01:18 AM »
Quote from BurkeKnight on October 20th, 2013, 01:16 AM
If instead of being against each other, SMF and forks, should be working together on main issues and features.
Diversity causes creativity. The more teams are able to work on their vision of a "perfect" BBS, the faster new features can evolve without having to ask all other teams first. A good example might be Windows NT, which started as a completely separate core team before Microsoft applied their improvements.

Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #25, on October 20th, 2013, 06:01 AM »
I'm not saying that they all should share everything...
Just the things that may improve security for all, and some of the things that they all may be able to work on jointly, for the betterment of all.

SMF and the SMF forks are together, against all the rest, and sharing some things would be a good idea, in my opinion.

forumsearch0r

  • Posts: 118
Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #26, on October 20th, 2013, 06:07 AM »
That would require all of their creators to share a goal. Won't happen.

Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #27, on October 20th, 2013, 10:23 AM »
Ahhh.... But they all do share a goal...

To be better than all the other programs out there.... ;)

TE

  • Posts: 286
Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #28, on October 20th, 2013, 11:01 AM »
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And what's the point of going OOP/MVC..?
Wedge uses OOP where it makes sense. Does Elk do that?
Last time I checked Wedge (a year ago or so) it wasn't true OOP but using singletons all over the place..

Elk is using OOP where it makes sense, yes. We have a coding guideline and we simply follow our own standards:

https://github.com/elkarte/Elkarte/wiki/Architecture
https://github.com/elkarte/Elkarte/wiki/Mvc

The point of following standards is to make it less complicated for developers and easier extendable. And last but not least to use other common standards such as unit-testing and build-testing (travis ci).

Nao, I would probably have contributed my code and energy to Wedge but I wasn't allowed to do so..  Sadly you (and Pete) never gave me write access to the main repo, thus I moved on at some point.. Sorry.

And please: I'm not up for a battle comparing Elk, Wedge and SMF... We all have wasted more than enough time & energy to complain about SMF, their NPO structure and such stuff. At least I don't have the time nor the passion to start such type of "battle" once again. Elk and Wedge are simply following completely different approaches ..
Quote from forumsearch0r on October 20th, 2013, 12:17 AM
Yup, I just registered on your board to test that. Got a timeout after returning from my OpenID provider instantly. Now that's a cool feature! I had to use the password-based authentication.

Guess I should fork ElkArte and make it right.
yep, probably a bug or the openID provider is based on stateless OpenID2 which isn't supported yet. We are still using SMF's OpenID implemantation under the hood and this is a stateful one. You're more than welcome to fork and fix it :cool:

Norodo

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Re: Arantor back on SMF Team!
« Reply #29, on October 20th, 2013, 12:21 PM »
How about we wait until the software is released, then we let the users decide? Right now this is not much more than a pissing contest.