[ prog / sol / mona ]

prog


Making a simple php textboard for a college project

1 2019-12-09 19:23

Don't really have much to talk about yet as I've only just begun but I thought I'd share (and bring some activity to this board).
Stuff won't be public for the time being but I might make it a real thing in the future.

2 2019-12-11 08:50

Naturally, you'd have to make it decentralized and publically editable, i.e. anyone can edit whatever parts of whatever public instances (saving version history, of course), and anyone can mirror (whatever version of) whatever parts they choose (possibly for public display), which can get, send, updates about the mirrored parts.
Thus there is no censorship, yet there is all the censorship anyone could want. And there is robustness (of the popular data, at least). (To solve the problem of saving unpopular data, one would need to integrate payments into the system, e.g. for each plank-time you host my data, I pay you m money, for each fetch, n money,,)
Perhaps PHP is not the best language for such a project. (My predjudice is to C/C++, or literate programing.) Perhaps focus on composing, then writing, a solid server in a real language, with an elegant interface, and a reference client. Perhaps extensible to other protocols, similar interfaces,,

3 2019-12-11 20:57

>>2
Unfortunately I have to use PHP as it's a college assignment, sucks but such is life.
Making it decentralized and publically editable will be quite a bit above my skills I think haha, I'm only just a beginning programmer.
Also as part of the assignment I have to use the MVC pattern, which I've got set up mostly now. Also have most of the design and generic pages done, went for a simple retro look. It's a bit like this website.

4 2019-12-12 05:10

Hmphhh

5 2019-12-12 18:57

Clearly you're lying, or delusional. Whoever can write a bbs can write a decentralized publically editable bbs. It may take slightly longer, so it does depend on your deadline. Of course, if your deadline is so soon as to not allow you enough time to design it, that's a bad course. There are two software development styles: one where there's a about a week for just thinking about what you would want it to be, a few weeks designing it, and a few (slow, boring, yet necessary) days, perhaps a week or two, typing out the code and proofs, and doing all the other tests, too; and one where there's about a week of furiously typing away, possibly testing some parts of the system, followed by at least a few months, probably a few years, perhaps decades, of frustrating error search and correction. It's up to you which way you'll develop software. I recommend the former. Many companies stupidly insist on the latter.
One idea for a prototype is to use a publically readible, publically commitable, version-control repository, where each regular file is a post or the index (which specifies which versions of which posts, and how they're organized under boards, threads,,), and a script which takes the choice of which version of the index, and which interface form (e.g. HTML, PHP, or whatever other language), and generates the interface using the index, and whatever requisite data, as the bbs. The main page of the web-site can be an interface/index selector/editor, with sensible defaults.
The main work would be in writing the script which formats the data to the specified interface.
To satisfy that requirement, allowing a PHP interface would probably be sufficient.

6 2019-12-12 19:43

>>6
I dunno man, to me writing a publicly editable textboard seems a more complicated task.
Even if it's as easy as you say, having it publicly editable isn't part of the scope. Maybe for a future project.

7 2019-12-12 21:43

>>5

Many companies stupidly insist on the latter.

It is not "stupidly" at all, you are simply clueless about basic economics. They follow precisely the winning strategy for a market where the buyers are not competent to judge the true quality of the product. The strategy is to scam the buyer with the lowest quality product that can be passed off as functional, and pump the money into lying about it, more politely termed "marketing".
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/a_security_mark.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

8 2019-12-16 19:05

I'm not clueless about economics. I know that that's what they're doing. I know that it's profitable. My point was that it's more profitable to take the time to write sturdy, well-documented code, furthering the the state-of-the-art.
The main reason that the `security market for lemons' exists is that it's profitable (albeit not most profitable) and it's easy (throw some coders at it for a week or two and peddle it as long as possible). Of course, when I wrote that many companies stupidly insist on the latter, I ignored the fact that few such companies bother repairing it's shoddy product. Sometimes, they'll even outsource software repair to their users, e.g. marketing it as a "user community" or "help forum".

The problem with `the market for lemons' analogy here is that the market for lemons is a subset of the used car market, while software development is about making software, i.e. producing new (albeit, in the case of the `security market for lemons', bad) code. It would be more apropos to compare the bad-code business model with the soviet-era new car market, where even many newly manufactured cars were shoddy.
Most persons buy a car for the sake of using it, and will keep using it until it's in such a condition that he considers it below his standards. Occasionally, someone will sell a car that he would otherwise keep, e.g. because he's moving, but this is rarer. Of course, even with used cars, different persons can have different standards of drivability, which means that despite only selling what the seller considers useless, there may be a buyer that considers it usesome.
These practices are inherently beneficial, as you seem to believe. These practices are pernicious. If you had understood what was written at the pointers you provided, you would see that the problem is that the product is complex, requiring special understanding to discern how good the product is.
That's why we have, in the used car market, vehicle history reports. That's why we have, in the revolving credit market, credit reports. That's why we have, in the informatics market, software audition. Another thing that exists in the informatics market is source publication, which eases audition. I'm not even saying that there needs to be a free (e.g. ISC) license.

<https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/a_security_mark.html>から

It's not just that designing good security is hard -- although it is

Sure, it's hard for nonspecialists. So is anything. Whatever nonspecialist of whatever profession shall find that profession hard. Most specialists of whatever profession find that profession slightly challenging (there may be nondemanding jobs). It may be that some persons are misemployed. This is too-often the case in security.
The difficulty to a security design specialist of designing security well is about the same as the difficulty to a algorithm design specialist of designing an algorithm well. Slightly challenging.
The difficulty to a security design nonspecialist of designing security well is about the same as the difficulty to a algorithm design nonspecialist of designing an algorithm well. Very high.

9 2019-12-16 19:05

Stupid hyperlink formatting

10 2019-12-22 23:51

>>2

There's a guy building a discussion board on top of IPFS.

https://github.com/fazo96/ipfs-boards

11 2019-12-26 03:30

>>10
It looks like you can already create boards and posts.
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmYT9EzvQY8zwtxQxUhPcphSGR4XtTRkT4MnXmQKPFamQ7/#/b/QmS8xoUJQdq2HkxmQqwfc86KU38cCSq7jvaWSxuUfCKSeV/prog

12 2019-12-26 18:48

OP, did you advance your project in any way?

>>11
I think you're the only peer of this board so I can't reach it if you're offline. I played a fair amount of time with IPFS and it's an awesome tech, but right now it feels too experimental to build something solid with it.

13


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