cgi mc/large data reads

[Richard MacLemale]

sadhu at castandcrew.com (Sadhunathan Nadesan) wrote,

> Subject: Re: cgi mc/large data reads

> I mentioned to you this was a good thing because it would be sad if our
> IT staff could not trust MC, we'd never be able to use it for anything.
> The entrance barrier is hard enough due to the lack of documentation,
> plus general programmer arrogance.  We can't buy books on MC, there is no
> manual, etc.  But I want to be able to use it, despite the fact that my
> staff are expert C and Perl programmers and resist anything that takes
> the power of IT out of the hands of the few (them) and into the hands of
> the many (much easier to learn MC than C).  So the fact that it didn't
> work made it instantly rejected.

I can relate, though from a different perspective.

I run a high school network with about 2,200 users.  We've got several
servers and both Macintosh and Windows clients.

OS X Server + Darwin MC = A Kick Butt Network, basically.  I have metacard
scripts automating the whole deal, for the most part, as well as running all
kinds of web services for staff and students.  Some of the mc scripts call
UNIX commands.  All of them work perfectly.

But I had to seriously look at whether I should use MetaCard or Perl to
automate the whole thing.  Both could do the job.  I'm a pretty good
metatalk programmer, but a very slow Perl programmer.  MetaTalk is way
easier for me to maintain and way faster for me to code.  But what happens
when I leave my high school?  The next person who comes in will not know
MetaTalk and will have no serious resources available to learn it.

But the fact is that in my county, school tech specialists are required to
be people with teaching certification, which means they're all ex-classroom
teachers.  And out of 50 tech specialists in our county right now, probably
2 know Perl, and probably only 1 tech knows it well enough to actually do
advanced stuff with it - me.  The point being that it doesn't matter if I
use MetaTalk or Perl to automate stuff, because the next person coming in
won't know either.  So I choose MetaTalk.  :)

It's too bad that more people don't take advantage of darwin mc.  It's easy,
powerful, and free...


-- 
:)
Richard MacLemale
Network Administrator
J. W. Mitchell High School