Be careful with this. We've used it on a number of sites, and whilst overall it's beneficial, there are a number of weird things to watch out for.
For instance:
- Don't add rounded corners to a <table> element - this will crash at least IE7 on XP
- Don't try to rounded corners an element you've hidden with the "left offset" technique (position: absolute; left: -9999px;). This will crash at least IE7 on XP.
I think there a few others I have since erased from my brain due to IE-induced PTSD. YMMV.
This is an absolutely true point - and I am definitely more on the idea side. In a lot of ways though, it's not so much the "MBA vs Coder" debate as much as the "designer vs coder" debate. I do the high level product design and actually UI for the product, so obsess about things like user behavior. Before I was doing this, I was designing programs for university students that were again, driven by thesis about behavior.
I hope the piece doesn't come off as thinking it's all about idea and no execution. The "in between" for me is that they're part and parcel of the same thing.
> It's almost a tautology - the execution guys say the execution is most important, the idea guys think it's all about the idea.
Isn't that opposite of what you'd expect? I'd expect in general for people to think their part is the easy part, and the other part is the hard part. After all, presumably that's why the execution guys can't come up with the ideas, and the idea guys can't come up with the execution. If the other part were easy they'd do it themselves.
I think there's a more succinct explanation of this somewhere, but I think people usually overvalue their own contribution whilst simulataneously undervaluing that of others (see: http://books.google.com/books?id=YywIHNBn_YEC&lpg=PA147&...).
So perhaps it's the cynic in me, but I would expect people to be justifying their own importance. I do agree with you though - it should be the reverse!
We've talked about adding more information about the market in general, and that's the intent of the blog (blog.200square.co.nz), but it's not very prominent at the moment.
You would definitely be able to see it first! You'd just organise a suitable viewing time with the owner (you can send messages back and forth using the system)
We can't really - that's one of the major concerns with our model. We've already encountered a few occurrences of this and are working through it carefully (don't want to piss off our early users!)
Hmmm - we had kept it like that to be focused on the seller - there's more buyer info under the "buy" tab. We hadn't considered the "traction" angle. I'll bring it up with the others - thanks!
"All too often a single HTTP request will have 4 or 5 database queries in it, and that is regarded as normal."
Is this really normal for a Java app? A typical Rails app (either built by myself or someone else) would have tens of queries in a request and still complete in under 1s. That was my experience with PHP too.
That was the final nail in appengine's coffin for me. You get one query per page, preferably a get by id, and you'd better not want to do anything fancy with the result either.
Need more? It's simple. You just port away from appengine. Or you jump through the insane hoops the author describes just to get your mildly complex pages composed and out the door.
The choice of a platform has nothing to do with the response times. The author was referring to a typical "enterprise" app, which might call several backends at once. Java or no Java, some of them will not be that responsive, and it will increase the overall response time. His point was that the "enterprise" way of thinking of what is "normal" should be reconsidered when you switch to GAE -- Java has nothing to do with it.
For instance:
I think there a few others I have since erased from my brain due to IE-induced PTSD. YMMV.