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April 26, 2004
More Postgres
Recently found on RootPrompt is a story on devx about PostgreSQL vs MySQL vs Commercial database servers. It's a puff piece about why you should try one of the open source databases instead of jumping right to the commercial servers. As a whole, the article can probably be trimmed to a single page of reading, but apparently devx wants more advertising dollars on it and extends it to 4 pages (HINT: pages 2 and 4 are the only slightly interesting ones).
This began a mind trip that got wondering; why are such articles being written? With the byline for the article you'd believe there was some heavy in-depth comparison to be found within, but you find little of that throughout the article, not even a discussion on connection handlers or data type differences. The more I read about computers, the more I realize that there now exists a very large gap in the world of technical literature. It seems to be a constant that you find either an article extraordinarily technical (i.e. Transparent Orthogonal Checkpointing, my current read) article, or some fluff piece that really provides no substance to extending reader knowledge. You can witness this in most computer books too (PHP ones especially, although I haven't read any of the current crop of books).
Jan even hinted at this disparity in a recent email, and it sounds like he has set forth a plan to put some of it to an end. Has technical writing become so useless that we now must exist with no authors willing to explain deeper technical concepts to non-technical crowds? Has this become the Holy Grail of computing; communication?
Before you state that my opinion is biased as I have experience with subject XYZ, I hope you realize that while I agree, the problem isn't germane to just computer concepts. Quickly scan many of the conference itineraries, books, and articles about Open Source applications and uses. You'll find again the very basics about why Open Source is useful, a topic that I believe should be a mere 5-10 min diversion on a presentation as a whole.
Posted by Dan at April 26, 2004 09:04 PM