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demosthenex

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Obscurity is just one more security tactic. Security by obscurity as the only defense is bad. As an additional layer to many defenses it is a sound choice.

You still paint camoflage on a tank.

I should explain what I've tried.

Nextcloud photos is not a photo application. It's basically a shared gallery with thumbnails. There's no metadata support or editing. No true multiuser access other than granting sharing through Nextcloud like Dropbox. The only good part is you can autoupload from your phone.

I've looked at several webapps, like Piwigo. Most of them feel like a single user application or have limited upload and metadata support.

The closest I have found is Digikam using external SQL, but this requires a local application carefully configured with a DB and a fileshare.

I think that's what the web community misses. We have 50 years of Moore's Law to benefit from, yet we are making slower applications than ever. The larger these codebases, the more complex they are to maintain, secure, and debug. They need larger hardware to provide the same relative performance.

I want to see more lean, tiny, fast applications. Low TOC, low investment because they aren't complex. Low end hardware that can be made reliable, small, and maintainable.

I think it's hideous that most business applications I see (CRUD interfaces) are 90+% text, and yet they are built on layer and layers of GUI and web interfaces.

Your Raspberry Pi example would be lean and easy to maintain. No virus scanners, no 20GB OS footprint to maintain. No worries about your user visiting Facebook all day instead of working with your business application.

I want applications that are so incredibly dull that they will be taken for granted as much as office telephone.

> you created a business that depends on a single point of failure that is entirely outs0ide your control

Long term I will have to keep a close eye on Microsoft and see if it's something I have to move away from.

I think there is a better analogy. Every business buys widgets from other businesses to enable them to function. There is only so much feedback or control you can get over that product, but as long as it meets your needs that's not a concern.

The problem is when you rely on a widget that suddenly has disruptive planned obsolescence, does this new anti-feature impact your business? You control your internal processes, and now an external source is interfering in your change control process.

Certainly you plan to replace widgets as they age on your schedule and budget. The issue is when it is forced on you.

Free software isn't immune from this either, for example the rolling upgrade bandwagon (ie: its fixed in the next revision but it breaks yours) and the systemd debacle where the choice over important system components was removed.

I just had an extended discussion on IRC the other day regarding Turbo Vision and console applications.

I had a short project of my own I wanted to do to replace a webapp I depend on, where the core is no more than 5 tables with a simple CRUD and a report. Using any web stack for this is absurd, dbase or a console app would be perfect as I prefer to work over ssh.

Imagine my dismay when I found there are virtually no options for making console applications with any modern tools. Even the ncurses wrappers are ignored or missing (ie: Python).

While the topic is hot, can anyone recommend an OSS or commercial application you can still use on Linux to make fast small console apps without dropping to C and Ncurses?