6 ms·

Taking a look at their "idea" page, I found myself nodding along with most of their bullet points (or shrugging and saying "not exactly my preference, but I can

by lambda 13y ago

Taking a look at their "idea" page, I found myself nodding along with most of their bullet points (or shrugging and saying "not exactly my preference, but I can see why you'd want that"), until I hit: Ghost would have cut-off points with major versions, allowing core developers to remove old code from the codebase and evolve the platform to allow it to improve. No one expects an app written for OSX 10.4 Tiger to work on OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion. Oh, hell no. Backwards compatibility is way more important than some shiny new feature. When I upgrade my software, I expect it to work better, not break. If I have a working plugin from 5 years ago, why should I have to fight with some pointless API redesign just to get it to work again? In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever cleanup you're able to do by breaking compatibility. Heck, in many cases you can get both by doing your rewrite but leaving a compatibility layer on top that gives you the compatibility that you need. I'm so sick of trendy "modern" frameworks like Rails that break compatibility every 5 minutes, and listing breaking compatibility as a major feature is a huge turnoff. How about focusing on spending the pre-1.0 releases iterating and designing a really good API that will be amenable to backwards compatible extensions, and then sticking to that API and backwards compatible extensions to it for the forseeable future?

karolisd 13y ago
Especially for a young project, I think this is ok. You don't want it to be set in stone too early. Once there is an established ecosystem around Ghost, there will be a lot more pressure to keep it stable.
- benologist 13y ago
  Even better than that is pressure to keep addons/plugins/whatever up to date. I think there's some good precedence for that with Firefox who (still?) deliberately broke all their extension compatibilities on every release, and contrary to that Wordpress who've led to a fully automated exploit ecosystem.
  - jeffreyjflim 13y ago
    I don't know about Firefox doing that on purpose, but the addon that I've written (Link Exposé) has seen several releases of firefox (19.* to 24.*) without having to do an (api) "update". It's written using the new jetpack SDK (now "Add-on SDK") - and there is a commitment to keeping that api stable.
RandallBrown 13y ago
How long do you expect upgrades to work before a break in compatibility? The difference between 10.4 and 10.8 is seven years. That doesn't seem like an outrageous amount of time to break compatibility.
- rustynails 13y ago
  My last computer retired - 1 month ago. It was more than 5 years old, running Windows XP. XP is still very popular and I would expect it to still be supported and it's 12 years old. Where did you get your 7 year magic number from?
  - pssdbt 13y ago
    The 10.4-10.8 is in reference to OS X, and ~7 years is the amount of time between 10.4 (April 29, 2005) and 10.8 (July 25, 2012).
  - GlennS 13y ago
    Microsoft products receive 5 years mainstream support and 10 years extended support. XP is currently supported for organisations who purchased extended support, but only because there was extraordinary demand for it. It ends in just under 6 months from now. Unless you're a large organisation paying a lot of money, you aren't likely to get 5 years of support for a particular version of most products. http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx
    - desas 13y ago
      There's a difference between end of support and end of backwards compatibility.
  - ameoba 13y ago
    You can't talk about Windows XP like it's a single, fixed point in the release cycle. XP was released in 2001, giving you your 12 year number, but there were also major service packs released in 2002(SP1), 2004(SP2) & 2008(SP3). The last release of XP was only 5 years ago - more recently than OS X 10.4 Of the new software that still claims XP compatibility, much of it requires SP3.
joeblau 13y ago
You must not own any Apple products. I have friends with the first Macbook Pro who can't use OSX 10.7+.
- alwillis 13y ago
  Should Apple not have gone to a 64-bit operating system because of hardware like the first MacBook Pro, with a 32-bit processor and RAM that maxed out at 2GB?
  - joeblau 13y ago
    I buy a new Mac every year so I'm up to date. I'm about deprecating old stuff, you can't carry legacy software/hardware/products over forever.
nailer 13y ago
> In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever cleanup you're able to do by breaking compatibility. Time and time again, rolling software has proven to be more secure than static releases. A plugin from five years ago that hasn't been maintained in that time is probably going to hurt you a lot.
- ericd 13y ago
  You say this, but I can't remember the last time an old unmaintained but reliable plugin has burned me. Likewise with old extensions and libraries.
  - nailer 13y ago
    I'm not much of a wordpress user, so alas can't provide good wordpress examples, but this is really a software in general thing. Run a Linux box? How many times have you upgraded OpenSSL in the last five years? Hopefully a lot.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- lambda 13y ago
  Rolling software is better achieved with better backwards compatibility than it is with constantly breaking API changes. When you have constantly breaking API changes, and then someone has an essential plugin that's unmaintained, then they're a lot more likely to stay with your old, buggy, insecure base package, rather than finding someone who knows how to update their plugin (remember, most users aren't programmers, and most have installed plugins for a reason). What you do is try to minimize the API surface that plugins have so it's easy to maintain backwards compatibility, and minimize the impact that older plugins can have by keeping them reasonably well isolated.
- jeffreyjflim 13y ago
  > A plugin from five years ago that hasn't been maintained in that time is probably going to hurt you a lot. Unless it just does some simple, or basic thing. In which case, you're still hurt. But in a different way....
comex 13y ago
For that matter, most apps written for Tiger should work on Mountain Lion, with the important exception of PowerPC apps - but that was a matter of maintaining library support for an entire architecture, and anything written for the Intel release of Tiger is fine. The other way around is different, of course, as as a huge number of new APIs have been added since then.
aghost 13y ago
More than $300,000 was raised on Kickstarter for Ghost, so after seeing this public release of Ghost I was really surprised. It is so simple, I could have paid a developer $500 to make it with more features. The Ghost admin panel doesn't allow editing themes, the post doesn't have buttons that allow you to quickly format posts, there are no SEO options/plugins, there is no theme editor that allows editing of themes, no sidebars, no multi-user creation, no e-mail to post, etc. Too many features are missing and this is very simple. WordPress is better, there just is no debate on this right now.
- mynameisvlad 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's actually the point of Ghost. To strip away all the features that make WP bloated, and bring it back to simple blogs.
- doppel 13y ago
  This is the first public release, to get feedback. They already stated (on their own blog) that an improvied admin panel, themes, plugins, etc. will come but it will take some time. Also, we are talking ~37k lines of code, not exactly something you can write in a week or two for $500.
  - pechorin_andrey 13y ago
    37k lines of code? And what we have finally? Tiny blog engine without categories support? Fuckin javascript.
rmrfrmrf 13y ago
Compared to WordPress, which touts backward compatibility as a strength, yet still manages to break itself in some way, shape, or form with every new release?
- zapt02 13y ago
  Me and everyone I have talked to in the WP dev community have exactly the opposite experience. I have used plugins that haven't been updated for four years without any issues.
  - r0s 13y ago
    Are you sure there's no security issues introduced since those plugins were last updated?
- lambda 13y ago
  I'm not necessarily comparing to WordPress. What I'm saying is that they should be going in the other direction; towards better backwards compatibility. Of course, one way to achieve this is less reliance on add-ons, so you have less API surface to expose. Having a usable WordPress install relies so heavily on add-ons that it's kind of pointless to consider WordPress alone.
r0s 13y ago
That's hilarious, it's a major feature I want from a blog and I came to the comments to advocate. It's one of the best things about Drupal, for instance. I want a frozen codebase that only worries about critical security updates. In the real world, you will break your site by adding new plugins every few months. The site will break. I get a stable codebase and I sit on it. Development causes bugs! Milestone releases are what I want. > In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever cleanup you're able to do by breaking compatibility. Here's the thing: if you're a user that needs compatibility don't upgrade! (not an option with most blogs) If you're always adding new functionality and plugins to your blog, things will break. If your business needs constant new web technology updates, use a real CMS and fix them when they break. They will break, they always break.
vidarh 13y ago
This is the reason why my own blog is static files of Markdown for the content, combined with a tiny blog engine, all in the same git repo - I just don't want to deal with the pain of some upgrade suddenly breaking stuff I've come to depend on.
- jeffreyjflim 13y ago
  I'd be curious - what do u use, and why? I've been meaning to look into getting my own blog restarted, but just haven't gotten down to the question of which static site generator to use.
neya 13y ago
Nope, this is exactly what happened to Wordpress. As a senior Wordpress developer who deserted the platform after giving up, I can safely comment on your views: #Supporting older versions is a pain. Supporting all features in older versions AND newer versions to work together is an even bigger pain. Example: Wordrpress. #Compatibility for older version leads to bloated code, with too many legacy variables, too many points of failure. Example: Wordpress. #Evolution of any software requires that it discards old ideologies and embraces the newer ones. The ones that don't do, tend to drift away from the main goals. Example: Wordpress. Wordpress was started with the exact same intention as Ghost and yet, what you are left with now is a half-baked unstable CMS, and a half-baked blogging platform that breaks old plugins with each upgrade. If you want to embrace progress, then you must embrace C.H.A.N.G.E. And this is not just for software.
jeffreyjflim 13y ago
Wow. An actual critique of Rails??? +1!!!

by lambda 13y ago

karolisd 13y ago

Especially for a young project, I think this is ok. You don't want it to be set in stone too early. Once there is an established ecosystem around Ghost, there will be a lot more pressure to keep it stable.

benologist 13y ago
Even better than that is pressure to keep addons/plugins/whatever up to date. I think there's some good precedence for that with Firefox who (still?) deliberately broke all their extension compatibilities on every release, and contrary to that Wordpress who've led to a fully automated exploit ecosystem.
- jeffreyjflim 13y ago
  I don't know about Firefox doing that on purpose, but the addon that I've written (Link Exposé) has seen several releases of firefox (19.* to 24.*) without having to do an (api) "update". It's written using the new jetpack SDK (now "Add-on SDK") - and there is a commitment to keeping that api stable.

RandallBrown 13y ago

How long do you expect upgrades to work before a break in compatibility? The difference between 10.4 and 10.8 is seven years. That doesn't seem like an outrageous amount of time to break compatibility.

rustynails 13y ago
My last computer retired - 1 month ago. It was more than 5 years old, running Windows XP. XP is still very popular and I would expect it to still be supported and it's 12 years old. Where did you get your 7 year magic number from?
- pssdbt 13y ago
  The 10.4-10.8 is in reference to OS X, and ~7 years is the amount of time between 10.4 (April 29, 2005) and 10.8 (July 25, 2012).
- GlennS 13y ago
  Microsoft products receive 5 years mainstream support and 10 years extended support. XP is currently supported for organisations who purchased extended support, but only because there was extraordinary demand for it. It ends in just under 6 months from now. Unless you're a large organisation paying a lot of money, you aren't likely to get 5 years of support for a particular version of most products. http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx
  - desas 13y ago
    There's a difference between end of support and end of backwards compatibility.
- ameoba 13y ago
  You can't talk about Windows XP like it's a single, fixed point in the release cycle. XP was released in 2001, giving you your 12 year number, but there were also major service packs released in 2002(SP1), 2004(SP2) & 2008(SP3). The last release of XP was only 5 years ago - more recently than OS X 10.4 Of the new software that still claims XP compatibility, much of it requires SP3.

joeblau 13y ago

You must not own any Apple products. I have friends with the first Macbook Pro who can't use OSX 10.7+.

alwillis 13y ago
Should Apple not have gone to a 64-bit operating system because of hardware like the first MacBook Pro, with a 32-bit processor and RAM that maxed out at 2GB?
- joeblau 13y ago
  I buy a new Mac every year so I'm up to date. I'm about deprecating old stuff, you can't carry legacy software/hardware/products over forever.

nailer 13y ago

> In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever cleanup you're able to do by breaking compatibility. Time and time again, rolling software has proven to be more secure than static releases. A plugin from five years ago that hasn't been maintained in that time is probably going to hurt you a lot.

ericd 13y ago
You say this, but I can't remember the last time an old unmaintained but reliable plugin has burned me. Likewise with old extensions and libraries.
- nailer 13y ago
  I'm not much of a wordpress user, so alas can't provide good wordpress examples, but this is really a software in general thing. Run a Linux box? How many times have you upgraded OpenSSL in the last five years? Hopefully a lot.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
lambda 13y ago
Rolling software is better achieved with better backwards compatibility than it is with constantly breaking API changes. When you have constantly breaking API changes, and then someone has an essential plugin that's unmaintained, then they're a lot more likely to stay with your old, buggy, insecure base package, rather than finding someone who knows how to update their plugin (remember, most users aren't programmers, and most have installed plugins for a reason). What you do is try to minimize the API surface that plugins have so it's easy to maintain backwards compatibility, and minimize the impact that older plugins can have by keeping them reasonably well isolated.
jeffreyjflim 13y ago
> A plugin from five years ago that hasn't been maintained in that time is probably going to hurt you a lot. Unless it just does some simple, or basic thing. In which case, you're still hurt. But in a different way....

comex 13y ago

For that matter, most apps written for Tiger should work on Mountain Lion, with the important exception of PowerPC apps - but that was a matter of maintaining library support for an entire architecture, and anything written for the Intel release of Tiger is fine. The other way around is different, of course, as as a huge number of new APIs have been added since then.

aghost 13y ago

More than $300,000 was raised on Kickstarter for Ghost, so after seeing this public release of Ghost I was really surprised. It is so simple, I could have paid a developer $500 to make it with more features. The Ghost admin panel doesn't allow editing themes, the post doesn't have buttons that allow you to quickly format posts, there are no SEO options/plugins, there is no theme editor that allows editing of themes, no sidebars, no multi-user creation, no e-mail to post, etc. Too many features are missing and this is very simple. WordPress is better, there just is no debate on this right now.

mynameisvlad 13y ago
I'm pretty sure that's actually the point of Ghost. To strip away all the features that make WP bloated, and bring it back to simple blogs.
doppel 13y ago
This is the first public release, to get feedback. They already stated (on their own blog) that an improvied admin panel, themes, plugins, etc. will come but it will take some time. Also, we are talking ~37k lines of code, not exactly something you can write in a week or two for $500.
- pechorin_andrey 13y ago
  37k lines of code? And what we have finally? Tiny blog engine without categories support? Fuckin javascript.

rmrfrmrf 13y ago

Compared to WordPress, which touts backward compatibility as a strength, yet still manages to break itself in some way, shape, or form with every new release?

zapt02 13y ago
Me and everyone I have talked to in the WP dev community have exactly the opposite experience. I have used plugins that haven't been updated for four years without any issues.
- r0s 13y ago
  Are you sure there's no security issues introduced since those plugins were last updated?
lambda 13y ago
I'm not necessarily comparing to WordPress. What I'm saying is that they should be going in the other direction; towards better backwards compatibility. Of course, one way to achieve this is less reliance on add-ons, so you have less API surface to expose. Having a usable WordPress install relies so heavily on add-ons that it's kind of pointless to consider WordPress alone.

r0s 13y ago

That's hilarious, it's a major feature I want from a blog and I came to the comments to advocate. It's one of the best things about Drupal, for instance. I want a frozen codebase that only worries about critical security updates. In the real world, you will break your site by adding new plugins every few months. The site will break. I get a stable codebase and I sit on it. Development causes bugs! Milestone releases are what I want. > In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever cleanup you're able to do by breaking compatibility. Here's the thing: if you're a user that needs compatibility don't upgrade! (not an option with most blogs) If you're always adding new functionality and plugins to your blog, things will break. If your business needs constant new web technology updates, use a real CMS and fix them when they break. They will break, they always break.

vidarh 13y ago

This is the reason why my own blog is static files of Markdown for the content, combined with a tiny blog engine, all in the same git repo - I just don't want to deal with the pain of some upgrade suddenly breaking stuff I've come to depend on.

jeffreyjflim 13y ago
I'd be curious - what do u use, and why? I've been meaning to look into getting my own blog restarted, but just haven't gotten down to the question of which static site generator to use.

neya 13y ago

Nope, this is exactly what happened to Wordpress. As a senior Wordpress developer who deserted the platform after giving up, I can safely comment on your views: #Supporting older versions is a pain. Supporting all features in older versions AND newer versions to work together is an even bigger pain. Example: Wordrpress. #Compatibility for older version leads to bloated code, with too many legacy variables, too many points of failure. Example: Wordpress. #Evolution of any software requires that it discards old ideologies and embraces the newer ones. The ones that don't do, tend to drift away from the main goals. Example: Wordpress. Wordpress was started with the exact same intention as Ghost and yet, what you are left with now is a half-baked unstable CMS, and a half-baked blogging platform that breaks old plugins with each upgrade. If you want to embrace progress, then you must embrace C.H.A.N.G.E. And this is not just for software.

jeffreyjflim 13y ago

Wow. An actual critique of Rails??? +1!!!