Hello

[aphenine]

Hello everybody!

I got a dreamhack account a few days ago and I'm trying to get my head around the Dreamwidth code base, in the hopes that I can contribute something. I just thought I'd introduce myself. I was also going to ask a question, but someone lovely and unexpectedly answered it on LJ. *grin*

I've never coded in Perl before, so it's a bit of a learning curve for me. However, I have web coded in PHP before and I've used MySQL before and I have also used *Nix environments before, so I'm not starting totally from scratch.

I think the dominant reason I signed up for a dreamhack account was that I kept looking at DW and thinking "if it was simple, I could change that". In the end, my curiosity got the better of me and I just had to find out if it really was simple or not. Since then, I've been far too amused sitting in the MySQL console pulling up a test comment and post directly from the database. SELECT * FROM logtext2; has not lost its power to make me squee for the last few minutes. But, a question. No, two questions. Why log for posts? And why talk for comments?

So far the only thing I've really contributed is an entry in the Dreamhack wiki giving an overview of some of the database tables. It's found here. It was in the wanted list and I thought, hey, what the hell.

Comments

[yvi]

Welcome!

So far the only thing I've really contributed is an entry in the Dreamhack wiki giving an overview of some of the database tables. It's found here

Oh, that's really cool. I have very limited mySQL experience - I can basically select a database, look at what columns it has and see what's in there. Sometimes I even manage a few WHERE commands. Which is why this took about three tries longer than it should have :) Any documentation of the databases is great!

So, I can't help you, I just wanted to welcome you :)

[aphenine]

Thank you for the welcome.

I remember I started by knowing very little about databases. My first thought was, basically, aha, a glorified struct in which to store my persistent data for my web application, with a complicated and annoying interface to get the data I want. My poor Computer Science friend facepalmed at my complete over-simplification of his entire database module. In retrospect, I have immense sympathy for him...

And yey, bug squishing.

[yvi]

You know, now I am tempted to go through the databases a bit more. It would be neat to have all of them on the wiki in some way. And some of the functions for Entry and User objects as well.

[denise]

Welcome!

I'm not really sure what the names signify! The only suggestion I have is that it was 1999 and Brad didn't have conventional vocabulary already established, so he made his own. I'm guessing 'talk' because commenting is like talking, and 'log' because journal entries are like an event log? ('blog' being short for 'web log' and all...)

(The answer to 'why' around here is usually 'Brad'. *G*)

[aphenine]

Thank you.

That makes a lot of sense.

[azurelunatic]

Just from hanging around IRC and the comms, I am left with the nagging wish to make a parody of Clue, including Brad, in his dorm room, with BML.

[aphenine]

*grin*

[janinedog]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the reason. The first version of LJ was a script called "bradlog", after all. I don't know when the terms "entries" (or "posts") and "comments" came about, but I'm pretty sure the database structure was in place before the terms did.

[pne]

The first version of LJ was a script called "bradlog", after all.

That was my first thought, too.

Compare also the names of the BML files for posting and reading comments: talkpost.bml & talkread.bml (again with the "talk" theme).

[aphenine]

Ooh, bradlog. It certainly all fits.

[badgerbag]

Yay! I'm hoping to dig into the code a bit this weekend and I'll read your wiki page!