Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Bedlam

Author:David Bakin
Posted:11/25/1998; 12:38:46 PM
Topic:Testing a new feature.
Msg #:509 (In response to 484)
Prev/Next:508 / 510

There were people lessons "relearned" as well as design lessons learned that week.

Leaving aside the negative lessons learned about other peoples stupid/selfish/unthinking behavior, here's a lesson to live by: When sending a nasty flame to someone for being a jerk remember to not exhibit the exact same behavior in your flame that you're toasting the jerk for. It looks bad, and people may rightly suspect that you're a jerk too.

Specifically, don't use "reply all" when sending a nasty flame toasting someone else for being a jerk and wasting bandwidth by using "reply all".

Maybe people violated this simple lesson during bedlam week.

Another lesson: some people insist on having the last word, even in a discussion that doesn't pertain to them. (Actually, by posting this message I'm violating this lesson myself!)

But to get back on subject: Here's a design lesson that came out of bedlam. Try to arrange that your administrative user/console/controller has access to the control function of your server even when the server is swamped processing requests. Otherwise it may be harder than you imagine to recover from an overload condition. For example, if your server starts handling pending queued requests immediately upon being started you may find that even rebooting doesn't give you the breathing space you need to grab the administrator's console and change settings.

-- Dave



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