nms - As Recommended By Matt Wright

[davorg]

Matt Wright has given the MSA web site a major redesign. He's included a page about nms. Here are a couple of extracts.

While the free code found at my web site has not evolved much in recent years, the general programming practices and standards of CGI programs have. nms is an attempt by very active programmers in the Perl community to bring the quality of code for these types of programs up to date and eliminate some of the bad programming practices and bugs found in the existing Matt's Script Archive code.

I would highly recommend downloading the nms versions if you wish to learn CGI programming. The code you find at Matt's Script Archive is not representative of how even I would code these days.

I call that a good result :)

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

[merlyn]

I don't know if you had to work to get that, but in any event, Congratulations! It's a true acknowledgement to you for setting up and managing the project, and a great concession by Matt Wright that his stuff could use replacing.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[moodster]

I must say I think that's a very gracious move by Matt. I say we have three Huzzah!s both for him and for the nms project!

Cheers,
--Moodster

[strat]

Maybe this could be the first step of a cooperation. Congratulations to the nms-team, and especially to Matt for doing such a great step!

Best regards,
perl -le "s==*F=e=>y~\*martinF~stronat~=>s~[^\w]~~g=>chop,print"

[Sifmole]

Matt Wright++

[vek]

Congratulations davorg on making nms a success.

Matt Wright++ for the favorable comments on nms.

-- vek --

[drewbie]

First, congrats on getting recognition from Matt. And thanks for providing a secure alternative to MSA scripts.

Here's my question: If Matt agrees that, basically, his scripts suck and acknowledges that the nms versions are better, more secure, etc, then why not take all his scripts down and say "Don't use these anywmore. Go see nms and use them instead"?

Matt says himself they are old, unmaintained, insecure, and generally crufty. So doesn't he stand to benefit in reputation if he points people to GOOD versions? And Dave has done a good job of keeping the API's compatible, so IMHO it wouldn't be hard for end users to switch.

[davorg]

On his site, Matt says:

My interests and activies have moved on, however, and I just have not found the time to update all of my scripts. One of the major reasons for this is that they work for many people. For this reason, I will continue to provide them to the public, but am also pleased to make you aware of well-coded alternatives. (my emphasis)

Also, let's not forget that Matt makes money out of the script archive.

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

[drewbie]

Ah yes... I had not thought about the money aspect. In delving deeper, there doesn't appear to be a lot of ads on his site so I wonder how much money he is making. In fact, the only ad I saw was the banner for his host on the front page. How

As for "they work for many people", I still say that he would better serve these people if he pointed them first to the more secure, actively maintained versions.

Time passes... And after a few minutes of surfing his site, I see that he does indeed have a link to the nms version for any relevant scripts. So all I could ask for now if more prominent placement of said links. But hey, I shouldn't complain right? At least he is giving people the option is they read the text. :-)

[joshua]

Congrats to everyone at nms. I am pleasantly surprised with Matt's decision to add this info about nms. This is definately a step in the right direction. I guess Matt has read the e-mails many of us have sent him about his poor programming and need to update his scripts.

Joshua