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a LAMP April Fools
Posted on April 3rd, 2008 No commentsMy work is unmistakably a LAMP shop. Our servers run CENTOS and all of the programmers run either Ubuntu or Mac OS X. I’ve built a reputation as Linux zealot myself to some extent… well maybe not so much a zealot but a strong advocate of open source solutions. When april fools rolled around I had to do something fun so I sent out the following email to the entire staff including the CEO:
I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately in regards to trends in the web design industry and came to some conclusions over the weekend that I thought I would share with everyone here at eROI. I’ve been observing the trends for some time and for some time have been an avid open source advocate and have historically recommended the LAMP stack for all development scenarios. It’s always seemed like the right tool for the job to me. Now usually its difficult for me to admit when I’m wrong but occasionally it happens and when the wind changes direction it makes sense to go with the flow. This may seem a little long winded but I am going somewhere with this, I promise.
I’ve been reading alot of articles lately as well as doing some tinkering on my server at home and I’ve come to the conclusion it would be in eROIs interest to abandon its open source toolchain and go with a proven winner time and time again. I’ve found that i’ve been able to almost triple my productivity developing in ASP.NET. Sounds crazy right? Well I didn’t want to believe it either and I can’t deny results. I did a pretty large scale website at home last week and I was blown away by how easily it came together. Technologies that I had previously overlooked like ADO.net, Sharepoint, and some really slick ActiveX controls redefined web development for me. It pains me to write php code now.
I’ve always discounted Microsoft claims that their products have a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) as propaganda but I talked with some old associates of mine who have been working in Microsoft shops and what they told me was pretty counterintuitive. Both of them had previously been LAMP shops that migrated to .net after consistently having problems with their servers going down. They said that once they made the move, their problems went away almost overnight, and despite the initial heavy monetary investment it actually ended up being cheaper overall maintaining IIS on windows server. I didn’t believe it but I guess since they had such low downtime and such high productivity, they had a totally loyal customer base and additionally their servers were such low maintenance, they only needed a part time admin.
With all that being said, I appeal to everyone here at eROI to reconsider our business model and rethink how we use technology. I think maybe we’ve over zealously dismissed Microsoft as a viable solution provider and that it would be foolish to not take this step into the imminent destiny of web design.
Surprisingly many of the staff were fooled into thinking this was a genuine heart felt appeal and even the CEO felt the need to verify that this was indeed a hoax. Those who knew me were pretty amused needless to say.
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