dns and software, was Re: Reliable Cloud host ?

Fri Mar 2 01:02:30 UTC 2012

On Mar 1, 2012, at 2:57 PM, William Herrin wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> You don't have to reinvent what I've done. Neither does every
>> or any other application programmer.
>> You are welcome to use any of the many connection
>> abstraction libraries that are available in open source.
>> I suggest you make a trip through google code.
> 
> Which is what everybody basically does. And when it works during the
> decidedly non-rigorous testing, they move on to the next problem...
> with code that doesn't perform well in the corner cases. Such as when
> a host has just been renumbered or one of the host's addresses is
> unreachable.
> 

Then push for better written abstraction libraries. There's no need to
break the current functionality of the underlying system calls and
libc functions which would be needed by any such library anyway.

> And because most everybody has made more or less the same errors, the
> DNS TTL fails to cause their applications to work as intended and
> loses its utility as a tool to facilitate renumbering.
> 

Since I don't write applications for a  living, I will admit I haven't rigorously
tested any of the libraries out there, but, I'm willing to bet that someone,
somewhere has probably written a good one by now.

> 
>> If you want, program in Python where the libraries do
>> provide the abstraction you seek. Of course, that
>> means you have to cope with Python's other disgusting
>> habits like spaces are meaningful and variables are
>> indistinguishable from code, but, there's always a tradeoff.
> 
> ::shudder::  I don't *want* to do anything in python. The occasional
> reality of a situation dictates that I do some work in python, but I
> most definitely don't *want* to.

Believe me, I'm in the same boat on that one. However, it is the only
language I know of that provides the kind of interface you are demanding.
Perhaps this should tell you something about what you are asking for. ;-)

Owen