Open letter to Telstra (GRRRRR!!!)

Dear Telstra,

After much deliberation (about 7 seconds) I have decided to shift my voice services to iiNet, in addition to my data services. This is for a few reasons:

1) They’re cheaper.
2) Their support is great.
3) When I called, I spoke to Adrian from Perth, not Raj from Mumbai, and Adrian had an Australian accent and could understand what I was saying and vice versa.
4) I didn’t get cut off halfway through the call (I can no longer count on one hand the number of times that has happened with Telstra in the last month).
5) They understand what a “generous quota” actually is and don’t use the word “Liberty” in the same context as “10gb/month”.

In addition to that, Telstra also failed to note that I canceled my *original* wireless service within the cooling off period (over $300), and that Telstra’s lack of accurate information led me to make a purchase of a SECOND wireless service, for which Telstra now expects me to pay full cancellation and hardware costs (over $400). To add insult to injury, Telstra have just billed me for another month of wireless access (~$165) despite the fact I no longer have a wireless service.

In yet another display of blatant ineptitude and disorganisation, getting my voice service connected in the first place was a struggle as Telstra was not in possession of up-to-date cabling records, and insisted that my home address does not, in fact, even exist. A Telstra representative also convinced me that I would be waiting “years” for additional ADSL ports to be supplied in my area, but that could be shortened to “months” if I switched to a business service, because that sort of build-out tends to be expedited. Less than 2 weeks after getting my landline connected, after Telstra finally sent a technician out to install the line anyway and just not bill me the installation cost if he did, in fact, find an active line (which he did), I was able to order ADSL through iiNet and had it connected in less than a week… despite the fact that Telstra insisted there was no way I was getting ADSL anytime soon. So essentially, I was sucked in to hopping on a Telstra Wireless plan by a combination of outdated information and outright lies, omissions and exaggeration.

Rest assured I have no intention on paying a single dollar of the ~$1,240 aggregate bill you’re about to hit me with, save for any costs incurred by *actual usage of service*, i.e. phone line rental, and the minute period of time during which I actually used your wireless service.

I wish to receive an updated bill which takes into account the waiver of fees for the first wireless plan (which was cancelled within Bigpond’s cooling off period, as confirmed by the representative who processed the order, and for which the associated hardware was returned), and the waiver of cancellation fees for the second wireless plan and associated hardware costs. In return, I am prepared to post back (at Telstra’s expense) the Bigpond Elite network gateway.

In essence, this leaves the line rental, call costs, and actual pro-rata usage of data services. I am happy to pay for these, as they represent what I actually used.

A copy of this letter is also going to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.

Kind regards,

Richard Walker

Continue reading...

MVC Frameworks and modern web development

Lately I’ve had the pleasure of playing around with Ruby on Rails, undoubtedly THE name that comes to mind when you ask about rapid application development in Web 2.0.

My first impression was that it was going to be a pain to learn the ins-and-outs, and that I was in for a steep learning curve as I had to both learn the Ruby language, and master the MVC framework Rails at the same time. Coming from a PHP background I knew there was a lot of stuff I would have to learn (and unlearn, in a manner of speaking) in order to program effectively in Rails.

In truth however, I found it easier to get up and running with Rails than I did with Symfony, which is basically a PHP MVC framework that mimicks Rails in terms of its functionality. Symfony is itself, however, a brilliant MVC framework and probably the closest thing to Rails I’ve found for PHP.

With Rails and Symfony, you start out by designing your database schema, and then can use a number of command-line tools to scaffold your application, either by creating just simple controller classes or going all the way and letting the framework build pages to provide full CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) functionality, which you can then go through with a scalpel and paintbrush and customise to your liking.

In essence, these two MVC frameworks provide all the functionality and libraries needed to instantly turn a YAML database specification into a working application in a matter of minutes.

Why is this SO AWESOME? Simple: it allows developers to focus their attention on delivering a product based around their core business model, rather than wasting time dealing with fundamentals. Think of it as building a beautiful house out of existing materials…. plaster and timber for the structure, concrete for the foundation, paint for the walls etc. as opposed to building a house by heading off to the nearest timber forest, cutting down trees, cutting the wood to shape, treating the timber, mining limestone and other minerals to create plaster, concrete etc….. you get the idea.

Software development has always worked like this in a way… frameworks get more and more sophisticated, common controls and elements are packaged with development environments to make rapid application development simpler and more effective etc, but it seems that frameworks such as Rails and Symfony go one step further, because just about *everything* you could possibly need for an application is already there, or readily accessible as a plugin, and you can turn a nifty idea for a SaaS application into a reality in no time at all.

Both Rails and Symfony are supported by a fiercely evangelistic community of developers who provide plugins for free to solve a whole host of common software development conundrums, and both are supported by terrific documentation… I have been able to assemble a basic Rails app from scratch simply by following the Ruby Guides. Not bad for somebody who’s never written a single line of Ruby code in their entire life.

There’s one framework I haven’t mentioned yet: Zend. There’s a good reason: I don’t think the Zend framework deserves the title “Framework”. I don’t like Zend. It feels bloated. It feels poorly documented. It feels badly coded (and I’m not the only person who feels this way). To me, it feels like the Microsoft of MVC.

Everything about Ruby and Symfony screams “simplicity” to me, like the creators intended to turn programming back into a graceful art, and to make people truly passionate about web development. Symfony and Rails are the Zen gardens of web development: minimalistic, spiritual, beautiful and closer to art than software development.

Zend doesn’t really “scream” anything, so much as make developers scream at how frustrating it is to use and develop applications. I’ve seen Zend code… it’s like looking into the gates of hell.

I’ll stop bad-mouthing the competition now, and simply close by saying: if you’re passionate about web development, and want to learn a framework that makes developing web 2.0 apps feel more like art than simply cutting code, I implore you to give either Symfony or Rails a decent try. Take a weekend to run through one of the guides. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Continue reading...