So, I wanted to post some trackbacks to blogs.apachecon.com and, well, I don't use a fancy blog entry editor thing which can do trackbacks for me. In case anyone else is in the same situation, here is a little command line tool for posting trackbacks: trackback. Unlike the actual spec, all fields are required for this client, sorry, is 10 minutes of coding between sessions =)

 
brianm@kite:~$ trackback -h
Usage: trackback [options] excerpt

  Options:
    -b, --trackback-url VALUE        The url to post the trackback to
    -u, --url VALUE                  URL of the response post
    -n, --blog_name VALUE            The blog name for the trackback
    -t, --title VALUE                Show or hide result url in output

    -h, --help                       Show this message
brianm@kite:~$  

If you don't specify a part on the command line it will prompt you for it -- should be friendly enough.

Okay, I admit it, I like writing the mass of utilities, reinvented wheels, and heady edifices to the god of improving my own productivity. I'll sharpen the saw until it can cut sound. I am a library and framework writing junky!

Along comes RoR, now I find myself having to bear down and implement the actually business functionality for the application. Now it is "implement a SOAP/HTTP service to allow the Swing client to post back its offline changes" and "build an arbitrarily queryable entity-change audit report." This is no fun compared to writing a config file parser or persistence abstraction layer that can transparently swap out any number of relational databases, orm frameworks, ldap backends, or transaction log based in-memory systems!

These folks have their priorities all wrong. Programmers are supposed to write libraries for other programmers to use in order to write frameworks for other programmers to use in order to implement Excel and Visio like interfaces so that the business analysts can write useful(?) software.