Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hackyhacky 43 days ago
I think you are confusing the reality of Canvas with a different, theoretical learning management system.

In reality, Canvas does not have workflow and does not prevent race conditions in grading. I can certainly imagine an LMS that does these things, but Canvas does not.

It would probably help if you had actually used Canvas before trying to convince us that it is non-CRUD.

2 comments

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to defend Canvas, so much as give general advice that ‘I could build this in a weekend’ is rarely a wise claim. The specific ways in which Canvas could not be built in a weekend do not need to be the ones I identified.
You are still wrong. Just look at the code. As mentioned before, it's open source. Here I saved you a google search: https://github.com/instructure/canvas-lms
"Look at the code" is not a reasonable response to "Is this app CRUD or not?" You've already been asked to provide specifics about which componenent(s) of Canvas are allegedly non-CRUD, and simply repeating your claim without answering the question does nothing to advance your case.

It's a simple question. Since you claim to be an expert on Canvas, I'm sure that you can point me to the relevant features much faster than I can sort through thousands of lines of code, looking for the one line that says "def not_crud_function()". CRUD or not-CRUD is a judgement about the purpose of a program, not its implementation.

"I don't want to glance through the code, I'd rather you write me a detailed report on all the thousands of places where it deviates from crud" (not a direct quote) is not at all a reasonable ask.

And If you can't be bothered to take 2 minutes to click through some pages on GitHub, I don't believe you'd take the time to even read that report. So no, I'm not doing your research for you.

Edit: I will do this for you though. Here's Gemini's opinion[1]. It's quite accurate as well, and goes into reasonable high-level detail (though doesn't get into specific modules). I especially loved this quote:

> At its absolute lowest level, almost all web software boils down to pushing state to and from a database. But calling Canvas LMS "just a CRUD app" is a bit like calling a commercial airliner "just a metal tube with wings."

[1]: https://gemini.google.com/share/142d4b2662d7

How reductionist and a straw man as well. No one here asked for a "detailed report." They asked you to name one (1) feature of an application that you claim to have intimate knowledge of; the original question was "What component in particular goes substantially beyond CRUD." It could take you one sentence. After multiple failures to pass that low bar, compounded by your total mischaracterization of the question and your citation of an obsequious LLM that also failed to provide any specifics, it's abundantly clear that you are unable to support your claim with facts and are not arguing in good faith. I won't waste my time further with your childish behavior.