BurningbirdWeb technology
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Looking at RSS posts and the results in the News Aggregator, I’m finding that I’m a rude poster. My postings are quite large. My last one is huge. Within the Aggregator, they take up a disportionately large amount of space.
Will RSS/syndication create a new set of rules regarding polite behavior? Keep your weblog postings small, and use Stories for the larger material?
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I am having a particularly troublesome night tonight with technology.
I look at RSS and syndication and say, well this is neat technology. But what about the interactivity? What about the context of each communication? If you think about it RSS and syndication strips away any mark of individuality of the posting and returns only an isolated bit of news, along side other isolated bits of news.
It’s nice, but not what I’m looking for. It has part of what I’m looking for, the seeds of something interesting.
UDDI sounds good on paper — shop for web services from a centralized service that is, in actuality, distributed nodes within a cloud. But then I look at the sponsors and I look at the specifications and I look at the potential restrictions and this is not what I want. Still, other seeds are getting planted.
Lots of talk about two-way web and that sounds appealing — let’s all work together. Hey. La La La. And with this we want to do … what was it again? More seeds, but no sprouts.
Google — all of the world’s sum total information in a little bitty living space. Smart bot, smarter algorithm. Big seeds, getting closer.
Web services. Seeds and some fertilizer throw in.
What do I want. What do I want.
I want to put my head next to my laptop monitor and have it tell me what I want, and then go find it for me.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Thanks to TX Meryl, I found this article describing web services in clear, comprehensible terms.
I like the article, but UDDI is NOT the approach to take for web services discovery. Not! Not! Not! Not!
Create a beautiful distributed technology, and then capture it and constrain it by a centralized discovery service operated by big companies. I don’t care if UDDI can be mirrored — that’s not the point!
Think about the technology Google uses to find all the information that we’ve become dependent on. Think about how well the company processes it and packages it and delivers it. I can find anything on the web, thanks to Google.
This exact same type of functionality can be used to discover web services if we implement a few (few, mind you) common specifications. We Don’t Need UDDI. The web of discovery will work for web services as it works for weblogging as it works for Google.
I will continue to beat you about the head on this issue until you ultimately bow to my superior knowledge on this subject 😉
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Dave is still talking about web versus C programming language. He mentions that scripting is what holds the web together.
Dave, someone has to write the base. You can’t create full applications with Javascript, without something taking the script and translating it into machine understandable bits. And that translation is accomplished through programming languages such as C.
As with proprietary and open source code, scripting and programming with a language such as C are not exclusive – they’re complimentary.
Now, if you’re saying that providing scripting capability gives people who aren’t programmers a chance to have a control over their content, I agree 100%. This is a win/win for both the scripting users and the professional developers — the former has more control over their environment, the latter can focus on the larger and more complex tasks we thrive on. And, yes, we have this increased flexibility due to the web … and to browsers that are enablers.
Perhaps Dave and I do agree on this issue but say things — or read things — differently.
When people say something I want to respond to, I respond to it. And other people are, hopefully, responding to me if I say something interesting. When I respond to what others write, it is a compliment. It means that what was said definitely got my interest, regardless of whether I agree with what was said or not. When people respond to me, I take it as a compliment, even when they call me nasty things. (Go ahead! Call me a bitch! I live for this!)
Having carefully said all this, I find I do want to respond to something Dave said on Scripting News. I have to respond — to hold it in will cause me an injury.
I was a developer before the Web was even a twinkle in Berners-Lee’s eyes. I love to program, and have worked — worked mind you — with 18 different programming languages, including C, C++, Java, Perl, Snobol (any of you recognize this one?), Smalltalk, Ada, Pascal, Modula II, FORTRAN, LISP, and so on. And I still love to program, though I spend most of my time designing technology architectures and writing now.
When the web came along, it was love at first byte. I thought that this was great stuff — a universal front end to any application. I was so sold that I focused as much of my professional life on the web as I could, and still pay the bills.
I wrote books and articles on CGI and DHTML and JavaScript and XML and CSS and ASP and a host of other web technologies. Even today I find I am as fascinated by the web as I was waaaaaaaaaay back in the beginning. I’ve never seen that the web is low-tech. If anything, I find myself being stretched more by the web than by traditional programming.
In all this time, I just don’t remember there ever being a battle between C developers (I’m assuming by this Dave meant people who don’t want to use the web as an environment for their applications) and web developers. Not all applications fit the web, and not all companies have chosen the web for their environment — but that’s not developers, that’s just business. Most companies today use applications from both environments, something that will probably continue to be the norm into the future. (We don’t want to use Word over the Internet as a service, no matter what Microsoft says. Same for PhotoShop)
There’s discussions — constantly — between server-side folks and the designers. I know that I’ve had a lively chat or two with the WSP people who are, primarily, web designers. But most developers I know of, such as myself, are thrilled to play with the new technologies the web has provided. There might be a few who don’t want to play web, but most of us are as happy (or more) working with web development as we are with traditional development.
The whole thing is really about services isn’t it? Providing services to people who need them. Most computer-based functionality is nothing more than services wrapped in a front end — doesn’t matter if the front end is a VB application or a web page. All that matters is that the services are prompt, efficient, secure, accurate, and effective. If some people prefer to create the front end in VB and put both service and front end on one machine, that’s cool. If they prefer a web page, that’s cool. Where’s the battle? Apples and oranges.
As for Netscape and Microsoft and the W3C not having a vision for the future of the web, oh they most certainly do and did. Microsoft’s whole vision is .NET and owning the internet. In fact, the company’s vision scares me most of the time. Netscape also had strong designs on the web before they became the underdog. As for the W3C, we wouldn’t have the web without this organization’s efforts. I may preach chaos, but I practice chaos on top of a specific development platform, and I have that platform thanks to the W3C.
The key is that there are a lot of groups and people who have their own visions for what is the future of the web. If we continue to work towards a common interface, then we can each practice our own vision and our own chaos behind that interface. But we must have this interface, and I’d rather it be provided by an organization that doesn’t profit, then one that does. The interface cannot be owned by any one company, any one organization, or any one person.