Re: XML.COM: How I Learned to Love daBomb

[Dave Winer <dave@userland.com>]

Aha!

I agree. There's an art to building networked apps. First we start off with
Hello World, then blogger.newPost, and all kinds of things to get the first
layer of wires running. Also custom one-off or private apps, of which there
are probably thousands by now.

Then, we get commercial products who differentiate themselves by having dual
power of being accessible through an easy user interface (Blogger is a good
example) and add programmability in some well-conceived, scalable, and
clonable way.

Then all of a sudden you have a market.

At that point experience becomes an important factor. Do you know how to
design and document this stuff, and help build a community so people feel
safe investing and do you have something that you can make money with so you
can hire people to market, explain, write sample code, do quality assurance,
answer the phones, and whatever else a company can do to support the market.

That's why I've been thinking a lot about platforms lately. I don't think
Sun or Microsoft has the guts to really lead this. So I see a bit of an
opportunity now. Having been around the block once on the Mac, with
virtually all the apps wiring up over a period of five years, I think I have
an idea of how this could work, and what things to avoid.

BTW, it's interesting that when you look at XML you see SGML, but when I
look at it I see AppleScript and Frontier.

Dave



----- Original Message -----
From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>
To: "Dave Winer" <dave@userland.com>; "Al Snell" <alaric@alaric-snell.com>;
"Michael Brennan" <Michael_Brennan@allegis.com>
Cc: "xml-dev" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2001 9:51 AM
Subject: RE: XML.COM: How I Learned to Love daBomb


> Good one, Dave.  Six.  We train ourselves not to
> see commonplace things (of).  (A hint for such puzzles:
> habit blinds you.  Read it bottom to top, right to
> left.)
>
> The web service challenge is to figure out
> orders of events (orchestration).  The basic
> interop based on sending essentially documents
> back and forth has worked for non-digital systems
> for hundreds of years (maybe thousands).  The
> task is identification of the right service and
> coordination given a complex task.
>
> Simple tools for simple tasks, but simple won't stay simple
> if it is all you know how to apply.   Most markup apps
> start simple, then the requirements pile up.  If the
> design is good, it grows gracefully.  Otherwise, it
> becomes kudzu and you rebuild at tremendous costs.
> Doubt it?  Gencoding is over 30 years old.  Why are
> we using XML?
>
> Hypertext became commonplace because of the
> HTTP protocol and staying away from the requirements
> of complex layout apps the requirements of which
> were derived from 1000dpi print systems for
> military manuals.   The system limits drive the
> design.  The web designers weren't clever or
> enlightened.  BBN and 72dpi screens had made
> the hard choices.
>
> Make sure the technology chosen is up to the
> challenge of the task and that the task
> is real.  Resist web for web's sake.
>
> Len
> http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard
>
> Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
> Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@userland.com]
>
> >The technology is no different, practically, to CORBA. Nothing will
really
> change, just a new set of tools will be sold, is all :-)
>
> In practical terms, SOAP and XML-RPC are different from CORBA because the
> technology is so bare-bones that it can be understood and deployed in a
> couple of hours by anyone with a modest scripting background. That's why
> it's catching on. Much the same way hypertext didn't become commonplace
> until HTML came along and made it so that all you had to do was put a few
> files in a folder and turn the server app on, and boom, you're on the net.
> Drop a script in a folder, edit your server configuration, and you're
> running networked apps. Want to tweak the code a bit? No problem, it's
just
> a script.
>
> With all due respect, I think this list has missed the maturation of this
> technology.
>
> It's moving forward steadily.
>
> Want a demo of how minds work when they only see what they're expecting to
> see?
>
> Try this little puzzle [1].
>
> There's no trick. Ninety-nine in a hundred people can't count the F's.
>
> Now go to this page [2], and follow the links and tell me a new network
> isn't building now.
>
> Dave
>
> [1] http://davenet.userland.com/1997/03/03/DonsAmazingPuzzle
> [2] http://plant.blogger.com/api/xmlrpc_newPost.html
>
>
>
>
>
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