X

Fri, 5 Feb 88 on NeWS-makers@brillig.umd.edu...

The astonishing baroqueness of X is the greatest threat to the general success of UNIX to have come along since System V hit the streets.

Speckers

Peter Saint-Andre knows...

Perhaps we should force spec writers to either write code or deploy services.

Oh and Peter also gave a helluva session at OSCON on security and jabber/xmpp.

Not To Mention

An underlying, unintentional, yet pervasive message at OSCON this year is this: while the web server is a proven platform for building applications, the web *browser* is a horrible platform for building applications. Browsers have a tough row to hoe to get where they need to be. The huge advantage they have is cultural: programming applications by default are assumed to be best done on a browser, especially "cross browser", no matter what pain is involved.

Please don't hurt the web! Use a productive client.

Two things are going to push browsers (maybe kicking and screaming) into the 21st century web: Flex, (which *is* open and so could show up in Firefox someday) and AtomPub.

The combination of those could be significant.

Coding Faster, Pussycat!

I could not agree more with Dan Creswell when he writes...

Every decent software engineer knows that actually you want less code.

Yet I've seen this get turned into a desire for tools that implement systems "without coding". Unfortunately those tools often ignore the benefits of text-based code such as testability, maintainability, flexible automation for deployment, and so on.

So I definitely want less code, while still wanting "code". :-)

Fallout

Joe Gregario on the N = 1 problem...

While not everybody needs BigTable today, more and more people will over time. The sooner we start building a common understanding of how to program against such a model the better off we'll be.

Joe also gave a helluva good presentation on AtomPub at OSCON last week.

Routing

Tim Bray wisely instructs...

Even if you’re living on one computer right now, it might be smart to write your integration pretending that you’re not, so that when the load cranks up, you can scale out.

I saw Atanu Ghosh talk about the XORP router project at OSCON last week. This is exactly the approach they've taken, and have been able to move components out to multiple machines. Not exactly intuitive for a router architecture, but a wise choice generally as Tim says.

AtomPub

Bill de hÓra writes...

Atom Protocol. Is nearly done. Even though I'm a co-editor, and hence have some bias, this one will be fun to watch. AtomPub sits in a very strange place, as it has the potential to disrupt half a dozen or more industry sectors, such as, Enterprise Content Management, Blogging, Digital/Desktop Publishing and Archiving, Mobile Web, EAI/WS-* messaging, Social Networks, Online Productivity tools. As interesting as the adoption rates, will be people and sectors finding reasons not use it to protect distribution channels and data lockins with more complicated solutions. Any kind of data garden is fair game for AtomPub to rationalize.

Congratulations. Way back several years ago as a shooting-from-the-hip off-to-the side observer I thought the Atom effort would just add confusion to the "syndication" domain at a time that RSS, feeds, blogs, etc. were gaining some visibility in the enterprise. This was a great effort, and a great vision, and I think I kind of "get it" now!

Swing and a Miss

I'm watching the Godfather and just came across a huge blooper. Sonny beats up his sister's husband in response to the husband beating the sister. A few swings into the beating though, Sonny clearly swings and misses but the brother-in-law flings his head as if contact was made.

Wild. I played Tivo back and forth in freeze frame to make sure of what I saw fly by the first time. Sure enough, this is a known blooper.

Now I don't know how I missed that so many times before.