Re: Leaving the Working Group

Keith,

Your contribution will be missed. Thanks for the encouragements!

-Erik

On Feb 17, 2009, at 11:18 AM, Keith Wells wrote:

> Dear Working Group members,
>
> I mentioned several weeks ago in our teleconference that I may be  
> transitioning away from XForms and moving to new assignments in my  
> department at IBM. Well it has happened and I have to refocus my  
> energies to new areas starting this week. Sadly, I will not be  
> focused on XForms as a standard any more, but I will always continue  
> advocating XForms as a superior tool for rapidly authoring robust  
> web apps and easily presenting our client's and customer's data in  
> their web browsers. Data presented anywhere, anytime!
>
> In my opinion, XForms has not received the accolades it deserves!  
> Simplification, presentation, reuse of other standards, MVC, ease-of- 
> authoring, abstraction; the people in the Forms Working Group have  
> done an excellent job in designing XForms 1.0/1.1 and are years  
> ahead in thought-share for opening complex web development from  
> several thousand JavaScript and HTML developers to, well, several  
> hundred-thousand (or more) authors, or to anyone who can learn  
> declarative markup (assuming this task is easier than learning Java/ 
> JavaScript). To me, this is a revolutionary concept and we have been  
> seeing other efforts to create declarative markup for AJAX/ 
> JavaScript expand from work in the Forms WG, in fact, several of our  
> fellow Forms Working Group members are leading this charge!
>
> A comment from a fellow IBMer on a conference call one day, he said  
> “I JUST want it to work!”. How many times have we heard this  
> statement from a customer, and then several months later, we hear “I  
> JUST want it to work, AND I want it to be inexpensive to build, AND  
> I want it to be even cheaper to maintain”. Well, compared to C++.  
> Java, and even JavaScript applications, XForms applications meet ALL  
> THREE criteria – and you don't need a programmer involved at all!
>
> As I say goodbye to my friends in the Forms Working Group, I applaud  
> your efforts over the years, I thank you for your innovation and  
> ingenuity you have transposed to words in the XForms 1.1  
> specification, and I implore you to continue in your efforts to  
> abstract "programming constructs" to "declarative markup" to  
> simplify the “art” of programming in the development of Rich  
> Internet Applications.
>
> Thank you all for your friendship and patience with a less-so- 
> abstract thinker! :) I hope to run into each of you in my future! It  
> has been fun for me!
>
> P.S. I have had a lot of fun hanging-out with you spec-writers --  
> you are a very different breed from your average programmer! (I am  
> not saying that is good or bad, but my goodness, you can discuss a  
> single small concept for hours if not days (and sometimes WEEKS)!  
> haha ).
>
> Thanks,
> Keith
>

--
Orbeon Forms - Web Forms for the Enterprise Done the Right Way
http://www.orbeon.com/

Received on Tuesday, 17 February 2009 19:39:06 UTC