Re: Next Web Focus

On 1/29/14 5:04 PM, Ambrose Little wrote:
> I’m also not deriding or opposing SoC /per se/, as anyone can see if
> they just read what I have written so far in my few posts here. With
> everything there is a spectrum, and SoC is no different. It can be taken
> to extremes and idolized as well as totally ignored and everything in
> between. All I would advocate for is moderation and balance of that
> principle against other important principles within the context of what
> I have said so far, which is centered around moving the Web forward.

I think you're at the wrong point on that spectrum, pointed the wrong 
direction for moving the Web forward.  That's probably not a surprise.

> I just read your blog post. Thanks for the history lesson, from your
> perspective. ;)
>
> Your post paints a pretty rosy picture of what has been in reality for
> many developers death by a thousand cuts.

Yes.  The cuts have been brutal.  I've suffered enough of them directly 
- writing a book on Dynamic HTML while IE 4 was in beta was really not 
the smartest thing I've ever done.  Implementing an HTML/CSS/JS app on 
iOS using PhoneGap a few years ago involved almost as many band-aids. 
You don't want to know the Lotus Domino stories or the 
HTML-documentation-in-a-Java-viewer stories.

> I have worked across several
> technology platforms in my time, and the Web, despite having been around
> for longer than most of them, is still comparatively very immature from
> many perspectives, only in the last few years starting to break out of
> this infancy.

I disagree about the infancy.  The Web's a pretty hardened young adult. 
  Unlike most technology platforms, it's had to deal with a diverse and 
cranky set of constituencies.  It's also had to deal with a wildly 
varying set of implementations across multiple platforms.

It may look immature to environments that have led coddled lives, but 
those very cuts have bred practices that let us achieve miracles every day.

> One thing’s for sure: millions of people have built things on the Web,
> despite all its problems. There is definitely a core set of goodness
> there for us to continue to build upon. I don’t think anyone could
> really dispute that. The trick is in teasing out what the good stuff we
> should keep is versus what we should let wane versus what we should
> tweak/enhance versus what we should add.

Yep.

> You end with this:
> "Let’s extend the Web and help it do more – but let’s do that by valuing
> the many strengths it already brings.”
>
> I can’t speak for Tom Dale, but I’m pretty sure we’d all agree to that
> statement. The devil is in the details, as the saying goes.
>
> You said elsewhere here, "No. We have a values barrier here.”
>
> I actually tend to agree with that, though probably not to the extent
> that you seem to be inferring. We sit in different places on the spectra
> and the details. I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the
> bathwater, but the Web does need to grow up and embrace the reality that
> what we need from the Web today is quite a bit more from what we needed
> in 1994 or 2000 or even 2010, and the needs will continue to grow and
> evolve. Trying to position the current architecture of the Web today as
> the optimal/all we should ever need (with some minor tweaking of
> standards here and there) because we’ve managed to sort of make it work
> thus far is just wrong, as I see it. Maybe that’s not your position, but
> what you have written here and in your post seem to suggest that’s where
> you are coming from.

Optimal, no.  But worthy of a more considered evolution than seems 
fashionable here.  I've watched great leaps forward collapse a lot of 
times now.  JavaScript Style Sheets is probably my favorite failure today.

> Anyways, hopefully we can move past these unproductive generalizations
> and instead refocus on more concrete ideas around how to move things
> forward.

I wish you luck.

> For my part, I am indeed interested in how we can advance Web
> /application development/, in particular (which is in itself an
> immensely vast and fundamental problem domain). As such, I do embrace
> things like Web Components (the concept of which has been around FOREVER
> in other platforms). That kind of SoC is far more useful in app dev
> than, for example, semantics/structure and style. Does that mean we
> should do away with HTML and CSS? Not in my book. I see no reason why we
> can’t take a both-and approach with regard to advancing the Web.

Yeah.  I tend to find that people who have a sharp primary interest - 
say graphic design or application development - just want the rest of 
the Web to get out of their way.  It doesn't have to die, it just 
shouldn't constrain them.  As you might guess, I have no patience for 
that attitude.

And with that, it really is time for me to get to other things for a while.

Good luck to everyone,
-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/

Received on Wednesday, 29 January 2014 23:05:50 UTC