Re: The Two Way Web

Justin Chapweske <justin@cyrus.net> writes:

> [Mark Baker writes:]
>
> > And many (most, from what I've seen) of those real people are
> > actually *misusing* HTTP.  If it was a simple matter of them
> > shooting themselves in their own foot, then I wouldn't bother
> > speaking out.  But encouraging the proliferation of RPC over
> > the web is the quickest way I can think of to turn a loosely
> > coupled message-based medium, into a brittle, staticly-bound
> > one.
> 
> Mark, the problem is that most developers feel safe in their warm
> fuzzy strongly typed, synchronous method call, tightly coupled, RPC
> world....thats the way they were taught to program.  I think that
> most people on this list will agree (with some persuasion) that a
> tightly coupled, development time constructed, web would be a
> horrible step back.  The problem is one of mapping loosely-coupled
> message passing ideals onto something that is natural for the
> mundanes to program against.
> 
> Asynchronous message passing used to be this really scary thing
> until someone had the bright idea to rename them as "Events" and
> invent a simple programming style for them.  If you want your ideals
> to stand, an alternative, learnjavain21days, digestable system needs
> to be developed that is loosely coupled and conceptually simple.
> 
> Its all about presentation...

Agreed.

I recognized, and quickly came to agreement with, the difference in
paradigms that Mark presents, but it _is_ a different paradigm that
has to be recognized first, and we can't expect everyone to grok it
instantly.  Many of these threads have been arguing at the bits and
bytes level about completely different paradigms -- _way_ too low
level for anyone to get a picture of what's being described.

As far as I can tell, Mark is the most knowledgable person in these
discussions who understands the paradigm he's presenting.  Mark, we
need more high-level info before more people can begin to understand.
Several of the links you've given so far have been either peripheral
or too deep.

  -- Ken

Received on Friday, 24 March 2000 10:59:18 UTC