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RE: Joel on XML

• From: "Box, Don" <dbox@d...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 22:46:21 -0700

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@u...]
> Sent: Saturday, July 22, 2000 11:21 PM
> To: Rick JELLIFFE
> Cc: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: Re: Joel on XML
> 
> 
> Rick, that was the paragraph I wanted people on the xml-dev list to
> consider.
> 
> Also look at the protocol that Napster uses, and don't take this as an
> excuse (it's already been done) to debate whether it's piracy 
> or not. It's
> something to behold, to see how simple it is, how suited to 
> the problem it
> solves, without any fanfare or bluster, or debate or 
> second-guessing. Like
> HTTP and HTML were in 1992 or so.
> 
> http://weekly.org/code/napster.php3
> 
> According to the company there are 20 million nodes running 
> that protocol
> right now. That's approximately 20 million more than are 
> running XML-RPC or
> SOAP.

Perhaps that's because there are way more people interested in swapping MP3s
than in administering UserLand stuff. If/when compelling
services/applications are served up via SOAP, then SOAP traffic will be
fairly ubiquitous.

> Moral of the story. Abstraction takes you away from the 
> application, 

Last time I checked, abstraction allows software developers to build and
integrate applications. The 20 million end users that use napster could care
less about abstraction, but I'm sure that the small handful of developers
that created napster didn't just churn out a bunch of random code but
instead used abstractions.

> which
> is the only place that has juice.

No one said that abstraction was sexy ;-) 

Seriously, abstraction and type are as vital as an opposable thumb if you
are a programmer. If you are a non-programmer, they are more akin to a third
eye.

DB
http://www.develop.com/dbox

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