The usual set of excuses
I have been shying away from writing about meatier topics here because I think they will take longer than I have to do them justice. And when I start to write something, it seems like I’m just repeating the obvious. Only when I broach a given topic with those who I think are representative of mainstream developers does it sink in that the stuff I spend a lot of time thinking about is all very unknown to a whole lot of people. I suppose that’s nothing new.
I still don’t have enough time to write everything I want to, but here are a few things that have spent a lot of time rolling around in my head, ideas that I think are important and that most normal people think I’m nuts to even spend time on (everyone, that is, except a certain fellow who has recently become enamored with Common Lisp — which exempts him from being called normal).
- Concurrency.
- Architecture for scaling. Flexible approach to databases.
- People’s expectations for software have increased, especially for the type of web apps that I write. The old way of doing things doesn’t cut it.
- User interface matters. And it’s usually done very, very badly. See #3.
- RIAs and where HTML & Ajax fall down. See #4.
- Games, education, Darkstar, and virtual worlds.
Every year I do a presentation or two at the MnSCU IT conference. I’ve been thinking that next year I’ll propose a talk entitled “Your Web Apps Suck (and so do mine)” that brings all those things into a 45-minute rant. But as entertaining as that might sound, I don’t think it fair to submit my colleagues to it. Never mind that “Sam’s Latest Rant” does not a good conference presentation make. So I’m unlikely to. Sorry. Buy me a beer or two and I’ll spill my guts.
In the meantime, I’m going to try to get off my duff and write more. No. Really.
27 Nov 2007 Sam
I’ve struggled with the same question – namely, why write about something when it seems to be a mere replica of existing material?
On the other hand, blogging is also about conversations. Perhaps an apparent rehash written today will prompt a thought from someone else.
Also, maybe a partial writeup on a meatier topic will prompt someone else to add something to the topic. Distributed computing via carbon-based lifeforms. :-)
As for nuts, bah – there’s tons of us out here. That’s the beauty of the long tail.
The long tail. Of course. An important point was hovering on the outskirts of awareness that I couldn’t quite identify. That was it.
Makes your point about conversations, doesn’t it? Thanks.
Well….as you know, Sam, I became interested in Common Lisp after reading the Ruby pick ax book….and finding that closures and stuff are all great(which lisp has as well), as are open classes, but…if a class is open, why can’t I override/extend a certain instance’s behavior?
With Ruby I can’t with Lisp I can. While this feature could be misused there are no doubt times it would be awesome.
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