Comments on: Are we all Cynics? http://www.stephendowney.net/blog/2006/03/16/are-we-all-cynics/ Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:18:35 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Web 1.0 V’s 2.0 | Stephen’s Thoughts http://www.stephendowney.net/blog/2006/03/16/are-we-all-cynics/comment-page-1/#comment-12 Web 1.0 V’s 2.0 | Stephen’s Thoughts Tue, 04 Apr 2006 19:28:18 +0000 http://secure6.ia-dns.com/~sdowney/blog/?p=38#comment-12 [...] As Walter Higgins said, just do it anyway. [...] [...] As Walter Higgins said, just do it anyway. [...]

]]> By: Walter Higgins http://www.stephendowney.net/blog/2006/03/16/are-we-all-cynics/comment-page-1/#comment-10 Walter Higgins Thu, 16 Mar 2006 17:21:00 +0000 http://secure6.ia-dns.com/~sdowney/blog/?p=38#comment-10 My own definition of what web2.0 is all about... If someone says you can't or shouldn't do XYZ on the web - just go ahead and do it. I've been steeped in Java and J2EE culture since 1999. What I've noticed is there's a tendency to agonize and fret over things like scalability and reuse to such an extent that we end up using over-engineered frameworks, libraries and APIs. The canonical example of Java over-engineering is the XML API. You want to read an XML document in Java ? First you need to create a DOM parser object. But wait ... before you can do that you must first create a DOM parser factory. But wait ... before you can do that you must first create a DOM parser factory builder ... and so on and so on... Dynamic Languages don't have all these hangups which makes it much easier to just get things done. I think web2.0 is a by-product of the wider adoption of dynamic languages. If you're constantly told that XYZ can't scale or XYZ can't/should'nt be done on the web, you either acquiesce or say to yourself 'f*@k it' and do it anyway. My own definition of what web2.0 is all about…

If someone says you can’t or shouldn’t do XYZ on the web – just go ahead and do it.

I’ve been steeped in Java and J2EE culture since 1999. What I’ve noticed is there’s a tendency to agonize and fret over things like scalability and reuse to such an extent that we end up using over-engineered frameworks, libraries and APIs. The canonical example of Java over-engineering is the XML API. You want to read an XML document in Java ? First you need to create a DOM parser object. But wait … before you can do that you must first create a DOM parser factory. But wait … before you can do that you must first create a DOM parser factory builder … and so on and so on…

Dynamic Languages don’t have all these hangups which makes it much easier to just get things done. I think web2.0 is a by-product of the wider adoption of dynamic languages. If you’re constantly told that XYZ can’t scale or XYZ can’t/should’nt be done on the web, you either acquiesce or say to yourself ‘f*@k it’ and do it anyway.

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