Monday, March 25, 2002

Saturday: "There isn't really much fun in web services unless you're a programmer who likes to play in different environments, or likes to work with other programmers who work in different environments, or thinks the Internet is cool, even if he or she can't totally explain why. Web services are plumbing, and therefore to most non-programmers, off-topic."  [Scripting News] Exactly.  Web services are not cool and neat.  They're a sewer pipe.  Not glamorous.  Designed to make life easier.  End users should not care what kind of pipe their crap goes through as long as it works.  That's why interoperability is so critical. 8:54:44 AM

Dave: "The Bigs roll out their own standards to battle the perception that the other guy is leading. None of them are leading. If you read the stories with that in mind, you'll find the truth. It's all lies."  The approach we've been taking to designing Web services is that there should not be a single owner of the Web services space.  Web services are plumbing.  Uninteresting outside of a larger context.  Differentiation should not happen on the plumbing level.  It's like trying to sell houses based on the quality of the sewer pipe.  Sure, you want to buy a house where the toilet won't back up once a week, but there's a lot more to it.  Trust me, if our only primary concern was to get a leg up on the other BigCo competition, we'd be pushing stuff out a lot faster than we are.  We also want this stuff to work.  8:41:47 AM