0xDECAFBAD - Tag: winer

Tagometers and Travesties

2006-12-21T01:19:56+00:00

You know you've truly arrived in Silicon Valley when the darling new feature you just helped launch on a Web 2.0 site gets shredded in a rant by Dave Winer. :)

My day, having started with me in a foul mood, has been made. Pre-launch, the tooth marks in my tongue have gotten deep as I watch the comments pile up. It's exciting to have so many people debating something you've made. (Update: Seriously. I'm in a better mood now. It's made me laugh.)

Actually, it wasn't the feature itself that got shredded, so much as the new JSON data feed revealed before the intended star of the show made it on-stage, by way of a screencast preview on Y!DN by Matt McAlister and an amplification by Niall Kennedy.

The feed itself is mainly intended to power our new Tagometer page widget include thingy. Beyond that, leaving the feed decoupled from the include itself made sense to me, both for our own flexibility's sake and as a nod toward our mashup friends in the blogosphere and lazyweb.

You see, I like JSON. It was convenient in this use case of creating a remote blog widget fed by cross-domain sourced data. I, personally, didn't even have to reinvent anything that wasn't already implemented in assorted off-the-web tools. JSON worked for this purpose - it might not work for your purpose. ~~If it doesn't, please accept my insincere apology, but yours wasn't my primary goal. Attempts to string me up for this travesty will be met with giggles and pointing.~~ (Update: I realize I'm not the to-be-strung-up party responsible for the JSON travesty - I just couldn't resist being a smart ass for its own sake. I really do giggle and point a lot. My actual apologies for that.)

It's funny, laugh.

JSON URL feed is not really an API. JSON URL feed is not a bold declaration of side-taking in the grand war of web service specifications. Do not base business models on JSON URL feed. Caution: JSON URL feed may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds or stop altogether. JSON URL feed contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at. Ingredients of JSON URL feed include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space. If JSON URL feed begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head.

Do not taunt JSON URL feed.

Archived Comments

Dave Winer
2006-12-21T02:00:51

Not sure if I helped your mood or made it worse, but the rant wasn't about you.

http://www.json.org/xml.html

Tell me what you think of that bit of hyperbole. Someone there is trying to undermine a lot of work a lot of people did over a long period of time to get software to interoperate. When you say that's just my issue, you miss the point. It should be everyone's.
Geof F. Morris
2006-12-21T02:28:32

Aw, man. It should've been "Do not taunt happy JSON URL feed."
l.m.orchard
2006-12-21T02:47:44

Honestly, it brightened my mood. The smiley was neither ironic nor sarcastic. Something big I helped launch has been stirring an interesting discussion, however tangential my blame in the making.

Vanity and Carly Simon aside, I know I'm not the main perpetrator of JSON. I just couldn't resist an opportunity to be a smart ass. For that I have a sincere apology. I should probably strike it or delete it now that the giddiness of a major launch and a lot of attention has subsided.

But seriously, what I meant above is not that this is your issue, per se. This post is really more directed at some comments on your blog post, in bulk.

Our particular intentions behind using JSON here do not necessarily map to anyone else's expectation from a web service or standards-driven perspective. It seems like a lot of people are looking at this JSON data since its early release, divorced from it's main consumer: The Tagometer JS include. It works for that purpose - and incidentally might help others - but we're not working very hard to support other uses.

Apropos of that, I don't particularly buy the hyperbole about JSON being XML's superior in the general case. JSON's a brilliant hack, but it's got issues. And seriously, if anyone thinks that adding and removing script tags on the fly in a browser DOM is the best overall way to go about things... they should be strung up. It just so happens that right now, it's the only way to do some things.
timb
2006-12-21T11:22:52

hooray, i'm glad to see the json url feed.

however, i shouldn't have to generate the md5s of the urls i am interested in... i should just be able to give it the actual urls.
John Manoogian III (jm3)
2006-12-30T02:28:08

mmmmm, swilling the liquid core...!

Don't Pee in the Potato Chips

2006-01-28T07:02:15+00:00

So, I've expressed some renewed interest in tinkering around with the code behind the OPML Editor and NewsRiver. Well, it needs to be said that there are some strings attached to playing in this field: That is, these are Dave Winer's potato chips I'm enjoying.

And, well, when you're taking chips from another another guy's lunchpail, it's customary to at least be nice to the guy and be gracious about the sharing. Granted, when I'm done, there could end up being more potato chips left in the bag than when I found it—that's the nature of this sort of sharing, after all. But the bag, nonetheless, was brought to the table by Dave.

Although I've tried to bow out of it over the past few years, I have historically been found amongst the crowd who've been known to take pokes at Dave when it affords a run of chuckles or guffaws. Sometimes, this has been in the pursuit of making a technical point or two in dramatic fashion—but often this has just been done toward the goals of playground-level politics and tit-for-tat.

Well, this crap doesn't suit me. Or at least, I don't want to be suited for it. You see, I really just care about being friendly, working on decent code—and besides, my Winer Number is right around Mu.

Although I've been witness to many clashes of ego involving the man with others of strong ego, I've never actually been the personal victim of any slight from Mr. Winer that I care to count or remember. It's been fashionable to poke at him, but my goal is to keep my ego at a calm distance from most things in life and I've not got any personal gripes with Dave Winer.

On the contrary, when I look at my career over the last few years, I see plain evidence that I've benefitted well from the man's influence—even if indirectly from his work. I've successfully profited from implementations of XML-RPC and RSS. I've managed to write my first book thanks to things I first picked up from him. And, I've learned a lot in pursuing fractional horsepower HTTP servers.

Dave writes shitty software and evangelizes shitty ideas. And, since the turn of the century or so, I've adopted and improvised upon many of them for fun and profit. Thus, while I don't want to be on any "side" or in any "camp" or be a mindless fan or follower of anyone or anything—I do feel a need to at least be nice to Dave Winer while I'm sharing his potato chips.

So, Dave? I'm sorry I've pissed in the bag of chips a few times. Maybe we can just call those salt and vinegar and let someone else eat 'em. In the meantime, I might make a run to the party store for some dip or something.

Archived Comments

Brad Neuberg
2006-01-30T10:54:25

Do you have a online demo for the OPML Editor you mentioned ?

Ancient code drifting down the newsRiver

2006-01-28T06:08:57+00:00

So, while working through some writing blockages last weekend, I started doing some hacking on Dave Winer's newsRiver running on the OPML Editor platform. (Oh, and it is a platform, maybe more so than even emacs—don't let the moniker 'editor' fool you.)

Here's the thing: It was a lot of addictive fun, and it takes me back to the love/hate thing I had with Radio, back toward the first days of this blog. This Frontier / Radio / OPML Editor environment is undeniably satisfying for me to work in. It's like potato chips: Jump to an outline here, tweak some code there, mangle an outline node up there, reload a browser page, watch things go—lots of moments of instant gratification all building incrementally atop one another.

In one package—which reminds me a lot of Squeak—the OPML Editor bundles a crazy amount of integrated machinery for both Windows and Mac OS X:

UserTalk, a very capable scripting language
An IDE based on outlining, somewhat like Python's syntactic indentation
Persistent on-disk hierarchical hashtables (aka the Object Database)
Code and data all live in the same object database
A web server and a host of other networking code—including Jabber messaging, although I can't attest to its freshness.
Blog editing and no-effort external web hosting file synch
Hot patching and easy upgrades that most other software packages dream of
Years and years and years of (mostly) working code with datestamped change notes and living history.

And the thing is? This was the state of the art for Radio back in 2002—and earlier than that even for Frontier. Fast forward from then till today, and you'll find that Frontier is now Open Source—with many of the same sorts of warts Mozilla's open source release helpfully revealed back in 1997. (Some hero needs to come along and port this beast to Linux! Good luck!) And now, much of the guts of Radio are released as the OPML Editor.

In a lot of ways, this whole family of apps built on this common ancestry of code is really shitty software. Kind of like all that code on the Qeng Ho from Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. This stuff crashes and sets itself on fire a lot, but then again it's amazing to see just how many wheels have been reinvented and re-reinvented since 2002 (and before) when I fire up this code today.

And now, it looks like the embers are stirring for this thing again. There's been a lot of time for a lot of angst to fade from a lot of places, and it looks like there's a new crop of fresh people rediscovering this stuff.

So, anyway, I like these potato chips. I think I want to start munching on them again, as time permits. Oh, and while I'm talking about potato chips—I have to say, don't pee in the potato chips and be nice to the guy holding the bag.

Archived Comments

Robert Brook
2006-01-28T15:03:50

Serious question: why not use Squeak?
l.m.orchard
2006-01-28T16:01:26

Robert: Short answer is that I saw Radio first for the RSS aggregator and blogging support, started hacking on that, and got sucked into other aspects of it along the way.

For Squeak, I saw some fun colorful things and kind of got the gist of the environment, but never got hooked on any daily uses of it after a weekend or two of playing. So, it fell into my "Learn Smalltalk" todo item that keeps getting pushed down the list by other things. That item's still on my list, though, and I mean to get to it someday...
Danny
2006-01-28T16:07:44

From what I've seen and read there are loads of good ideas in that platform, but there are two things I personally find extremely offputting : the pervading sense of Not Invented Here, and the sheer age (in the negative sense) of the stuff.

Now the code's been open sourced, maybe there's a chance of the tastier crisps (UK localization) catching up and being integrated with the rest of the world. Ok, very IMHO but : swap US-ASCII for utf-8, XML-RPC for doc/literal XML, RSS 2.0 for Atom, Object Database for triplestore, Python for UserTalk, outliner for modern IDE (although actually the outliner UI is probably one bit that might be worth preserving as-is) etc.

Well, ok, maybe it is a bit much to expect. Maybe a maximally interoperable version of the Frontier approach could be recreated (without reinvention) by plugging together various existing open source libs..?

For now I guess I'll have to make do with Web as Platform (and/or Squeak) ;-)
l.m.orchard
2006-01-28T16:28:59

Danny: Yeah, I agree with a lot of those points, and they fall into the 'hate' side of the 'love/hate' thing for me. (Well, more like 'strong distaste' than 'hate' anyway).

And I've realized that, since drifting away from Radio/Frontier, I've been recapturing it in various forms using tech like Python, triple-stores, mini-HTTP servers, and the like. And although these things have felt 'healtier' in a non-NIH, bigger community, more loosely coupled way... it's still a satisfying experience (like potato chips) to find it all buttoned up in one integrated package that works on most of the platforms I care about.

It's still kind of a writing-with-my-wrong-hand kind of pain in the butt to get all the loose coupled stuff working sometimes. And many times, there are very good reasons for thing being hard and lots of things need minding. Like, XML-RPC style web services versus REST:

REST is a cleaner, more web-natural approach—but sometimes it takes a lot of thoughtful meta-tinkering where that XML-RPC stuff would've had you on the road hours ago. Of course, years from now, the XML-RPC stuff might smell a bit while the REST stuff will have stayed solid and revealed further unexpected benefits... but bah. They both have their place.

It's a lot like baked versus fried. Anyway, rambling now.
Danny
2006-01-28T16:57:00

"It’s still kind of a writing-with-my-wrong-hand kind of pain in the butt to get all the loose coupled stuff working sometimes." Nicely put, yup. Bit of a challenge. Coincidentally, yesterday the idea of "Semantic Web in a Box" came up - maybe the place to start would be "Web in a Box"...
arbitrage betting
2011-06-23T02:16:57

Nice points there. I agree with you. Those steps dated in the past are still very useful and helpful until today. We just need to be careful which ones to use. Munch more potato chips! Cheers!