Web TwoPointSchmoe
If there’s one thing a time machine would come handy for right about now, it’d be to go back and stab Tim FuckFace O’Reilly with sufficient vigour and zest to prevent the calamity that is the web 2.0 buzzword.
Maybe it isn’t surprising, after all, It’s been proven time and time again that I’m in the tiny minority of people in blogwankland that remains skeptical, reality based, and decidedly anti-danglyshinyobject. Of course, I’m comforted by the fact that the silent majority is likely also on my team, and that our tech landscape has thoroughly earned the abysmally low expectations the world has of it due to the shiny object brigade.
So what’s so bad about Web 2.0? Well, it’s such an astoundingly meaningless term. If you speak to anyone advocating this pile of fetid excreta, you’ll find them launching into disturbing contortions and obscene limb flailing in a pathetic attempt at coherently tying together a number of unrelated topics. If you really need a visual, picture a group of adults with severe Downe’s Syndrome attempting to twitch in time to some death metal. Their fat limbs jutting angrily, bereft of any centralised control mechanism. Their slack jawed faces staring blankly at horrors only they can see, drooling foolishly in the forlorn and impossibly distant hope of a brighter happier world.
Yes web 2.0 people, that’s you. Why, you probably wonder, given your collectively pitiful mental acumen. I’ll tell you, it’s because your desperate need to gawp at everything and anything in front of you is downright offensive to humanity. Maybe some examples will help illustrate the point.
AJAX. It’s amazing how many people think that AJAX is pixie dust. I’ve lost count of the horrific usability of 80% of the shit that ajaxian.com spooges over, for example. Granted, that site isn’t really to be taken seriously for anything more than its grinning idiot approach (count the smileys, if you don’t believe me). It is however an accurate reflection of the AJAX mentality.
Dion Hinchcliffe in fact, quite unintentionally, beautifully captures what it is that makes Web 2.0 twats so worthy of a bit of friendly hooded-crucified-with-electrodes-on-genitalia-while-standing-on-some-sort-of-box action. Apparently he thinks that ‘Web 2.0 represents best practices’. Ohyeah? If these best practices are so obvious, why are there more AJAX frameworks now than java web frameworks? Why is it that every single AJAXified app behaves in bizarre and unintuitive ways, on the rare chance that it actually works on more than one browser? Why is it that whenever the AJAX behaviour is not subtle or in the background, users feel confused, sad, and start crying like little girls? Why are all the lemmings desperately trying to find design patterns and a method to the madness?
Dion’s ‘Quality is maximised, waste is minimised’ assertion is breathtaking in its naive audacity. The fact that he cited 37signals is testament enough to how divorced he is from reality. I know of 5 people who have tried 37signal’s basecamp. None of these are techies, and every single one of them had an awful experience, and spends their time telling anyone who’d listen that it is, without a doubt, the worst project management tool they’ve ever encountered. The ‘simpler means higher quality’ line is also ludicrous. Simpler for who? Simpler to code has nothing to do with simpler for the user.
All Web 2.0 chozgobblers think that all they have to do is be Googly and their problems will dissapear. Sure, it’d be great if we could all churn out toys like google, an endless parade of what happens when you have too much money, too much time, and few revenue streams. Just never forget that what makes all those toys feasible has nothing to do with Web 2.0; it’s boring old AdWords and AdSense.
There’s no doubt that ajax, tagging, semantic fappery and all that other gibberish have some potential. Ultimately though, there is no revolution, nor even an evolution. It’s simply the ability to toss in a few more tools in the toolbox. Specialised tools, that can be effective when used against the right obstacle. Nothing more, nothing less.
December 9th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
I like ajax :):);)
December 9th, 2005 at 11:52 pm
Second post. yay
December 10th, 2005 at 12:05 am
Well done description of AJAX’s hype and usability. Who in their right mind, after writing javascript, hating it, being ok with it, and at the end abandoning it altogether, would say that AJAX is the right tool for the job. The principle is great, and I’ll tell you one thing, one that has been around for years now. (i.e. Flash). So why is everyone jumping around, happy to start coding in that “aweful hybrid of a scripting language” we all like to call java-scraped.
So people lay off of the damn AJAX hype. It is useful when its used for a particular task that it could potentially solve. Otherwise, don’t put AJAX stuff into everything you make now, because all you will end up with is many “Javascript Error On Page” messages in our favourite browser.
Another thing, just because you can make your pages sing and dance using javascript, it doesn’t automatically qualify your application as AJAX based. You will have actually had done some backgroupd calls to the server to retrieve some sort of data in an XML format that you could parse using Javascript DOM (horrible memories of endless nights spent debugging javascript come to mind). If you don’t do that, you’re simple using DHTML, which stands for Dynamic HTML for all of you ignorant people out there, and it involves using javascript to make your pages literally sing and dance in the browser.
Done.
Thank you.
December 10th, 2005 at 12:06 am
Here is the term that Macromedia should have coined
AFSAX (Asynchronouse Flash Script and XML).
December 10th, 2005 at 3:37 am
The scripting language for Flash is “ActionScript”. Which makes the acronym “AASAX”. Try saying that in public.
December 10th, 2005 at 7:48 am
Don’t you dare criticizing my beloved AJAX! I shall send the King Fahd death squads to eliminate you!
December 10th, 2005 at 11:33 am
is “AASAX” pronounced ass-axe?
December 10th, 2005 at 11:58 am
I notice Google Mail is about as reliable as a drunk. Could it be all that traffic coming from these back and forth Ajax calls?
December 10th, 2005 at 12:14 pm
-Live with it before some miracles happen to W3C and browsers
-Javascript libraries are more organized and powerful than ever before.
-Developers get jobs with javascripts<
-People more aware about client programming that the browsers are supported and we dicthed for long .
So please don’t flame war on Ajax . It’s up to no good. Ajaxian is a cool site since quite organized than “come and see my javascript playground” on the geocites webpages. So please ..
December 10th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
Is Hanni a swinger? He reminds me of the mental basketcase Serge Bureau over at Javalobby when it comes to web development. AJAX is a freaking mess and quite limited, but Java on the client is dead thanks to Sun and their craptastic Swing implementation.
Once IE is XAML-fied, free software low-lifes, such a s myself, will know what rich web apps are all about.
December 10th, 2005 at 7:43 pm
Hello, can you give me the number for the internet? how do I put dancing pictures on my page?
December 11th, 2005 at 10:37 am
Shouldn’t you actually try Basecamp before bagging on it? Twit.
December 11th, 2005 at 10:55 am
Web 1.0 and 2.0 are both over-hyped. Reminds me of the days when I got to work and turned on the PC, went to make coffee and by the time I got back the PC had almost finished booting up.
December 11th, 2005 at 6:17 pm
O’Reilly should sue to shut down this blog.
December 11th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
You guys are really just jealous that you
a) suck at javascript and others don’t
b) are too lazy to work on a user interface that actually benefits the user (look at this ugly ass blog for an example) and other people actually spend their time and energy making websites look nice
c) have no design skills whatsoever whereas others do (once again, may I point towards this ugly blog?).
d) believe the web should not move beyond its current simplistic user -> server transaction approach and have no dynamic content unless you’re using flash. I mean jeez, you wouldn’t want to actually have to code this stuff, would you?
December 11th, 2005 at 9:56 pm
For those who are interested, Paul Graham provides a *much* more useful take on so-called Web 2.0 (http://paulgraham.com/web20.html).
December 12th, 2005 at 1:47 am
You hit the nail dead on the head man. Nice one bile boy.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:55 am
Shall we ream the origin server with one horrendous, long request/response cycle, or bleed it to death with a thousand quick cuts?
I would be very, very interested to hear how people go about constructing C10K capable AJAX web apps, since that’s gonna be the decisive data point that determines whether AJAX is a wank stain waiting to dry or actually useful.
Might even learn something, too. Simple considerations of TCP/IP overhead and the requirement to handle concurrent client requests
bode grave skullfuckery if someone dumber than me choses to try this shit…
December 12th, 2005 at 9:47 am
I love javacript. Ever since I rediscovered its usage along with XMLHttpRequest, I have lost 10 pounds, grown hair, cleared up my acne, and grew a few inches. By growing a few inches, I was able to sell my sportscar and buy a tiny eco friendly vehicle. This has saved me tons on money and now I can retire years early with my new trophy wife.
I cannot dis javascript since it has transformed me into a better man.
December 12th, 2005 at 10:06 am
I had a rather nice dinner yesterday evening, we started with a bowel of New England clam chowder. The appetizers including lobster and crab spring rolls and oysters; my entre was the “Pacific Grill”, which included ling cod, a crab cake and swordfish, with crispy haricots and mashed potato. We ordered a Stags Leap pinot noir and a rather nice pinot gris from an Oregon vineyard. A few minutes ago, about 5:45 PM Eastern Standard Time, I shit it all out in a horrible bowel movement. Just thought I’d share.
J.O. U Dun No Me
December 12th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
Joseph, thanks for sharing this great moment with us, but did you really mean to write “we started with a bowel of New England clam chowder”?? Sounds like a freudian slip to me.
PS: stay off AJAX – it’s mine.
December 12th, 2005 at 7:16 pm
Hell of a troll post ‘jroller’.
How many people are going to bother reading this shit after seeing “Tim FuckFace O’Reilly” in the first paragraph.
Real mature.
December 13th, 2005 at 4:00 am
Apparently various hundreds per day, Jon: could it be there’s something you missed?
December 13th, 2005 at 8:34 am
Guys,
I have just been murdered by Arnold “Terminator V” Schwarzenegger, which ironically means “black nigger” in German. I can say it now: I was actually innocent. I understand Amerikkka could no longer tolerate the existence of a peaceful man who wrote children books such as myself. So, I’m up here in heavens, next door to Kind Fahd. He’s in hell as he actually had blood on his hands. I hear he was a good friend of Amerikkka until the end.
God bless you all,
Tookie
December 13th, 2005 at 10:57 am
I recommend ‘s/Web 2.0//g’ as an appropriate filter. This kind of filter works generally pretty well in a wide range of topics to avoid getting worked up and, as a consequence, getting other people worked up.
December 13th, 2005 at 11:32 am
Personally, I prefer AFLAX.
Unfortunately, an even bigger scam than Web 2.0 is going to be Spring Framework 2.0. I’m getting so sick of this bloated, unrestrained piece of garbage. Rod Johnson’s entire name consists of words for male genitalia, and he’s touted as some visionary. Unfortunately, we’ll never see a bile from Hani on Spring after he, admittedly, drank the sour milk from Rod’s pasty white saggy man boobs.
December 13th, 2005 at 11:47 am
Use Spring! It is good for you. I laugh at all the fuckers posting messages after all my postings at TSS. You made me famous!
Happy Hanukka suckka!
J. O. U Dun No Me
December 13th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
Someone doesnt like Hani… http://www.ryanripley.com
December 13th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
I really appreciate your anti-fuckfacedness attitude. I’m sick and tired of shiny-object fetishists who ghasp at evey new-and-improved polished turd with dreamy eyes. These turdburglars are costing the economy untold billions of dollars a year just to satify their genitalia tugging fantasies.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:44 am
First off, I too hate the buzzword “Web 2.0.” It’s just a silly term for something that didn’t need to be “termed.”
With that being said — you don’t seem to have any idea what “Web 2.0″ actually is. You think it’s Ajax. You think it’s a technology, or group of technologies. It’s not. It’s a mindset. It’s a way of thinking about the web and your users. So-called “Web 2.0″ apps don’t have to include Ajax. There are several characteristics of Web 2.0 apps, and none of them have to do with technologies. Some of them are:
- Architecture of participation
- Open data formats and licenses.
- Providing of a service, not “software.”
- Provide a rich user experience (which CAN use Ajax, but certainly doesn’t HAVE to)
All of these, in my mind, are good ideas. I wish someone hadn’t decided to wrap them up and call it “Web 2.0,” but they did, and we’re stuck with it.
Web 2.0 != Ajax.
December 14th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
It’s DOWN’s syndrome, you know? Without the “e”. And you can’t have a “severe” one. Just thought I’d share an actual piece of information here.
December 14th, 2005 at 3:49 pm
Didn’t we move toward JSP and ASP for that matter because every browser supported things differently. Causing massive bugs and version specific sites. So now the AJAX people want me to write browser specific code AND trust the XML parsing power of client machines? Call me when you can get something that I can deploy not only on the latest browser but also “Aunt Millie’s” machine that she bought 4 years ago and has never updated.
December 14th, 2005 at 4:05 pm
Jeff’s comment initially looks useful however it is meaningless methodology tripe without context, detail and successful/relevent case study examples (his blog was no help). I have see too many methodologys turn out to be turds to not be skeptical! There is no substitute for a good team and good _active_ project management (especially customer management).
OSS code resources can be useful, however I agree with others that NIH, bogus IBM developers * and framework autoerotic are a serious problem now, someone needs to give these idiots a wake up call e.g. XML and patterns should be designed in properly with a view to maintenance coding, not just bodged in to fit some weird grass and booze inspired anti-pattern.
* IMHO IBM’s Eclipse, SWT, JPOS and many other products suck, I really hate the ‘design’ of Eclipse and SWT!
December 16th, 2005 at 2:17 pm
You wanna see an overhyped, over-engineered piece of uselessness, just take a look at Spring. What a waste of human energy. Web 2.0 has nothing on that!!
December 25th, 2005 at 8:34 am
Everything is useless as long as you don’t use it. And I see the people here have decided what’s useless without even trying to use it.
For me, currently, AJAX is about prefetching data from the server BEFORE they are requested. I don’t see why someone should wait for the damn loader animation instead of a page reload. I would rather not wait at all.
For exaple I am now making a web application that after it loads the main page, it starts loading all news items in separate divs so that WHEN and IF the user requests the news item it will display instantly! Moreover after user login I start preloading all user specific data so that the page actually feels like an application!
I have also solved the reloading issues.
By the way… JAVASCRIPT & CSS2/3 work miracles!
Ciao
January 3rd, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Sounds great, Alexandros !
I agree that it has to be a good idea to load and continuously refresh all the data the user might possibly request. Since all applications have infinite bandwidth and servers that can handle infiinite load, there is no reason we should inconvenience the user by making him wait … oh, perhaps 5 whole seconds … to get the latest and greatest data.
The current AJAX marketing message seems laughable to me. The claim that ‘business users’ users either ‘will not wait’ or ‘can not spare the time to wait’ is simply untrue. ‘business users’ have no problem waiting 5 seconds for data. That’s why the Internet works. AJAX, as promoted on that basis, is a complex and unreliable pile of technofolly that solves a problem that does not exist.
On the other hand, it will probably get someone some consulting jobs this year. And that can’t possibly be bad.
February 16th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
So its ten years ago and I write my first document.open();document.write();document.close().
Yippee! Look at me I am writing DHTML. I promptly wrote a letter home to mom about my achievement.
Pretty soon I am writing full blown DHTML interfaces. element.visible = hidden or hide, fuck I can’t remember if that is IE or nutscrape.
My DTHML widgets are connected to the server by an applet marshalling java objects directly to my javascript. (actually cooler than XML parsing). But then I say to my self, “Self, this is a pain in the ass. Is this spooge or is this useful.”
My mom says is spooge and to quit wasting my time and build something useful.
Well its ten years later and nerds do what they do best. We reinvent something old with a new name. Hurray! Fuck EDI lets make Web Services. DHTML? What is that? I am using AJAX. Manning wrote a book on it so it must be cool.
Make something useful and it does not matter if it uses the blink tag and midi background music. If your mom’s knew the spooge you put forth in the name of client-side web development she would spank your bottom red. Ever try to reverse engineer a tangled mess of loosy typed script kitty code?
Online communities are not Web 2.0, they have been the goal of just about every web app since forever.
February 16th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
The browser is so cool I am going to write an entire application interface devoted to its powerful scripting engine and XML parsing capabilities. God I love browsers, they are so cool.
Back button?? No dude, you can use the back button. Refresh, no sorry that will fuck everthing up. Bookmarks? Hey, what is your problem man, why you so worried about using the browser features.
But wait, “I have also solved the reloading issues.” You have to be kidding me.
March 16th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I think you are too sceptic. Look at google and microsoft, they embrace ajax. Ajax will become the future. Don’t look at bad examples in the past but look at it’s possibilities. It’s not there yet (default back-button support, printability etc) but it will be in the near future, the upcoming frameworks will cover a lot for the developer. For the next year(s) ajax will become more and more popular. Take a look at live.com and your personalised google page, it’s the future. Second, there is not alternative, only outside the browser.
October 9th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Took the words right out of my mouth. I can not stand these people who think that the future will run on shiny bullshit that Does Not Work. Could not have said it better myself.