Re: Rotten Fruit, was Re: Correction Re: Foreseeing the Web, was Re: CONFESSIONS OF A CHEERFULLIBERTARIAN By David Brin

From: Emlyn (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Thu Dec 07 2000 - 03:29:20 MST


> "Most successful mass stuff like this"? Name three other things like
> coding an HTML web page. Name five.

Urm, ok, generic applications like Word, Excel, etc. Simple, sometimes
grubby, really easy to get something half baked together.

VB programming. I leave as an exercise for the other coders here to explain
this one.

The english language. Half stuffed, jammed full of extra features and
doodads, much of the complexity cloberred over years of being a peasant
language, and now in the role of global language. I'm no linguist, but
people interested in such things have said to me that English is relatively
easy to get up to minimum speed on, and comparatively difficult to master.
Sound familiar?

Stuff like this, "successful mass stuff", must not retain elegance which
makes it at all complex. The main criteria is that you can throw together a
half baked sentence/document/program/page, and it'll work enough. Doing the
big, hard stuff, requires a real expert (moreso than with something well
designed). And when I say "you", I don't mean "you", I mean the least
competent interested person.

> There is no question that the Web
> has succeeded. And so most people put up with all the things wrong with
> it--"404 not found" being one of the biggest. No rotten fruit to be
> thrown at you--you're eating it. And so am I. Every damned day.
>

That's funny, I find it pretty tasty.

> Not sour grapes, though. :)
>

It's a bit more like gravy, as far as I can see.

Emlyn



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