Simon Morris's Blog: Web Applications Archives

In recent weeks I've been immersed in the strange and exciting world of the JavaFX Preview release. Some might say up to my neck, although sometimes it's felt more like drowning. JavaFX makes a lot of previously very complex graphics tasks now very simple. At the same time it makes a lot of previously very simple tasks now frustratingly hard!

Of course, this is merely preview release one — another update is apparently scheduled for this November, so perhaps some headaches will be addressed by then. Here's hoping! But for now here's some random gripes, observations (and a little bit of interesting source code) relating to the current release.

When Buzzwords Go Bad

Posted by javakiddy on July 31, 2008 at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I always assumed the word "jargon" was a reasonably recent addition to the English languages, but a quick glance at the OED gives examples of its use dating back as far as Chaucer. It would seem that man has been uttering "... unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing; nonsense, gibberish" for centuries! Or perhaps that should be "...conversing by means of symbols otherwise meaningless; a cipher, or other system of characters or signs having an arbitrary meaning" ?

Gibberish, or just a cipher? The dual meaning perhaps reflects the inclusive/exclusive nature of jargon — if you're part of the 'in group' jargon is useful shorthand, but to outsiders that same jargon is unintelligible and meaningless.

If "jargon" is centuries old, I wonder how old is the practice of using it to confuse and bedazzle? The OED's earliest source for "management speak" ("[...]being obfuscatory, needlessly complex, or empty of useful meaning.") only dates back to a 1986 Sunday Times article, yet I suspect the practice is far far older.

The problem is no sooner has a new term entered the lexicon than someone, somewhere, will start to abuse it for whatever reason. The unfortunate popularisation of term "web" in place of "internet" was likely due to the ignorance of many politicians, journalists and other commentators during the early years of the fledling technology. However, years later the wholesale abuse of the (far too sexy for its own good) phrase "Web 2.0" was more down to 'marketing' than anything else.

This is precisely what has happened to "RIA", Rich Internet Application, a piece of jargon now so diluted through multiple interpretation that it doesn't really mean anything any more — at least, so say the members of the Java Posse in their 24th July podcast.

Is RIA meaningless? And if so, is it worth replacing it with a new term?

Flogging a Dead Horse

Posted by javakiddy on June 30, 2008 at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Today is apparently Bill Gates' first day away from Microsoft. As he leaves, some have suggested Microsoft's star is now in the descent, as Google's star climbs ever higher. Is this really the case, is Google destined to become the next Microsoft? When a company attains a certain dominance in the market, isn't it hard to unseat them? After all, they can afford to hire all the best people!

Cast your mind back to IBM's nervous toe-dipping when it came to the fledgling micro computer market in the Seventies, or Microsoft's initial head-in-the-sand attitude towards the internet in the Nineties — being big doesn't always make you right. Indeed the larger the organisation, the better it gets at sustaining incorrect assumptions in the face of mounting contradictory evidence. (One wonders, for example, whether a concept like transubstantiation could ever have survived in a religion with only a handful of members?)

There's safety in numbers, for sure, but only by way of passing the buck for a bad idea. Shared responsibility can often mean no responsibility at all. In the right environment bad memes can survive unchallenged, and humans seem particularly good at creating those environments. We believe because the people around us believe, not because we have given an idea careful contemplation or scrutiny. What's important is that the group has clear goals; how well those goals stand up to reality is of secondary concern. As the song says: "any dream will do!"

Anti-Social Networking

Posted by javakiddy on April 17, 2008 at 06:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For a while now I've been mulling over an idea for a new type of social network, one which is actually social in nature and not just name. The key to my idea is harnessing the ad-hoc connectivity of wireless mobile devices to move the network out into the real physical world. It's a curious little idea which, like most curious little ideas, involves a lot unknowns which have to be worked out. The aim is to bring like-minded people together, be they fans of the same sports team, devotees of Opera, potential love interests or employees and their ideal employer. Oh, and once they've found each other it can recommend a restaurant all parties will enjoy (with a small referral fee, no doubt — even I know you need a revenue stream!)

Mind you, everyone seems to be jumping onto the social networking bandwagon at the moment, and just because I find my idea interesting, doesn't mean the great unwashed masses will. If I had more killer business instinct I'd be land-grabbing a chirpy domain name in all its ".com", ".org", ".co.jp" variants, and readying my bank manager to receive the millions as they start rolling in. As it is I'm happier just to get a basic prototype working, to see if it actually works as a concept.

As software increasingly moves on-line the consumer (we are told) benefits from the added flexibility. But the developer has to jump through more hoops just to get a basic prototype up and running. Time was when you compiled your binary and passed it around on a floppy to your friends. Now you have acquire a server, install and configure it, register a domain, pay for bandwidth...

It's a lot of messing just to test out an idea. Fortunately Google have come to the rescue with the launch of their Google App Engine, promising to get rid of the pain so I can concentrate on the code. But what am I giving up in return for this shortcut?

A Rose By Any Other Name

Posted by javakiddy on June 12, 2007 at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)

Oscar Wilde once famously remarked that Britain and America were two nations divided by a common language*. Of course, we've all heard the urban legends of Brits innocently employing their vernacular to ask for cigarettes in America, and the misadventures of American tourists dealing with the twisted logic of British place names, remnants of a few millenia assimilating every passing Viking, Norman, Celt, and Roman — not to mention a large portion of the German royal family. (Yes, it's written "Leicester Square", but it's pronounced "Throatwarbler Mangrove".)

[*] = Some credit George Bernard Shaw, although it seems neither man actually used quite those words. [The Top Three Quotation Origin Requests]

Yes, language can be a slippery thing at the best of times. The potential for ambiguity is high even when all parties agree on the terms in use, but when terms are subject to malleability, discourse can quickly descend into a babble of cross purposes and conversational blind alleys. Fabrizio Giudici recently fell foul to such polysemy in his blog, in which he is troubled by an imprecise definition of 'Rich Internet Application'.

It highlights an interesting question: what do we mean by Rich Internet Application? And, more importantly, which of the many and various solutions which go by that name is the most likely to succeed?

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