From: Ken A. <kan...@bb...> - 2004-09-23 22:39:59
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In http://tim.oreilly.com/opensource/paradigmshift_0504.html This struck me as relavent to JScheme. A summary would be that software is becoming a commodity which affects profits, players and other things. "Glue code" is not a commodity and is where dynamic languages shine. Dynamic languages support the process (evolution) of software. We are both inside and outside the internet. We are outside when we search for something on Google, Amazon, or Ebay. We are inside when someone askes for something we've provided to these sites. It is the process of those sites that keep them alive. Dynamic languages help keep the process of software alive. Tim's course could be an example of how a user (not developer) communtity could keep such a process alive. k " Perl has been referred to as "the duct tape of the Internet", and like duct tape, dynamic languages like Perl are important to web sites like Yahoo! and Amazon for the same reason that duct tape is important not just to heating system repairmen but to anyone who wants to hold together a rapidly changing installation. Go to any lecture or stage play, and you'll see microphone cords and other wiring held down by duct tape. We're used to thinking of software as an artifact rather than a process. And to be sure, even in the new paradigm, there are software artifacts, programs and commodity components that must be engineered to exacting specifications because they will be used again and again. But it is in the area of software that is not commoditized, the "glue" that ties together components, the scripts for managing data and machines, and all the areas that need frequent change or rapid prototyping, that dynamic languages shine. Sites like Google, Amazon, or eBay -- especially those reflecting the dynamic of user participation -- are not just products, they are processes. I like to tell people the story of the Mechanical Turk, a 1770 hoax that pretended to be a mechanical chess playing machine. The secret, of course, was that a man was hidden inside. The Turk actually played a small role in the history of computing. When Charles Babbage played against the Turk in 1820 (and lost), he saw through the hoax, but was moved to wonder whether a true computing machine would be possible. Now, in an ironic circle, applications once more have people hidden inside them. Take a copy of Microsoft Word and a compatible computer, and it will still run ten years from now. But without the constant crawls to keep the search engine fresh, the constant product updates at an Amazon or eBay, the administrators who keep it all running, the editors and designers who integrate vendor- and user-supplied content into the interface, and in the case of some sites, even the warehouse staff who deliver the products, the Internet-era application no longer performs its function. " |