Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

 

Cattle-Driving the Future

Phil Wainewright: Avalon - Microsoft's Microchannel, in his followup on Joel Spolsky's API Wars article, Phil compares Microsoft's Avalon efforts to IBM's PS/2 and Microchannel misfire.  I suppose that makes Microsoft's Bob interface the mate to PC Jr.

Phil bases his speculation on Avalon GUI technology being delivered exclusively with Longhorn.  Unless we are to believe that our existing applications won't run on Longhorn unless we convert to Avalon somehow, I don't see the danger.

I have no idea whether the sharp minds at Microsoft want to confine Avalon to Longhorn as an attractor.  It's not that I'd be surprised that Microsoft is positioning to serve more than one agenda by developing a very high-performance graphical capability.  I just can't see that as an area of concern for me.  I think I'm going to pay more attention to integrative technology (.NET and Web Services) that is already available.

But I am left to muse about unspoken agendas and the Microsoft-IBM history.

---

Sometimes, unspoken agendas have us be wary.  It's as if what isn't being said is shouted very loud on the human backchannel.  I think it is natural to feel wary at those times.

Here, context is everything.  When Heathkit advertised "We won't let you fail," it was heard quite differently than IBM's expression of that.  IBM is known historically for aggressive maintenance of "account control," and the PS/2 might well have been seen as a way of re-establishing a "franchise."

I see in this a different insight than Phil's into the OS/2 fiasco.  The breakup of Microsoft and IBM over OS/2 seems like a complements clash of the kind that Joel Spolsky has noticed: "smart companies try to commoditize their product's complements."  From that perspective, we should not be surprised about the antagonistic breakups of partnerships where one company wants software to be nearly free and the other wants hardware to be nearly free.  That the guy with the franchise on the operating system owns the toll-booth for that particular racetrack is also not surprising, nor is the effort of hardware floggers to break away from that rat-race for their own mercantile purposes.

In the game of "who do you trust" that customers are left to figure out, I think we should just notice where they put their money and where do they aggressively seek substitutes, realistically or not.  I bet Avalon is not part of that equation.
posted by orcmid at 6/19/2004 04:33:17 PM

 

Rich Client, Poor Client, Smart Client, Web Client

Joel on Software - How Microsoft Lost the API War.  Joel Spolsky outdoes himself (and he'll do it again) in explaining what happened to the developer world and how the Windows API may have become irrelevant.  This is a big deal, because the Windows API is as important to developers and Microsoft as the Wintel BIOS is to PC makers and Microsoft.

Here's how it looks to me:

• There now are more APIs, of different kinds at different levels, increasing the platform's appeal.
• For web-distributed applications, more has been done to ensure that Microsoft platforms fit naturally on one or both sides of those connections than for any alternative.
• It doesn't matter which toolcraft prevails for choreographing the desktop user interface of web-serviced applications: It will be supported on Windows.

Here's how I see preservation of Microsoft platforms as the integrative technology of choice.  [disclosure: My firm is a member of the Microsoft Empower ISV Program.  On Wednesday, my four-pound DVD starter kit of all-the-software-you-can-eat-for-a-year arrived.]

Protecting the Cycle of Demand.  Joel, in discussing what he calls the Raymond Chen [and here] model, acknowledges the tremendous effort that Microsoft has invested in supporting third-party legacy applications.  Microsoft works diligently to make OS upgrades as painless for customers as possible;  the company is very attentive to those people who buy the computer that has the operating system that runs the applications that are developed on the operating system that runs on computers that people buy.  Microsoft owns the tollbooth (and the pit stops) on that particular Möbius-surfaced gerbil raceway and the ticket onto this ride for developers has been the Windows API (along with its companions, the Platform SDK and application-deployment model, all available at no cost on-line).  Nothing illustrates the commitment to grandfather working applications better than the current desperation to put Windows XP SP2 out there and have it be installed successfully by everyone who tries it, creating a buzz that encourages nearly everyone else to try it too.

The Web, as in Freedom.  Joel sees a dramatic change now that the ideal means for application deployment is the web.  The competing protocol of choice is now HTTP, an open industry standard for connecting users and applications and services across platforms using the Internet.  Now the client is your web browser, and the application is somewhere else.  Anywhere else.  I'm operating with that model this moment as I create this blog entry using www.blogger.com.

Wallpapering the Usability Divide.  This is not a perfect arrangement because of browser incompatibilities (and the annoying tendency of developers to QA against only one particular browser).  Along with that, browser-based applications can be pretty intrusive, and even when that is tolerated, browser usability is not that same seamless application experience found with well-crafted desktop-application surfaces.  Joel provides a nice recap of the dissonance with your Aunt Tilly's desktop:

But there's a price to pay in the smoothness of the user interface. Here are a few examples of things you can't really do well in a web application:

1. Create a fast drawing program
2. Build a real-time spell checker with wavy red underlines
3. Warn users that they are going to lose their work if they hit the close box of the browser
4. Update a small part of the display based on a change that the user makes without a full round trip to the server
5. Create a fast keyboard-driven interface that doesn't require the mouse
6. Let people continue working when they are not connected to the Internet

to which I would add being able to work in multiple applications at once and blend between them while also providing for full accessibility.  I have never considered substituting Hotmail and web-based distributed-learning applications for the fat-client Outlook and FirstClass on my desktop.  I will be happier when I can operate my blogs from the desktop and not the browser.

Meet the New Game, Just Like the Old Game?  It is not so clear to me that Microsoft is changing the game.  With .NET, there is a new integration model that works with web-deployment and smartness on the client.  In addition, the raw platform and a good chunk of the API has been contributed in public, freely-available specifications through standards processes of ECMA International.  Two major tests of this new agility are GNU dot Net and the Mono project.  Mono is coming along nicely with release 1.0, now sponsored by Novell, in beta.  This suggests that Microsoft's offering of the baseline .NET facilities as a basis for heterogeneous, cross-platform distributed applications is serious.  There is corresponding promotion of XML and Web Services that support platform-independent ownership and preservation of distributed data.  That's effectively a new API, one based on XML for presentation data units (in the old Open Systems Interconnection -- OSI -- Model sense of presentation) and for protocol data units in the Web Services protocol stack. 

Here a Stack, There a Stack, Everywhere a Stack, Stack.  "Stack" is increasingly showing up in the language of Microsofties, and the relationship to OSI models seems to be no accident.  It is, of course, completely possible, permissible, and encouraged to build proprietary layers atop an open stack and to wrap proprietary infrastructure as open-system access points.  It is important to realize that Web Services (and XML) are for application-to-application communication and the stack provides for thin-client, client-server, peer-to-peer, component substitution, service-oriented architectures, distributed security, and who yet knows what other forms of distributed operation.  On Microsoft platforms, .NET and the WS stack will be bolted in everywhere, with application access mediated by, you-guessed it, interfaces to objects supplied via .NET library classes.

Counting APIs.  Beside the Windows API, we now have two more interface stacks:  The .NET API on the platform and the XML/Web Services stack for cross-platform operation.  Although .NET is still evolving and transforming (as are Web Service specifications and implementations) the picture is fairly clear.  If you are in a position to use Microsoft libraries, then you will have their strong on-platform support libraries for offering and accessing Web Services.

Is It a Good Thing?  It seems to me that there is more for Microsoft to gain in this approach than anything there is to loose.  Their own developers require this capability in delivery of applications and services.  I don't think external developers will find anything unwelcome here.  There are now more layers of defined interface around which Microsoft may extend their platform reach, and third parties can do the same.  With the .NET ability to easily define and substitute components both above and below the Microsoft-defined integration points, there is less reason to fear becoming captive to a platform-exclusive point-of-view.

Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?  While it may seem that these open interfaces don't bind developers so close to the Microsoft platform as before, it is definitely easier to develop and confirm applications using Microsoft client and server platforms.  And on any platform, making sure that there is interoperability with the thorny cases of Microsoft's Web Service implementations will matter.  In addition, developers will find it easier to integrate alien servers (running J2EE, say) and mainframe legacies into Microsoft platform solutions.  I would say that Microsoft has done as much as anyone to enable platform interoperability and preservation of application code and design portability.  They're not going to do it for us, and they're also not in the way.  I like their confidence that this is a valuable way to compete.

In the Eyes of the Beholder.  I see the interoperability features as evidence of Microsoft's eagerness to extend its platform's reach and availability in a world of competing user agents and service sources.  I've ignored competing approaches to user-interface crafting and visual-development of applications.  There isn't any experience to suggest that Microsoft will be at any disadvantage in those areas.

Listening to:

Duke Ellington Ellington at Newport (1956) Complete double CD, Columbia (1956, 1982, 1999).  My high-school chum Ron Lougheed gave me my first LP of this concert performance, and I wore it out before the sixties got very far.  It is great to have this fine expanded compilation.

posted by orcmid at 6/19/2004 03:15:56 PM

 

Accountability and Transparency for Credibility

RG News: Critical Factors In Gaining Online Credibility.  Here's a great checklist and some links on the conditions that have a web site be considered credible and trustworthy, at least as a provisional judgment by visitors.  I am fascinated by how many of the items involve establishing some personal level of visibility along with accountability for the site itself and what is offered. The general thrust is toward transparency as a means to building a trust relationship.

A key aspect is establishing a track-record of dependability.  I would add that the greatest test is how breakdowns are handled.  What do you do when there's a mess, and what does that show you can be counted on.

I suppose that reputation building is a factor as well.

I'm redesigning my consulting-practice and ISV site, and these are matters I intend to address, especially as I shift my focus to more-personalized areas of computing.
posted by orcmid at 6/14/2004 03:27:23 PM

 

In an ALGOL State of Mind

Anders Hejlsberg - Tour through computing industry history at the Microsoft Museum.  If you are able to watch the video, you'll enjoy this story of the origination and development of Turbo Pascal, Delphi, VJ++, and C#.  My favorite part: Anders' first programming language was ALGOL.  Of course.  I should have known.
posted by orcmid at 6/14/2004 03:17:15 PM

 

The Ever-Shifting Tide of Communication and Civil Literacy

Smart Mobs: To the class of 2004.

Last night, at a small dinner party here, I took some time out as host to scan four photographs that a guest had kindly brought.  The pictures are of petrographs that she saw while visiting Africa in 2000.  I am touched by the eons that mankind has found expression for itself for whatever purpose, including none but for its own sake.

Petrograph and photograph: Each is ephemeral; all endure as connections and expressions of who we are and of what matters to us at the time, some evoking resonance in the human spirit across millennia.

I have been collecting material of this kind as part of a project that recognizes general literacy (and the communication of abstract concepts) as a recent phenomena. Wide-spread civil literacy is just today happening in the world.

We forget, in the immediate generations, how recent are so many ideas and discussions. Not much more recently than our time, those concepts had no existence.  Neither pharmacology nor socialized medicine nor pharmaceutical industry would be recognizable on the public agenda one century ago. "Public agenda" wouldn't have much currency either.  Neither neo-conservative nor AARP existed in the Great Depression, though their harbingers can be identified.  Without the nascent civil literacy of the 18th century, it seems impossible that we would have had the revolutionary ideas of the relationship of people to each other and government to commemorate here every July 4th.

Philosophers and historians note that there has been perpetual tension between what we lately speak of as individual liberty and social cohesion.  These are increasingly the subject of civil literacy, expressed both in concept and in deed.  Along with that conversation is a new concern over the instituting of empire in forms and extent that were impossible before this age.  One may well ask whether every reform in human affairs invites its own corruption, and has it been ever thus?

Today, Howard Rheingold delivered an address to the graduating class of Stanford University's Communication Department.  This speech is being delivered at an institution that is barely a century old, named for a youth who died of typhoid fever during a visit from California to Italy in 1884. Herbert Hoover, in the first graduating class, studied geology and was known for his humanitarian efforts before he became the 31st President of the United States.  Today, there will also be a commencement address by a 1950's Stanford graduate, the first woman ever appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

These are but a few reminders of the marvelous journey that we are swimmers in.  Howard's charge is for these newly minted communicators and journalists to restore the civil conversation to its promise and preserve civil literacy for us all. David Weinberger has provided the nutshell summary.

What is at issue is the very nature of humankind, the image we have of our limits and possibilities. History is not yet done with its exploration.... of what it means to be human. - C. Wright Mills

posted by orcmid at 6/13/2004 10:09:12 AM