Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

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Hairballs in my soup

Author:	Dave Winer
Posted:	12/6/1998; 5:47:30 AM
Topic:	Zope vs. Frontier
Msg #:	858 (In response to 850)
Prev/Next:	857 / 859

Good deal! I learn a lot from you too Wes.

Of course BeOS and Java are better APIs than the APIs in Mac and Windows. They came later, and had the benefit of the experience. In the case of BeOS, the architects came from deep inside Apple, where they had to support the sins of the early days of the Mac. That's the tradeoff. The old APIs have history. That's both their power (large installed base) and their curse (can't break the apps).

And I don't want to diminish the value of WORA. This web page is WORA. Java was just following that idea, taking the idea of a web page and turning it into software. And in doing so a can of worms opened. Security! They paid lip service to it, but they had no silver bullet. Security means anemic. No way around it. (The Java guys floated some FUD too, remember "Captive-X"?)

I think a company like Apple or Be has an opportunity to add their APIs to the open source soup. In Apple's case, the API is a hairball, but it's a hairball many of us know. Be is not a hairball, but they still have to teach multitudes of programmers to work with it.

Dave

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