On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Dethe Elza <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Other have made the argument that Google is essentially the modern > command-line interface, but I think this goes way beyond Google. Things like > mash-ups are made possible by the View Source nature of the web, every web > page becomes an API. The ubiquity of Javascript is what makes it powerful, > not so much the actual syntax of Javascript (although I will go on record > that I *like* Javascript). > > Actually, View Source is an abomination. If you think about it, it is entirely non-object-oriented. The fact it is so pervasive is nothing remarkable. We call the users of this technology code monkeys for a reason. It's only ironic that a common way to do Mashups is named "GreaseMonkey" - you're not even writing code, you're simply taking two *concrete representations* of *data* and rubbing *butter ghee* or *baking grease* so they can slide across each other's surfaces. > And back to Andrey's example that Julian was responding to. We can write > bookmarklets or GreaseMonkey scripts, or browser plugins that change every > aspect of GMail. We can use GMail to make general Google Queries. We can > embed spreadsheets and other executable code into GMail messages. How much > goal direction and configuration is needed to become "a program?" > > I once saw an interview with John McCarthy on InfoQ where he effectively said the problem with the Web and things like Gmail is that "it's not Emacs". What he meant by that was that you didn't have the ability to control what gets persisted, including your configuration settings. Google Docs *is* changing this. Yesterday, I filled out a web form and was informed after clicking enter that I had actually been filling in somebody's Google Docs Spreadsheet!
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