Web 2 point Oh (no)

Chris Norton, May 30th 2006, 2:53PM

Books of academic criticism of a certain movement, whether literary, artistic or philosophical, always seem to start with the same introduction. Say you're reading about abstract expressionism. The intro will say 'first, what is abstract expressionism? It's hard to define the movement in any definite way'. You will now feel a little annoyed that this author doesn't know what he's talking about. Then the intro will say 'of course, none of the artists discussed in this book would call themselves abstract expressionists'. You will now start wishing you'd picked up the copy of Heat instead of this book about a movement that doesn't seem to exist and that nobody wanted to belong to.

And that, my friends, apart from showing off my extensive knowledge of the art world, is all a bit like Web 2.0. Nobody seems to know what it means, and all the real innovators and cutting edge folk on the web seem to be shunning the label. No wonder - the phrase itself sounds incredibly smug, mainly because of the 'point oh' bit. It is scientifically impossible to say 'Web 2.0' aloud without sounding like a punchable buffoon - try it.

What's more, it's kind of innaccurate: the 'version number' format of the name implies a completely new version of the WWW, where instead, on the sites sited as being part of this exclusive club, all we find is more of a 'Web 1.25' - a web with a few bells and whistles on top. Ben Ramsey has been talking about the need for a new term, now that O'Reilly Media have claimed Web 2.0 as their own - but I'm thinking perhaps the whole buzzword needs to be binned, or at least saved until the web really is revolutionised.

Tags: web2.0, www
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Things can only get better

Chris Norton, May 10th 2006, 9:45AM

Hello Earth! When people come to me seeking a deeper understanding of what a web developer does, I usually mumble something about back ends and databases and how it's much more interesting to do than talk about. Well today I feel like being more forthcoming, so here's a post about the joys of web dev.

Now (and forgive me for dipping into a bit of UKFast promotion here) I've been working on our new Client Area for a couple of weeks now, and it's struck me that the best bit of working on the web is the changeability of it all. Whilst there's always got to be a deadline, things are never set in stone. Nothing's ever perfect, but working in this fluid medium means that, if an improvement occurs to me, I can make it - now, or in the future.

Say you're a novelist, and you've just noticed you've used the word... I don't know... 'wow' far too many times, so many times that it looks ridiculous, hey, you used it five times on page 57 alone... well, you've just had that book published and now you look silly, you wow-obsessed fool. You can only beg the readers 'be kind to my mistakes'. If I on the other hand suddenly notice I've got far too many... I don't know... mysql_query commands going on in a script, hey, I used it five times on line 57 alone... well, I can fix it just like that - either now, or in the future when somebody goes 'Oi Chris, you mysql_query obsessed fool'.

Of course there are times when you could have done with some burning bridges, and you really really don't want to see X Y or Z script again. But on the whole, it's a satisfying plus-side to this beast we call development.

Tags: coding, development, websites, www
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