June 21, 2005

Hmmmm..... well, I do know one thing for sure...

Scripting News: 6/8/2005

I realize I'm almost two weeks late on commenting what has probably been commented to death. But my heads been down and I'm only now getting around to reading some of the comments regarding Dave Winer's popularity contest.

Well, even though the vast majority of people have never heard of Steve or myself, we're more influential than John Lennon or Bob Dylan ever were.

Without suggesting that Dave's feelings towards his influence are on or off base I can say that in 20 years the chances are quite good that I will still be listening to and at times entranced by the lyrics and sounds of John Lennon and the Beatles as well as Bob Dylan, U2 and other timeless influential musicians such as Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, and others. On the other hand I have my doubts that I will be reading and re-reading Dave Winer's archives or purchasing a narrated version as a more convenient medium to play over and over again, finding both entertainment and inspiration while I hack at yet some more code for some new idea I am positive is the coolest ever...

Now, this is just me speaking... someone who finds things like XML, XSLT, and other timeless functional programming languages like Lisp to be as close as we humans can get to the language of the God's. But if I were asked in 20 years who I thought the most influential person in technology has been over the last 30 years my first response would be Tim Berners-Lee, my second Tim Bray coupled with Jean Paoli and C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, Eve Maler would then be followed by François Yergeau coming into the XML specification in the second and third iterations respectively.

However, this leaves out four obvious candidates for the top spot in Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak from a business development and leadership standpoint (Wozniak of course being more of a hacker than the others) and from the flip-side of the technology coin you've got Gordon Moore from the hardware side of things, Donald Knuth from a pure fundamendtal computer science algorithmic standpoint, Adam Bosworth from an applications standpoint, James Gosling and Anders Hejlsberg from a language standpoint, Charles Simonyi from an OS/Platform and Language architectural standpoint, Linus Torvalds (another candidate for the top position) from a computer revolutionary and OS development standpoint, and Sam Ruby and each and every one of the originating members of the Apache Foundation from an Internet HTTP and Applications Server standpoint.

Now if we think about the ongoing design and architecture of the World Wide Web we've got to think about Norm Walsh and when it comes to turning the minds of a generation of developers back to the fundamentals of functional programming methodologies James Clark and Michael Kay have got to be given a top spot in driving the old (and correct!) way of programming into a new way of thinking about the future of software application development.

To be honest this is only the beginning. There are at least 75-100 others who have had just as much influence as a lot of those mentioned above but it seems silly to keep at it as I think the point I am trying to make was made about 3 paragraphs ago...

This is not to say that Dave Winer has not been influential or that he doesnt deserve a great deal of credit for bringing the concepts and technologies surrounding blogging into the mainstream. But there are others who could and should be given a great deal of credit for this medium and yet probably never will because they simply don't care all that much too say anything.

None-the-less, Dave has done a great deal of work and I for one am thankful for this just as I am thankful to the rest of the above mentioned and non-mentioned[1]* individuals for all that they have done to help bring us to where we are today.

Even still, with as much as you all have done I don't mean any dis-respect when I say I still think I'm going to be jamming out to John Lennon and Bob Dylan as opposed to any of your blog entries round about the same time you all are justifiably retiring from a long and glorious career of changing the face of an entire global community where billions and billions and billions of lives will be touched in ways we probably will never fully understand.

Thank you everybody! I know I'm having fun building and playing and learning in this wonderful world of computing you all have developed. That means you too Dave :)

Cheers to you all!

[*NOTE: I should point out that I realize that there is the entire founding forefathers and mothers of computer science that I didnt even touch. I purposely focused on 30 years back from 20 years from now as to only focus on those that have been a part of the the development of our interconnected world of Graphically-based power-houses that sit on our desktop and in our briefcases such that the comparison to the 21st century of computing would still be valid strictly from a "still at it" standpoint.]