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What's Spreading "the AJAX Wildfire"?
An anonymous reader writes "AJAXWorld Magazine is running an article entitled "What's So Special About AJAX?" in which the majority of the contributors agree among themselves that AJAX "heralds a new, global sense of what the web can be and what the web can do, in ways that are so different but so much better than what we have been used to." While many of those the magazine consulted adduced technical reasons for the spread what one of them, Rich Internet Application pioneer Coach Wei, calls "the AJAX wildfire," only two mention how human nature — including that of software developers — is, well, notoriously susceptible to the latest fad. Which side would you agree with?"
It's just the next step in rich user interfaces on web pages. Nothing more, nothing less. Not a fad, but not a revolution, either. Web 2.0 doesn't exist. It is a stupid idea thought up by marketing guys with nothing better to do. There will not be a sudden shift in the way everything is done. Instead, things will gradually improve over time. The technology behind AJAX is cool enough, but it does not warrant the immense bullshit marketing and exposure it gets.
How is Ruby lacking where lesser languages have lasted for so long? This isn't a question with hidden value or a bait for a flame war, I figured you'd finish your own comments:
"Ruby is more likely to be another fad because..." where's your argument?
"AJAX is actually something new..." despite the cries it's been around in a former life known as remote scripting, which has been in the ASP-supported languages[1] for several years. The difference is you can do...in AJAX wherease remote scripting was restrictive in the way
"but AJAX is definitely...important." because...
Unless you want to toss out karma points like toothbrushes when you find a hair in them, you might want to answer your own questions because you're leaving yourself open to challenge without making your point(s) known. You're either going to waste a karma point by posting incompletely or you'll have to come back in and waste a second one trying to defend your position.
This is going to sound nasty to some people, but I'm tossing a karma point out to you and anyone else who posts quick little quips. Take it as constructive criticism, even if you don't think it is.
I was really dirty in debates and public speaking (esp. the latter in college). In both of them, it was, "You're likely to hear this from someone following me. And when you do, I want you to listen for answers to the following questions. And if you get these answers, think about how appropriate they are for the given set of circumstances." The Persuasive speech (in college): "You're going to hear people get up here and talk about abortions & birth control, gun control & registration, involvement of the US as a force for peace in the world, yadda, yadda. I want you to think how much of that affects right now as you're sitting here. Most of us here are seniors and now live off-campus. Do you know what happens to you when you live off-campus? You still pay for one meal a day at the Dining Commons, even if you don't go. So if you're married, you're paying for a meal you're likely to never go to...yadda yadda". I watched a lot of pale faces as I sat down. Because almost everyone there had to get up and talk about everything I said basically said was a sucky topic yet found something they were paying for and never knew it. (I always went first because it was like Goren on Law & Order: Criminal Intent...no one ever knew what type of show was going to be put on and I wanted to get first shot at manipulating the crowd.
Take five minutes, at least write something that's reasonably complete. It doesn't have to be the magazine article some of us write who go through write, preview, edit, preview, edit, preview, etc. and spend twenty or twenty-five minutes to craft a post. Unless you've got a dilly of a one-liner. By all means, get it posted. But it'd better be good.
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[1] Remember: ASP != VBScript. ASP is a platform|umbrella. It could be PERLScript, JScript, PHP, VBScript, and a couple of other languages which were made to fly.