Javascript - Still Object-Oriented

Dan Ingalls did an hour long(demo, slides, Q&A) tech talk at Google last month that was very informative on a number of levels. Even if you are already familar with the basics of the Sun Lively Kernel project, it’s worthwhile but if you haven’t seen it, there’s nothing like getting it from the horses mouth.

The Q&A was very interesting - So many people seem to miss the simple albeit very subtle value of a clean architecture. In the fast-moving world of the web, it’s been hard for many to see that when you blindly rush ahead focused only on getting stuff done now, you inevitably create messy situations from which you later have to dig out from under. As I’ve noted before wrt AJAX, the long path taken to Web 2.0 was considerably longer than it had to be. The seeds of REST & AJAX were in HTTP-NG over a decade ago if folk had been open to listening. OTOH, if one wants the cleaner approaches to get better traction, sooner then it’s necessary to make sure that the less interesting but vital work gets done earlier on in the process. Which reminds me - time to get back to coding

… is alive and well in Morphtron

In the past two years, many websites have been undergoing fundamental transformations in how they are viewed and interacted with. Driving these changes are technologies which have been around for almost thirty years and in their present form for nearly a decade. During that time I have been one of the pioneers of several of technologies which are making a come-back with AJAX and Web 2.0. Part 1 of this article takes a look at what AJAX really is and how it could have evolved differently. My objective with Part 1 is to show that given an understanding of the path we’ve traveled, we can take can make choices to move forward more efficiently. Part 2 will examine how AJAX is paving the way for the emergence of the agent and story-driven participatory environments I pioneered and what that will mean for the future of the web and the global economy. Continue Reading »