Picking nits — rich or thick?
I just read through a recent Joel on Software post to take a much needed break from looking for good mandolin tabs (send me some links if you know any — a kickass xmas gift from my girlfriend, but now I have to learn how to play the damn thing!). In this novella of a post, Joel takes a pretty interesting approach to analyzing and editorializing on a Steve Gillmore post — definitely an entertaining read, but actually kind of depressing. The jargon in Gillmore’s post was pretty dense, or so Joel implies, and he claims to have spent about three full hours researching some of the names and hip valley slang Gillmore was spouted off…
Now, I’m no valley resident. Never even been there. Don’t even work in the field. I’ve been following the conversation here and there, but needless to say, I’m pretty far removed from it all. Yet, reading through Gillmore’s text didn’t seem like a problem at all. Sure, the post could have used some links (what gives, Steve?), but I just don’t get Joel’s gripe. Sounds more like whining because he’s just a few steps behind. So what? Now he’s done his three hour homework and he’s all caught up. Good Joel.
It’s jargon. That’s what it’s for. Sure, it can be (read: often is) overused, but in this instance Gillmore refused to dumb it down for the bonehead masses (or to use his phrase: “playing to the middle of the pack”). He was kicking off a conversation with his peers, in their language. If you read the comments, his readers seem to agree. This isn’t pretentious buzzword bullshit jargon, so give it up, Joel.
More to the point of the post(s) in question. I couldn’t agree more with Joel on one thing — Steve Gillmore and Jonathan Schwartz are pretty much on this same page thick client debate. I can see Gillmore’s confusion — the thin/thick client debate is a relic from the bygone days terminal computing. It was dusted off to hype internet appliances and other narrow hardware. It has more to do with what’s under the hood of a user’s computer than what applications they’re using.
This may be splitting hairs a bit, but as far as I can tell, there’s slightly different jargon for that debate, and Schwartz should know it. Rich. As in Rich Internet Applications. As in how Sun was hyping Java applets; how Macrodobe’s always positioned Flash (and now Apollo). That’s thin v. rich, not thin v. thick — and it was no doubt a bastardization.
None of that makes a damn bit of difference, however. Joel, Steve and Jonathan all agree — RIAs are here to stay. Now it’s just a platform battle royale. While I agree it’s going to come down to open vs. proprietary, I don’t give a damn if Sun GPL’d Java — it’s not even in the conversation.