One heated debate on the scope of a Web Application Developer's work, web2.0 and what not

Yesterday wasn't quite a normal day for me. Lots of crazy and strange things happened out of nowhere yesterday. In between those things was a pretty much uncalled for debate on the scope of Web application developer's work scope with one of my old time buddies. I some how hate people who try to debate on things that they know very little about but pretend to know a lot. I have met lots of characters in my life who wants to be treated as GODs, and trust me, i have no problem if they are indeed gods of something. But i hate those people who in some way tries to project themselves as gods before people who know them very well. These guys will surely pass on as gods before the ignorant, hapless people around them. They will be worshiped as the undisputed kings by this circle of people around them. But, if i happen to be at the receiving end of one of these gods, i show a tendency to fight day and out to prove them mortal.

Lets come to the point, this is a story that happened in the great MulberryLand. There was this poor goldsmith who used to make jewelery for the Royal family of MulberryLand. There was no other person in the entire MulberryLand who could make jewelry as beautiful as our goldsmith. The jewelery that he made were so beautiful that the royal family used to send many gifts to the man with the golden arm. So pretty soon, the poor goldsmith started growing rich. He bought a new house, furnitures and also a beautiful bride. Life was settling in and he continued to be the first preference of the royal family when it came to jewelry.

One fine morning, our mrs.goldsmith goes to her husband and asks for a gift. What she asked him for was a golden necklace. The man who makes the most beautiful jewelry in the whole kingdom said, "No dear, how can i make jewelry for you. I'm the royal goldsmith. It'll be an utter waste of my talent and technology if i ever made a cheap jewelry for you."

So the royal goldsmith's wife is disappointed. She is a very beautiful woman, but no jewelry, not even a drop of gold on her.

Now lets see, where do i come into the story. I told our goldsmith to beautify his wife using the great talent and technology that he has. This got me into one hell of a debate. and this is the culminating comment i got "its a waste of a technology like .... for spicing up your ......."

The first blank stands for the technology that he works on, more precisely Flex. The second stands for his new wife, say the new website that hes creating.

The challenge that i put forward was to show to the world how a flex based site can make your own website look pretty instead of having a boring html template that you have borrowed from somewhere. The goldsmith told, hes a "Web Application Developer and not a Web designer", the Royal goldsmith. I tried to explain to him what is the scope of work of goldsmith. But all in vain, he comes up with all those points to prove that i'm pretty much outdated in latest technology and that my view point is aging. He said, i'm looking at a web developer from the web 1.0 perspective and that my dear buddy has already entered the magical world of web2.0.

Now let me tell you what i think a web application developer is. He is the one who develops an end-to-end web application (however complex it is, as he might be required to write all those beans and what not depending on the complexity of the application) that finally gets deployed in an application/web server. When you are having a personal website and hosting space on the net, i feel i have lots and lots of stuff i want to share with the visitors of my site. The technical opensource stuff i do, the tutorials i have written, photos and what not. If i were working with a technology like flex ( i used to work with a bit of ajax while working on my mobile research site as part of my Trilogy University project ), i'll try to use my technology to showcase how easily and nicely perhaps i can arrange all the information/resources on my site. I can also provide some free services like rss feeds and even polls there. Okay, incase you don't want to do all these stuff like me. Atleast get your site to look good, eyecatching. And certainly, theres nothing thats so catchy on a webpage than flash stuff. Whether it be annoying ads, or cool games flash was supposed to be the "next generation stuff" on the net. If i feel that my technology is not useful for me when i'm building a website, i'll rather not try to sell/advocate that this is the best technology to use when someone else is building their site. I will never advocate that this is the "NEXT GENERATION WEB UI". I'll just say, heres a technology that you "might" find useful. If you look at the websites of Ajax frameworks, almost all of them have made their entire site using their framework. Isn't it the way to go. Even the product that i'm working on (called, Versata) is used extensively inside my company for developing internal applications. So the use of your product starts from you, your home and not someone else's home. Like gmail being the official mail client for google guys.

Whats this web2.0?(from wiki)

Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a perceived second generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. O'Reilly Media used the phrase as a title for a series of conferences, and it has since become widely adopted.

Though the term suggests a new version of the Web, it does not refer to an update to Internet or World Wide Web technical standards, but to changes in the ways those standards are used. According to Tim O'Reilly "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.".

Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee have questioned whether the term is meaningful, since many of the technology components of "Web 2.0" have been present since the creation of the World Wide Web.

Ceratinly, i dont see web2.0 changing the definition of the scope of work of a web application developer. Perhaps, let me wind up by quoting Mark Cuban* on web 2.0 : "There's nothing new there."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/category?blogid=19&cat=650&o=50

*Cuban has gotten a lot of attention lately for calling whoever bought YouTube -- that would be Google, which acquired the San Bruno online video company for $1.65 billion last week -- a moron.