Sacramento Real Estate Blog

In Part I of this phenomenally popular article series, I was able to get through the amble and the preamble and finally arrive at the vague threat that this series might indeed contain an article. Tonight I am goaded, inspired — nay, nurtured — by the lovely Austin Realtor’s Wife, Lani Anglin, aka the prettier half of this science-fictiony Blue Brainy Guy, who’s initials I think are BR but after all this is Web 2.0 and who the heck are we?  Lani (who’s not Jen Kay, in case you were wondering) asked me the question the other day that was the basis for this whole article: “So tell me about your love hate relationship with Web 2.0.” At about the same time, Mr. Lani, the blue brainy guy, who’s also not Athol Kay, the latter being a sock puppet, posted a similar essay that’s worth reading on his site.

Actually I’ve gone through a transformation in the last day or two. I’ve decided to really see if there’s something in the Web 2.0 world for me. That is to say, I am a web 2.0 penitent. A lot of my softened attitude toward Web 2.0 probably traces ultimately to the fact that I’ve landed squarely in the AJAX / Javascript / OPC (Other People’s Code) aspect of Web 2.0 in my map site. So that’s as good a place to begin as any.

Other Peoples’ Code

Yes, I know, we have widgets and gizmaux and plugins and sidebars we can put them in.

Rah.

Admittedly: my code isn’t the best in the world. I was a good full time programmer at one time, made a living at it, but I wasn’t the Tiger Woods of the keyboard or anything. But here are a couple of things about my code: We don’t need multiple DNS resolutions for it, typically, because we’ve done that. Also, I control it, so if it stinks, I know who to holler at to get it fixed. Also, I can try to make it somewhat fast.

I like Jim Cronin. I really do. I hope he didn’t get run over by a team of articles about teams. I’m a bit worried about him. But (at the risk of picking on him), Jim’s site takes some ten seconds to finish loading. I know — not a big deal, you can see the Tomato and start reading the article, but I still want to see the page finish loading. As a developer, who used to pay attention to such things knowing a customer would holler at me, it’s a distraction.

Where does that slow load time come from? Other Peoples’ Code, of course. Jim has many of the latest bells and whistles, as well he should — I should have a house, by the same token. My site, which only has a couple of Javascript links, one so I can see if NikNik or the Sock Puppet or Jen Kay are reading me as they should be. I just installed that the other day. The other bit is so Hittail can make inane suggestions, like telling me I should be blogging about “electronic signatures 2007″. Hittail’s so fun. Yet even with just those two, I’m up to three seconds. A “static” (minimal PHP) page on the same site takes just over a second to finish doing its thing.

It Was the Best of Code, It Was The Worst of Code

But look: Google, and Yahoo — who between them probably spend more on keyboards than I make in a year — have competing, free APIs to put maps on your site. How cool is that? I have a whole blog growing up around Other Peoples’ Code, so I don’t want to make it seem all bad. We’ve now serving developer man hours, free, through a series of tubes. And not just code, either. We’re structuring data over here using XML and consuming it over there using plain old stateless HTTP. How fun is that?

I’ll bet Al Gore never dreamed of such applications when he invented the telephone.

What’s also neat about that is that we’re publishing what we’re doing as we’re doing it, so all us men may be working on the chain gang, but we sure make a lovely sound.

I’m not so sure how many more installments there will be of this, but I’ll let you know when I’m done so you can get on with other classics like Charles Dickens or what have you.