I don’t normally pay attention to what search terms I “own” on the various search engines—but I was amused to discover via my referers page that my site is #1 on Teoma for bong hits.
02:27 pm #

How sweep it is!
11:06 am #

Since I work for myself, I can choose to be impolitic when I want to. So I’m going to say something I’m not supposed to say: I don’t like SOAP.

(Simple Object Access Protocol, that is. I like the other kind of soap.)

I like web services. And I’m glad when they’re implemented and adopted, even when they’re SOAP interfaces. Something is better than nothing. The trend is good.

But while XML-RPC is a thing of beauty, SOAP should have been named COAP—Convoluted Object Access Protocol.

It just plain offends me as a spec. People claim there are things SOAP can do that XML-RPC can’t do, but I remain unconvinced.

It’s a shame that for a spec to be adopted in the “enterprise” it requires a level of absurd obfuscation. It’s almost like a continuing employment clause for programmers. If you choose the psychotic spec, well, they can’t fire you, because they’ll need you too much.

It’s like IT managers choosing Windows because it’s harder to maintain, so they know their jobs won’t go away.

All that said, I’ll still use SOAP when necessary, of course.
10:53 am #

Tonight I’m going to school for the first time in over ten years. I’m taking a continuing education class, elementary French, at the local community college.

I’m pretty excited about it. I’ve learned some French before, but my biggest problem is hearing it. Language is one of those things where to learn it well you need to learn with other people.

On a philosophic note: you’ve no doubt heard it said many times that the purpose of school is to teach you how to think, and that facts, the actual content of learning, are much less important.

I dispute that. Yes, school teaches you how to think—but the content of learning is hugely important.

Otherwise it’s like learning French without learning any vocabulary. You can’t communicate—you can’t even really think—without vocabulary.
10:12 am #