Random Thoughts

Have you heard of IndieWebCamp.com yet? I hadn't heard about it until a couple weeks ago, but as soon as I started digging into what it is I really liked what is going on there. Basically, what you're looking at is the beginnings of a federated social web. It's the idea that blog posts and comments shouldn't belong to a single central company but that they should be built into the web's infrastructure. The best part is that it's already working. Let me take a moment to slow things down a bit and explain it as I understand it from the ground up. Facebook owns your account; I mean, it's your account but it belongs to them. If one day Facebook decided that they wanted to pack up their website and make a restaurant chain that serves cheeseburgers instead of crappy BuzzFeed listicles they could do that and you wouldn't have a Facebook anymore or a way to send messages to your friends. You might say, "So what? I'll start using Twitter, Google+, or ...

Software development appears to be heading in a similar direction as automobile assembly. Before Henry Ford revolutionized the industry every car was unique and complicated. They required specialized mechanics who knew the specific vehicle inside-and-out. This sounds very much like software development today; it is possible for any developer to get into an application and make changes but it is only efficiently done by someone intimately familiar with the specific nuances of the application. We're very close to a tipping point in development where applications may be created on an "assembly line". It is already beginning, you no longer (and haven't for quite a while) need to know HTML to create a website because many hosting companies have a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to generate the markup needed to display content on a site. I'm writing this in a blogging engine right now that doesn't require me to change my CSS to alter the look/feel of my post. Using...