Occasionally, I’ll come up with an idea that seems so overwhelmingly useful, needed, or just plain interestingly fun, that I’ll begin to consider how I might implement it. When such an idea relates to the internet, I’ll oftentimes first implement it here at plexAV.com. That’s when I open the laptop, open the FTP client, open the text editor or the IDE, open the web browser, open a can of RedBull, and start to crawl ahead into the darkness of the unknown. The way is dimly illuminated; by the glow of the screen and my own sense of curiosity.

When I’m knee deep in PHP, Javascript, CSS, HTML, et al., there’s nothing that makes life easier than someone else who knows what they’re doing, doing the work for me. When such a person isn’t available, then I at least search to find a good tool to use. Note the distinction between a person and a tool. A person is obviously (at least to me) not like a tool in that a person ought not be ‘used.’ A person generally is due (and ought to expect) some form of compensation, whether that be cash, comestibles, housing, a new computer, etc., and one ought happily and generously provide such.

“Happily” in the proceeding refers to one’s motivation for paying a person. The measure of compensation ought not be based upon the difference between the amount or quality of a person’s work product and that achieved by oneself (perhaps aided by some tool), or another. Instead, compensation ought to reflect one’s appreciation for the creative time a person spends focusing on another’s ideas and acting to realize such.

The difference will seem insignificant to some, and fewer still may consider the foregoing an exercise in hyperbole. Yet I doubt that anyone so insensitive, so inured to the significance between these two motivations, would characterize the distinction as overstatement, intentionally exaggerated for effect.

To those that refuse to consider the foregoing and feel that reading this essay has been a waste of time, consider the following. The amount of creative time each of you has spent focused on these ideas is itself insignificant, and as such, you are fully compensated by the author’s present consideration.

To each of you considering the foregoing, please “comment” with your criticisms, clarifications, or questions. In keeping with the idea, I grant to anyone so “commenting”, a perpetual non-exclusive license in and to the copyright for the present essay.

Summum Bonum,

Kenneth Stein

Copyright 2008 Kenneth L. Stein

All Rights Reserved under U.S. Copyright Law
and all other applicable U.S. and foreign laws.

Jesse James Garrett, author of The Elements of User Experience, has been touting a Microsoft developed technology as the next big thing. Garrett says, “The gap between the experiences we can provide on the desktop and the experiences users can get online is closing, thanks to a new Web application framework we call Ajax.” For those interested, you can find the quote in this article. Ajax, which stands for ‘asynchronous Java and XML’, enables the development of better web applications. Using Ajax, communication between the server & client is no longer dependant upon the User. Information is updated without the generally required User mouse-click. The cost associated with implementing AJAX is relatively small when there is relatively little data-flow between client and server. As the amount of data-flow increases, the complexity increases disproportionately.

While the word ‘Ajax’ might carry with it a sense of shiny sparkly cleanliness, one finds that it’s been around for a while. Ajax will not result in vastly improved web applications. When compared with HTML, Ajax’s advantage can be distilled to a single trait, resolution. Because information can be transmitted asynchronously, software designers may develop and implement more complex models of various processes and objects. In essence however, such an approach saddles designers and coders with complexity that quickly demonstrates the law of diminishing returns. One will find that developers use Ajax to improve data transfer or aggregation and to provide flourishes to websites.