Next post
Web Services are overhyped.
This is a common theme with our industry. Remember when Java was overhyped? Remember when Push was? Remember when the Macintosh was?
Whenever something is overhyped, I start looking elsewhere for the real action.
The real opportunity for the average Joe developer (financially) is not by building Web services, it's by building business information services behind the firewall. I think we should call services that run behind the firewall “HTTP Business Services” since my mom and dad can't see them from the World Wide Web.
Most of the programmers who use Microsoft stuff (or even Sun's Java) are building business applications. The kinds you never hear about. They are ripe candidates to build new kinds of business information systems.
For instance, KGO Radio in San Francisco is being run by a Visual Basic app. It works. It helps them run their business. It was probably run by a developer who didn't really care that his app is helping Microsoft sell a few copies of Windows. The developer probably got paid a good fee to create the app. He or she is happy.
Those are the kinds of folks that are using .NET. Will the next version of Quake be written in a .NET language? Of course not. The next version of RedHat Linux? Of course not. The next version of UserLand Frontier? Of course not. The great folks who write those kinds of apps, platforms, and OS's aren't the average Joe developer that Microsoft cares about (if they did, a stretch limo would appear, and they'd buy you, just like they did to Anders Hejlsberg when he worked at Borland).
Why do I believe that HTTP Business Services are underhyped?
Jon Rauschenberger, one of the guys at Clarity Consulting