Richard Turner posts a response letter to the whole Distributed System White paper thingie. I thought it might be interesting (to me, at least) to respond briefly with my thoughts on it.
I think both John and Richard (and several others) have made good points over this discussion. Personally, I think the whole discussion has been very enlightening and entertaining, and I do feel that John's critique does actually make sense and he has good points overall.
I'm a little baffled, though, as to how Richard claims that "The paper never states explicitly, or proposes to provide, guidance on best practices for how to actually go about designing distributed systems". At first light, I would've agreed.
BUT, I think one key point of what John has been articulating in his posts (at least it seems to me this way) is that the way the underlying technology and API is framed has a significant effect on how you think about and how you design your distributed system. Thus, you can't really talk about how to use the technology available to build distributed systems in the best possible way without also hinting at the best way to conceive and design it (at least up to a certain point). A leacky abstraction, and one I don't feel all that comfortable with this, but that's what we end up with given the state of affairs.
Consider this in the light that what John has been talking about is not the way indigo works, but rather about the abstractions that indigo provides for building your distributed system and how it shapes your perception of how to design the system in the first place. That is pretty significant, imho, particularly given that MS is trying to bring all of its previous distributed systems under the Indigo umbrella and thus under a single API and programming model.
On a closing note, I do feel that the whole discussion is getting out of hand and escalating to a level that is both unnecessary and potentially offensive. I've read both Richard's post, as well as the several answers to John's posts from Steve Swartz, and I'm under the unfortunate impression that a whole defensive attitude is being build up that is not productive and doesn't help the discussion at all. Things like Richard saying that "Instead, you berate me, and the WCF team..." and the whole tirade that follows is, well, silly. Please let's not make this into a "WCF team against the world/customers/customer/someone" fiasco. It does not help Indigo, it does not help Microsoft, it does not help ourselves (a.k.a the customers/developers) and it most as certainly does not make you sound more credible and professional.
4 Comments
archived from WordPress — closedI don't understand why Rich Turner must take the brunt of criticisms for making aggressive posts. JCJ, whether or not he has valid complaints, has always made his posts look like the Indigo team is made up of a bunch of clueless people. Please note that the bunch includes the venerable Don Box. If he wants to say stuff like "the Biztalk team gets it, the Indigo team doesn't" then he must be man enough to take the backlash. Also note that JCJ himseld has not expressed any dissatisfaction with the tenor of the posts. So why are you guys butting in the middle and trying to moderate a non-existent issue?
You should consider minding your own business and just contribute only on the technical aspects (for which you are well known for anyway).
Those 2 guys are adults and can get by just fine.
Dilip,
I don't think JCJ has made the indigo team like idiots. In fact, I distinctly remember him saying repeatedly that they got a lot of stuff right. I understood it more like him saying they didn't understand his necessities, which is something that could happen to anyone; even the smarter of us.
I should also clarify that I'm not speaking on behalf of John, he is quite capable of speaking out himself. And frankly, whether he takes offense with what richard says is his problem, not mine (and I most certainly didn't feel offended by richard's post, btw).
What I'm trying convey, though, is that I see something in the attitude of some of the WCF team members that could, in the long run, undermine their relationship with the community, and that in turn would certainly do a disservice to all involved and possibly remove the possibility of some valuable (if contrary to their own) inputs about the product design. That is all.
Tomas
I really don't understand your point. WCF is not built to cater to JCJ's "necessities". Its one big umbrella unifying the myriad communication methodologies available to a programmer in the Windows world. If JCJ wants to follow a message based approach, his complaint is more attunded towards WCF not supporting it in the programming model directly. Well, I don't know much about Indigo since I don't live by the bleeding edge of technology but I can recognize the fact that JCJ's is just ONE approach. Not the ONLY ONE. That is the problem with trying to please everybody -- it simply isn't possible.
There is nothing wrong with the attitude of the WCF members. It takes 2 to tango however I do agree that as a vendor marketing their product to the customers, its the company that must show more restraint.
P.S: some of JCJ's posts (despite the fact they have some good points) are downright patronizing.
Dilip,
Again, I'm talking in plural here. Of course WCF is not meant to comply with just JCJ's necessities. It is, however, meant to solve problems for MS customers in general, right?
Of those, several do have necessities that JCJ articulates, I feel, well. I'm not talking about *his* specific view of the world, but about that of a set of people whose ideas go in a similar direction. I, personally, happen to agree with a lot (but not all) John has said. A more interesting point here is that most of us don't want to change indigo from the bottom up; at least I don't... there's quite a bit of good stuff in there... however, can what is there be more approchable from some other perspectives with a reasonable effort? I think that is worth asking.
I agree with you 100% that the WCF team can't please everyone. The point is that they should try to listen and understand what the customers are saying, even if it does not fully align with their own opinions. That's it. I know they can and do it, because I've seen it happen(if from far away, since I'm not an indigo guy, either), but there seems to be some resistance building up. Again, just mho, I might be wrong on my impression.