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I mean, a tool-maker wants to sell you tools. Why wouldn't they want to sell you tools that obviated the need to look down the wire? If customers wanted those t

I mean, a tool-maker wants to sell you tools. Why wouldn't they want to sell you tools that obviated the need to look down the wire? If customers wanted those tools. Maybe it was just harder/more expensive to make those tools than the "just solve it with tools" spec-makers anticipated. Rather than it being any particular misalignment of incentives.

toyg 5y ago
It's just that the cross-vendor interop efforts were often skin-deep. They all tried to lock you in one way or another, by implementing this or that spec draft a bit differently and making specs overly-verbose and burdensome to implement for anyone without a big budget. Microsoft had just won the browser wars that way, after all. But hey, if you stuck to one vendor, it all worked like magic.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  I see, the interoperability issue makes sense, and now I'm starting to remember it. (I never did THAT much with SOAP). But you really think the specs-writers (being some of the same people as the tool-makers?) intentionally made the specs overly-verbose and burdensome to implement, to protect their tools businesses? That's different from what you said in your original comment, about spec-makers "believing toolmakers were on their side" -- now you're saying the spec-makers were the tool-makers and not actually on the end-developer-user's side! I'm still inclined to believe a lot of it was people (both spec-makers and tool-makers) doing their best with a challenging problem, rather than intentionally sabotaging it for profit. But you think I'm too optimistic?
  - toyg 5y ago
    It really depends on your view of W3C as a standard body. > That's different from what you said in your original comment SOAP basically started as an attempt to learn from the mistakes of CORBA and RPC, and I think it started with good intentions all around. When complexity hit, however, the original designers basically went "we'll deal with it in the various sub-specs, but don't worry, tooling will take care of this anyway". I do think most of them were not malicious in this approach. Meanwhile, vendors understood where the wind was blowing, and got themselves heavily involved in the various efforts - hence the proliferation of WS-* and incompatibilities. > I'm still inclined to believe a lot of it was people (both spec-makers and tool-makers) doing their best with a challenging problem Considering the amount of money and manpower that went into these efforts, ascribing it all to lack of skills would possibly end up being less optimistic - about the state of corporations, the work they produce, and what this means for human progress. TBH I think the charitable reading is just that there were too many cooks in the WS kitchen. I feel some of them burnt pans on purpose, maybe they didn't, but at this point it doesn't matter much.

toyg 5y ago

It's just that the cross-vendor interop efforts were often skin-deep. They all tried to lock you in one way or another, by implementing this or that spec draft a bit differently and making specs overly-verbose and burdensome to implement for anyone without a big budget. Microsoft had just won the browser wars that way, after all. But hey, if you stuck to one vendor, it all worked like magic.

jrochkind1 5y ago
I see, the interoperability issue makes sense, and now I'm starting to remember it. (I never did THAT much with SOAP). But you really think the specs-writers (being some of the same people as the tool-makers?) intentionally made the specs overly-verbose and burdensome to implement, to protect their tools businesses? That's different from what you said in your original comment, about spec-makers "believing toolmakers were on their side" -- now you're saying the spec-makers were the tool-makers and not actually on the end-developer-user's side! I'm still inclined to believe a lot of it was people (both spec-makers and tool-makers) doing their best with a challenging problem, rather than intentionally sabotaging it for profit. But you think I'm too optimistic?
- toyg 5y ago
  It really depends on your view of W3C as a standard body. > That's different from what you said in your original comment SOAP basically started as an attempt to learn from the mistakes of CORBA and RPC, and I think it started with good intentions all around. When complexity hit, however, the original designers basically went "we'll deal with it in the various sub-specs, but don't worry, tooling will take care of this anyway". I do think most of them were not malicious in this approach. Meanwhile, vendors understood where the wind was blowing, and got themselves heavily involved in the various efforts - hence the proliferation of WS-* and incompatibilities. > I'm still inclined to believe a lot of it was people (both spec-makers and tool-makers) doing their best with a challenging problem Considering the amount of money and manpower that went into these efforts, ascribing it all to lack of skills would possibly end up being less optimistic - about the state of corporations, the work they produce, and what this means for human progress. TBH I think the charitable reading is just that there were too many cooks in the WS kitchen. I feel some of them burnt pans on purpose, maybe they didn't, but at this point it doesn't matter much.