07.17.06
On AJAX and Hype
Found this amusing but poigniant comment:
Steven, a young web wiz, has just celebrated his bar mitzvah. He received a dozen gifts and must write a dozen thank-you notes. Being webbish, he creates an on-line ?Thank-You Note Generator.? Steven shows the site to his friends, who show it to their friends, and soon the site is getting traffic from recipients of all sorts of gifts, not just bar mitzvah stuff.
If Steven created the site with CGI and Perl and used tables for layout, this is the story of a boy who made a website for his own amusement, perhaps gaining social points in the process. He might even contribute to a SXSW Interactive panel.
But if Steven used AJAX and Ruby on Rails, Yahoo will pay millions and Tim O?Reilly will beg him to keynote.