DISQUS

Scripting News: All the angst over Atom (Scripting News)

  • crabasa · 3 months ago
    I had forgotten all about ATOM! Those flame wars were legendary. Wow, what a blast from the past...
  • Swift2 · 3 months ago
    This is a true statement: "A new format is no big deal." This is true about more things than news aggregators.
  • nbradbury · 3 months ago
    Exactly. I remember all the feed format battles, and wondering if any of those involved in them had ever written an aggregator that supported more than one format. Adding Atom support to FeedDemon way back when was no big deal - I've spent more time trying to design a toolbutton icon than I did adding Atom support.
  • dave · 3 months ago
    Well said Nick. The battles were mostly to try to get me to admit something. I said "bring it on" let's have another format. Even after I endorsed it, they still said I was opposed to it. Those were terrible days when discourse in the tech community was almost all negative. Thankful it all eventually calmed down.
  • nbradbury · 3 months ago
    Honestly, I find that most of these tech battles can be avoided by simply asking yourself, "do people using my software really give a damn?" More often than not, they don't. Which, for the record, is why I'm staying out of the whole "RSS is dead" thing.
  • dave · 3 months ago
    My concern is that some Dilbert-like thinker at some big publisher might hear this BS and decide to pull their feeds. RIght now that's not happening. But I've seen weirder things. (During the Atom uproar, every meeting I had with a publisher focused on this subject. Wasted a lot of time, at least, and might have significantly delayed some projects.)
  • nbradbury · 3 months ago
    Well, it's fair to say I have similar concerns. I don't want someone not to try FeedDemon because they heard RSS isn't "cool" anymore (and let's face it, most geeks desperately want to be cool, whether they admit it or not). But if presented with the opportunity to talk with these people, just ask where they heard that RSS isn't cool, and nine times out of 10 they'll say they read it in the feeds they're subscribed to in their RSS reader. In which case, just give them a blank stare until they realize the error of their ways :)
  • dave · 3 months ago
    I have to learn that blank stare thing. :-)
  • nbradbury · 3 months ago