Or maybe, to be frank, perhaps not a lisp question at all. So delete
this if you are busy.
However...from the two meetings of the Toronto lisp group I have
attended, I gather that several of you do web development, or related
stuff. So some of you are probably knowledgeable in areas that are a
mystery to me.
I made it CASCON today and enjoyed the session on "Practical Ontology
Infrastructure". Of course, this topic has plenty of connections to
things that may interest the lisp community. But that topic is not the
source of my questions, or rather my bafflement.
Over the past ten years I have often been utterly flummoxed and not a
little annoyed when I try to grasp what is going on in the "business
world" of computing. At CASCON this week many of the sessions were
about SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). The notion of SOA came to
my attention some time ago, but although I looked it up on wikipedia
and even read some commercial blurbs on it, I still have no damned
idea what they are talking about. I enjoy learning things that seem
like "computer science." But I cannot for the life of me penetrate
this combined computing and business stuff.
From my limited, jaded, and admittedly dated perspective, it seems we
are subjected to a never-ending succession of questionable panaceas,
cooked up - maybe - by marketing people. The ones that are about
computing over the internet seem particularly offensively squishy to me.
Would anybody be willing to fill me in, perhaps not on the mailing
list if it is too off-topic? LIke, as I struggle to learn lisp and
such, should I really pay attention to "software as a service",
"service oriented architecture", and so on ad infinitum?
Or should I just grow old and die of gum disease and varicose veins.
F**k.
- Dave -