Charles Gallant

The wordpress system is functioning pretty nicely, and I’m going to start making everything look nice. Working with wp, and using it as a system for learning the fundamental ideas behind PHP & MySQL has been pretty interesting.

Blogging, and templetized “web programming,” is doing some pretty interesting things to web publishers. Now self-proclaimed “web developers” can work with HTML, javascript, css, php, and mySQL overnight. The magic of cut & paste has made for some great advances in the publishing world, and allowed thousands of (otherwise muted) people to get their voices heard. But there is a bunch of really crappy code out there that is a result of people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Websites (and servers) are half as efficient as they could be, but as long as they work, nobody gives a damn. Then again, everything is like that. Cars aren’t as efficient as they could be, personal computers are full of spam and crap, and everyone’s VCR will flash 12:00 until the end of eternity. Who cares? I can’t decide if I do or not. Hell, it would be great if everything was nicely & perfectly put together, but that’s not going to happen. I’m leaning towards “don’t care.”

The question I have is whether or not technology is fostering the lack of patience in learning. The very nature of “hyperlinking” seems to promote a fragmented understanding of something. On the other hand, making connections across multiple disciplines by contextually linking to them can do amazing things for learning. I guess it could go either way; the internet just amplifies what we already have. If we’re willing to spend time researching and understanding something, it can be great. If we’re impatient and willing to accept a shallow amount of understanding as “complete,” it’ll do that for us too.
To a certain extent, working with technology implies standing on someone else’s shoulders and plugging in crap that you don’t know anything about. Hell, my JOB is in computers and I don’t know a damn thing about what’s happening inside my Intel chip. I used to get very frustrated by this– thinking that it was impossible to make anything groundbreaking without completely re-inventing the foundation upon which I’m standing. Now, I’m trying to think of my “technologies” as tools, and to not kill myself trying to understand how every one of them works. Perhaps this lumps me together with the “web developers” I mentioned above… I guess it’s all in how crazy you are.