Garbage Burrito

I was thumbing through the lastest edition of the Java Developer’s Journal whilst sitting on the think tank.  I have to keep up with stuff so I can continue to pretend I'm a Java developer until I escape the nightmare.  When I opened to the first page I was dumbfounded by the editorial entitled "Social Computing Will Turn the Web World Upside Down" by Jeremy Geelan.  Wow, I knew there was a large majority of Java Day Coders that are worried more about getting home to watch the Chiefs game than at least pretending to participate in the world they help construct.  However I figured it was hard to miss the Web 2.0 hype that's saturating every tech corner, except for the JDJ apparently. 

At first I thought maybe I had read it wrong, maybe this guy has a new take on the matter, however the rest of the article was filled with gems like "In other words, Social Computing is about to turn the Web world upside down", "Think I'm Exaggerating?", and "But this time, trust me, things are different".  I don't typically think of myself as someone who's ahead of the curve, which is why I can't believe this guy is talking about social computing as if it hasn't already happened.  MySpace is the most popular site on the internet and Digg is huge.  Yahoo has already Web 2.0ified there home page and purchased Delicious .  Not to mention there are already tons of clones of popular social computing sites.  I don't even know why I'm listing all this out.  I don't want to dis Mr. Geelan; from looking at his credentials he seems to be on the ball.  It's more likely that the JDJ editors asked him to write this, than that he thought he was spreading the news.

I can't make a blanket statement, as I know there are plenty of passionate Java Ninjas out there (I used to be one).  But it scares me to think that the readers of the JDJ, who are supposed to be keeping up with what's going on out there, aren't privy to one of the biggest internet movements since the beginning.  And what scares me even more is that some of the people are going to read this article and say "What a load of crap, that will never happen".  Trust me, I've met these people.

All I have to say is, WAKE UP FOOLS.  There is an entire world of fun out there that you're missing out on because it takes all your effort to keep up with the latest frameworks.  While you're waiting for your Portal server to start up, people are writing applications that others actually enjoy.  While you're fishing through a sea of XML, people are solving actual problems.  I'm still stuck in this world of mindless mediocrity, but I'm trying my darndest  to get out of it.