It's even worse than it appears..
Thread: I didn't coin the term Web 2.0, but i didn't object to it either, because what we were doing was realizing the vision of the web from the guy who invented it, who wanted it to be two-way. People wouldn't just read stuff on the web, they would also write stuff.#
  • I was thinking for a while about what would be the best way to illustrate the opportunity in factoring the Twitter API, so that developers wouldn't have to run a server to create browser-based apps. #
  • I was thinking of maybe releasing the source for thread.center or happy.friends, or another of the many Twitter utilities I've written over the years. I still might do that, but I decided for now to go another way, by writing the simplest program possible, an app that just posts a tweet that says Hello World. #
  • So here's the source code of the app. It's separated into two folders, server and client. #
  • You can run it here. I am running an instance of the server on one of my machines. #
  • This is how I envision Twitter's backend working for developers. Just include the functionality in the Hello World server in Twitter's server. Why should every developer have to write the same code, and run a server? All I want to do is write and run something quickly to try an idea out. And if it becomes popular, I won't have the skill or resources to scale my server, when Twitter is already scaling their server, and my server is doing nothing but communicating with Twitter's. A perfect opportunity for factoring. #
  • Obviously such a backend would have to do more than post a Hello World tweet. That's not hard to do -- I've done it and am happy to share the code. I think that Twitter is an excellent platform for developers, and it would be much better if it got even simpler. #
  • If you have any questions, I've started a thread here. #
  • This is how simple it should be.#
    • twitter.newPost ("Hello World")#
  • That's assuming it's running within an app that uses Twitter for identity, like Drummer. #
  • In fact that bit of code actually works in Drummer. 😄#
  • Here's the man page for the verb.#

Last update: Tuesday June 7, 2022; 2:10 PM EDT.

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