As I may have mentioned before, I have an unseemly fondness for geeks. By this I really mean anyone who has a boundless and unselfconscious enthusiasm for arcane subjects, but because of the industry I work in, that mainly translates to Silicon Valley-style software developers.
So I was obviously very excited last night to attend a seminar in a swanky Central London hotel, where a renowned uber-geek had been laid on to address a crowd of techies about the latest efforts to standardise the development of service-oriented architectures.
Much of the evening was dedicated to pondering a long-standing problem that IT types have, which is that no one ever understands what they're going on about. This resulted in the following lovely bit of monologue:
Uber-geek: If we can just find a way to talk to business users on their level, all our problems will be solved.
Audience: Hear hear!
Uber-geek: They'll soon realise that this new service-oriented architecture will be the saviour of modern business.
Audience: Oh yeah!
Uber-geek: We just need a simple way of explaining what we do, then they'll be queuing up to buy it.
Audience: Tell us what to do, o wise one!
Uber-geek: Well, we could start with WSDL. It does provide a completely mathematically robust system for describing services and interaction. But of course there are elements of the SOA system that escape mathematical description, because it's cybernetic.
Like I said, I love geeks.
INSTANT UPDATE: So long then, chaps, I'm off to the Isle of Wight for a spot of birdwatching. With champagne. Apparently.
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7 comments:
Excellent. I need to add 'cybernetics' to my list of words to look up though, because it's looking increasingly like it has nothing to do with Terminators.
Just watched first ep of The IT Crowd - quite like it.
I'm not convinced that the uber-geek didn't actually mean "cyborgian", but I was too scared to put my hand up.
Could you please describe, for our education (and general scoffing), exactly what uber-geek looked like?
I'm ashamed to say I don't actually know, because I was sitting right at the back and I didn't have my glasses on, and I was also trying frantically to type it all up on my laptop. Which was quite difficult, as he insisted on using words of about 20 syllables, and I can only type with two fingers. Sorry Spin.
Geek!!! :-)
So I take it "service-oriented architectures" aren't McDonald's drive-thrus, then?
Cyborg counter staff could only be an improvement. I don't really see the problem with robot maths, but then, I do suspect I'm rather missing the point.
Ah well. Enjoy the champagne.
first sentence; check.
last sentence; check.
the bit in-between: you know when charlie brown's teacher is talking?
geek.
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