On the new forum: a whopping 300% increase in membership ;). Also, some thoughts about the why of Ode.

For anyone reading this blog and interested in Ode who has not yet registered for the new forum I wanted to share the first post, as well as some of my thoughts about it.

Congratulations on the completion of the release version! I am very impressed, having thrown a few hundred Blosxom blog posts dating back to 2003 at the Ode installation and having a hitch-free experience. To a Perl-based Blosxom user like me, Ode looks like promising tool to carry forward my dynamics blogs and semi-static html sites that function as smartphone apps. Also, it can replace presentation software with less overhead than what I currently use plus local setup on my server instead of a third party's. In sum, here's to a flourishing development of Ode and a flourishing Ode developer and user community.

It suggests some of what I like about Ode, which is essentially *the practicality of simple*.

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There are more than a few mainstream blogging/content management/dynamic publishing platforms available. Many of these are actively developed, and some of them are well funded, with an organization and a team of paid full time programmers behind them.

Despite all that, it's not possible to do with those platforms, some of what can be done with Ode.

You could say that Ode is a platform that you install either on your own server, or with a hosting provider (as opposed to a service like wordpress.com, typepad, posterous, and others) and that would not be untrue. But it's not the whole story. Consider that every mainstream desktop operating system either comes with a web server and support for Perl, or at the very least, it's free and easy to get and install a web server and Perl. That being the case, Ode is not so much a platform that must be installed on a public web server as it is a platform capable of publishing a public site, but which can be run anywhere, for any number of different purposes. Furthermore, you can run Ode locally and on a remote server somewhere, and sync the content directories (which include themes). That gives you a hosted public site with seamless offline functionality, such that you can do everything locally that you can do with an internet connection (to the extent that the distinction isn't really important).

That sort of thing would be difficult to do with more sophisticated packages because their architectures are more complex and so less flexible (and less accessible). If it can be done, you (or someone else) would need to spend a lot of time and effort developing a very clever solution. On the other hand, you can do it with Ode without writing a single line of code. Install Ode locally and at the server, sync the content directories (in any number of different ways), and it just works.

It's hard to rejigger a complicated thing so that it does something other than what it was expressly designed to do. A car makes a great car (def: a road vehicle, typically with four wheels, powered by an internal combustion engine and able to carry a small number of people) but a pretty lousy everything else. On the other hand, simple things, e.g. small interlocking plastic blocks for example, can be put together, taken apart and reassembled into almost anything. What's more, complicated things made from simple components often retain many of the attributes that make the components so elegant, e.g. adaptability, reliability, accessibility, affordability.

This is why I believe that programming is such an important skill, i.e. something that can be useful to many more people than those who have traditionally found their way to computer science, professional programmers, and computer technology enthusiasts

Here is a quote I've always liked by Matt MacLaurin, a computer programmer and Principal Program Manager with the Creative Systems Group at Microsoft Research:

Programming is good for you. Even if you don't program for a living, programming stretches your mind in ways that are very beneficial.

Think about it. Even if you're just working on something boring like a calculator program, your brain has to simulate what the computer is going to do so that you can construct your plan correctly. When something goes wrong, you again simulate many different possibilities mentally to form a theory about the bug - and to correct it.

Simulation itself is a very interesting special case of programming. Building a sim is like a multidimensional form of writing a story.

You're not writing one story; you're construction [sic] a story space in which an [sic] huge number of different stories can happen. - story: keep track of who did what when - sim: keep track of who can do what and what new possibilities will emerge if they do it Learning to simulate complex systems in your head is great practice for a lot of jobs - like running non-profit organizations, effecting social change, or running a car dealership. And simulation, as we know, is just a polite word for gaming. Programming - or, more precisely, the mental facility developed by programming - is a life skill that should be accessible to everyone.

I recognized this when I first saw Blosxom, which was maybe six years ago (or more). It's interesting that despite all of the innovation and change that's happened in that time, the web is fundamentally the same, and spectacularly more important than ever. The fact that the web just takes it all in stride, says a lot about how truly ingenious the web itself really is.

Anyway, that's where my interest in Ode comes from. I see it as an expression of the original design goals of the web (the first web browser was also an editor), and way to make full participation in the web accessible to the widest possible audience, in a way that promotes the long term health and prosperity of the web, and celebrates the importance of individual contributors.