K.I.S.S.? BILU!
Anyone who has ever studied UI (or UX, as they're calling it these days) knows the acronym K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Grid computing guru Greg Nawrocki notes this in his latest post: Complexity...
is one of the primary barriers of widespread adoption. Quite simply, Grid computing needs to be a transparent technology before it is widespread. How many of us would be browsing the web if we had to hand assemble http queries in a telnet window?
All I can say to that is, "And how!"
With all of the attention that has been paid to flexibility, interoperability, multi-os, and a lot of the other great features that distributed computing systems have today, it's clear that one thing got dropped off the list: usability. I read a lot of blogs and newsgroups, and I am continually amazed at the number of people who spend their time messing with perl scripts in order to run distributed processes (and this is on top of the grid software they're running). Perl scripts? That's the moral equivalent of hand assembling your http queries!
When we started designing the Digipede Network, we had a mantra: "Radically easier to Buy, Install, Learn and Use." We repeated it to ourselves over and over again. We concentrated on ease-of-use in every phase of the product--from how it would be sold, how it would be installed, how developers can work with it, and how it would work for people who have never written a line of code in their lives.
Why? Because we believe that distributed computing has the potential for a much, much wider audience than it has gained so far. Greg points out that "It's refreshing to see the discussion expand beyond the traditional (pharma, financial services, energy) markets" by talking about the 451Group's new report on the use of grid in the Digital Media Industry. But at Digipede, we see potential beyond specific verticals. We think that distributed computing is a tool that can be used by anyone in enterprise computing.
Anyone can use distributed computing?
Yep.
If it's radically easier to BILU.
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