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The Talk Show With John Gruber

192: ‘The Original Sin Is XML’ With Special Guests Manton Reece and Brent Simmons

The Talk Show With John Gruber

John Gruber

Technology

3.63.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 May 2017

⏱️ 119 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Manton Reece and whisky-soaked baritone Brent Simmons join the show to talk about JSON Feed, the new spec they co-authored for syndicating things like blog posts and podcasts. We talk about their longstanding mutual interest in [Userland Frontier][f] -- Dave Winer’s groundbreaking scripting environment from the early ’90s -- and how that background and their mutual love for publishing on the open web and the democratization of technology ultimately led to the creation of JSON Feed, as well as their other new projects: Manton’s [Micro.blog][m] publishing platform, and Brent’s new open source Mac app, announced for the first time right here on the show. And of course a brief look ahead to next week’s WWDC 2017.

Transcript

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0:00.0

All right, we got a super special episode of the show. We've got two guests.

0:05.2

Double, double your pleasure. Double your fun. What was that chewing gum called?

0:11.4

Double mint? Remember double mint? Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It was always, uh, yeah. It was always like you'd get like, uh,

0:17.8

it was like two, two twin teenagers boys or girls would, uh,

0:22.2

we'd get double the pleasure out of, I guess like a shared piece of gum or something.

0:27.2

We've got friend summons.

0:29.9

Uh, yo, longtime friend of the show and Matt and Reese, who's a long time friend of me,

0:33.5

but I don't think has ever been on the show before. No, thanks for having me. Uh,

0:38.4

and I've got both of you on because you guys both have new stuff that's come out.

0:43.4

Some of it you've collaborated on. Uh, and it's also sort of interrelated.

0:48.5

It makes, I think it makes a lot more sense to have you guys on together than, than separately.

0:52.7

Yeah, I think so too. Uh, I've described,

0:55.0

man, and, and me in a way as litter mates, you know, we kind of came up around the same time and we have a lot of the same values and,

1:02.6

you know, 90s, you know, scripting and web and Mac and all that good stuff.

1:07.5

So it's not surprised that we're still, you know, uh, collaborating, uh,

1:12.5

fun stuff so many years later. So one of the things, it's not even one of the major announcements. I mean, but I'll just list them up front.

1:18.8

We've got a JSON feed, which is a new format for syndication of, of content in JSON format.

1:26.0

We've got a micro.blog, which is a micro blogging platform that mantin just, uh, launched about a month ago.

1:34.5

Uh, we've got other cool stuff related to feeds of Brent and then, uh,

1:39.5

but then one of the other things you're working on right now, Brent, is you are working on a modernization or getting front,

1:45.8

just getting frontier to run again.

1:48.5

Well, it really is pretty much a ground up rewrite. Uh, you know, I have the old source code that, you know, with me and I can do a build on a 10.6.8 virtual machine.

...

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