“…there’s no real technology there. There’s no noteworthy computer-science problem being solved. The Ajax stuff is pre-written. You just have to go to the libraries and put it all together.
When Gmail came out — and Gmail is a pretty kick-ass product — it was like, “Ha! Ajax for dynamic web apps! We can use it for everything!” So now you have companies like Zoho, for example. Their sole goal is to take every desktop app that ever existed and reimplement it in Ajax with no added features or functionality. It irritates me as an engineer that companies with no engineering merit.” (Emphasis mine)

This quote is from Ted Dziuba, and came from Wired, and I read it first in Zoho Blog (via Scoble’s Tweetstream). Ted has BS in Computation Mathematics, and perhaps that is why I fundamentally disagree on this issue, here are the three issues I have with his analysis.

#1 By “No real technology” I think that Ted means that there is no innovation.–WRONG
#2 “There’s no noteworthy computer-science problem being solved”–RIGHT (maybe), but that’s not the point!
#3 Ted is an engineer, and he’s mad because “There’s no engineering Merit” in Zoho– RIGHT, but again not the point.

#1 One could take him to mean that liteally there is no technology there, but I sincerely doubt that is what he is saying, rather that there is nothing new, no innovation. The idea of a word processor or a spreadsheet has been around for at least as long as Ted has been alive, so it’s true that part of it isn’t new. Of course the idea of sending messages to someone, in the form of letters has been around for centuries, millenia in fact, but when we suddenly got to be able to do it online it was the killer app. IM then changed things again, but it was still essentially the same concept. We applied computer science to it. We reduced something to s set of rules, modeled those rules in a computer language and, presto, our world is forever changed (Well I’m sure there is more than just computer science at work here,but for the sake of room and simplicity). Real, seamless online collaboration with word processing and other productivity applications is an innovation, one that is already starting to change the way people work. We are in the early stages, there is no doubt, but I feel comfortable saying that this kind of collaboration will change the way we do think about work.

#2 If you choose to define computer science at the logical positivist/reductionist activities of creating computer languages and modeling different rule sets to create things, then you are right. There is no big problem, they didn’t create Ajax. I’m no coder, so I don’t know, I’m guessing they may not even be pushing Ajax to it’s limits, maybe there is no new code at all, just rearranging things in novel ways to create new applications. So essentially it’s true, from a CS perpective online collaborative word processing and it’s sister apps are not a noteworthy computer science problem, and by that definition most computer applications aren’t either unless they are pushing the language into places it hasn’t been before, combining rule sets in significantly new ways, or something else like that. Again, I’m no coder, so I don’t really have any examples at hand, and if I’m wrong I’d like to hear about it. No the problem Zoho is solving is essentially a social one, a human problem, a problem tackled by interaction designers. I blogged about designing for sociality, and in fact I used productivity software as my example. Zoho is starting to solve a great HCI problem, and I applaud them for it. So yes, Ted, you’re right, but you’ve missed the point IMO.

#3 This is pretty much the same thing, but with engineering as it’s focus. I assume Ted means computer engineering, which is essentially the applied branch of CS. I was kind of sketchy between CS & CE in #2, I haven’t thought about that too much, and I frankly don’t plan to in the near future. Again Ted you’ve missed the point. There are companies that get money and success through engineering, or scientific merit. I would say originally, Google was one of these (no longer though, IMO, but they do have very good CS & CE). A good technology business, one that will be successful is a blend of several things: CS, CE, Entrepreneurship, HCI & UX Design, believing in your idea  in your idea to the point of being one or more of the following: arrogance, stupidity, chauvinism.   I’m sure I left out a bunch of other things too.

So go sneer to yourself and your minions, and realize that excellence and innovation and good technology in this world comes form cross-disciplinary teams working together.  HCI people need CS, CE people need CS ideas, and the list can go on forever.

Last of all, thank you Ted for making me think about this, you’ve clarified and crystallized some of my views, and I welcome any corrections and discussion.