Some dude posted a tirade about the uselessness and banality of most weblogs, which obviously touched off some sentiments throughout the "blogosphere". (Yeah, it's from February 3; I'm not exactly Mr. Current Affairs, am I?) The article starts off attacking bloggers in general, then degrades to harsh criticism of Movable Type. I don't agree with his attacks on weblogging, which I believe rivals instant messaging as a revolutionary communications technology, but I'm more than happy to add my piece about Movable Type.

This sentence sums it up: "Movable Type is written by web designers, not programmers." We all know how well web designers can program. Most of them are even honest enough to admit that they are not capable of producing code any more than I am capable of producing a decent-looking webpage. Not the oblivious folks at Six Apart though. To make matters worse, they've taken it upon themselves to lead the creation of new weblog "standards", such as the disgustingly-broken TrackBack mechanism. I could live with ignoring their bad code, but creating bad standards that other people have to conform to is inexcusable.

Maybe one day some sort of standards group will tackle the problems confronting weblog interoperability. It has already started, in fact, with the intention of developing Atom through the IETF. Until then, we'll be forced to put up with "standards" defined by a single, incompetent vendor.