How WebHooks Will Make Us All Programmers

@progrium
#webhooks

web developers? how many are frontend, how many are backend?
twitter username. send me questions.

How WebHooks Will
Make Us All
Programmers

has kathy sierra taught me nothing?

How WebHooks Will
Make You A
GOD

alternative title

someday you may be asked if you’re a god and as we’ve learned from ghostbusters, you will want to
be able to say yes.

Make You A
GOD

The Evented Web

evented programming

How WebHooks Will Make Us All Programmers

What are WebHooks?

Why should we all learn to program?

How do WebHooks foster programming?

1
What are WebHooks?

event callbacks over the web. the design pattern or architecture of letting users receive
notiﬁcations over http. it’s not a spec or a protocol, it’s more along the lines of ajax: just an
interesting way of doing things.

command line: pipes. we talk about the equivalent of pipes on the web and people say RSS! and I say
nooo.... it’s something else.

Input Output
Program

pipes are amazing in their simplicity. it’s all from a bit of infrastructure involving input and output

STDIN STDOUT
Program

STDERR

stdin, stdout were available to reroute wherever the user wanted
most common use was chaining commands together: piping
feedback loop, which is the key to emergent systems

xargs
wget
echo
mail

grep
wc

cat

so you had all these simple little programs, that might not even be useful alone

cat

xargs
wget
echo
mail

grep
wc

string them together...

cat grep

xargs
wget
echo
mail

wc

cat grep mail

xargs
wget
echo

wc

and you have something more useful than just the sum of the parts

STDIN
Program

but it doesn’t work without the output. it just breaks.

API
Web App

unfortunately that’s how the web is today.
we can talk to web apps, but they really can’t talk to us. or anything else really.

API Events
Web App

it’s not that they can’t, they just don’t. we need to start placing event hooks in.

function clickHandler() {
alert("Click!");
}

element.addEventListener('click', clickHandler);

element.addEventListener('click', function() {
alert("Click!");
});

element.addEventListener('click', function() {
var name = $("input#name").val();
if (name != "") {
alert("Hello, " + name);
}
});

element.addEventListener('click', function(event) {
var name = $("input#name").val();
if (name != "") {
alert("Hello, " + name + ". " +
"I'm " + event.target.id);
}
});

getting people excited about evented programming.
twisted, event machine, etc ... event driven programming.
web hooks -> evented web

twitter.addEventListener('newfollower', function(event) {
var twitterUser = event.follower;
var friends = facebook.getFriendsNames();

if (twitterUser['name'] in friends) {
twitter.follow(twitterUser);
}
})



} else if (twitterUser['following'] > 1000 &&
twitterUser['followers'] < twitterUser['following'] / 2) {

twitter.block(twitterUser);
}
})

twitter.addEventListener('newfollower',
v eventHandler);

twitter.addWebHook('newfollower',
'http://example.com/eventhandler');

twitter.addWebHook('friendupdate',

some other events you could imagine writing handlers for

twitter.addWebHook('directmessage',

twitter.addWebHook('myupdate',

makes twitter an even more powerful platform than it is

MAILHOOKS
DEMO

let’s see this in action. mailhooks was one of the ﬁrst “adapters” i built for the evented web.

MORE DEMOS
(and then code)

create postbin, setup/show tender, pivotal tracker, twilio.
demo clickhooks with postbin and and then show the code.
http://2.latest.scriptletsapp.appspot.com/1w47Cs/run

webhooks are simple as you saw. their simplicity affords them to be used as a simple
building block in slightly more complex systems like pubsubhubbub.
how many have heard of pubsubhubbub? how many know what it does?

not time to play the video, i know brett is here and they talked about it.
basically real-time feeds using webhooks as the core mechanic.

all these sites publish content with pubsubhubbub, meaning they all effectively have
webhooks for new content events... as a result, you can consume their content in realtime.

simple mechanics, if done right, yield rich, emergent dynamics.
the emergent system with webhooks is the evented web.

The Evented Web
(Programmable Web 2.0)

Event Triggers

(WebHooks)

Web APIs Handler Scripts

“In computer programming, hooking is
a technique used to alter or augment the
behavior of [a program], often without
having access to its source code.”


the idea is the handler is a URL... whatever. it doesn’t matter whats on the other end.


because its a url, because it’s http ... you already know how to deﬁne it. it’s a simple web app, or web
script.

love it, hate it... its everywhere. commodity hosting. compared to classical cgi and perl, it was
easy. no permissions or cgi-bins... just upload a ﬁle with ftp.

so i built scriptlets, which is basically that. use php, python, javascript to write simple little
scripts hosted in the cloud. write it, save it, get a url to run it. perfect for webhook handler
scripts.

here’s a wrapper that makes postbin work for pubsubhubbub

here’s a script used with hookpress to add comment notiﬁcations via notify.io to wordpress

this is the code i used for the clickhooks demo. you can see how simple it is, notify.io does
most of the work.

notify.io is a useful part of the ecosystem. it solves the notiﬁcation part.
“how do you get events to the desktop?” pubsubhubbub for example
also a gateway drug for webhooks...

NOTIFY.IO
DEMO

intro. twitter DM example. outlets. curl. NioCallback. DrEval...

What are WebHooks?

The Evented Web blends our existing ecosystem of web APIs with event-driven programming,
creating a web that is both more programmable and real-time.

What are WebHooks?
Event callbacks over HTTP
enabling the Evented Web

The Evented Web blends our existing ecosystem of web APIs with event-driven programming,
creating a web that is both more programmable and real-time.

And so concludes the
technical portion of the talk.

Questions so far?

2
Why should we all
learn to program?

so many passionate programmers that are so smart and inﬂuential on society.
gates, jobs, zuckerberg...
exploration of thoughts on signiﬁcance.
sidenote: programming == holistic programming, not just “software engineering”

“As programming becomes more
important, it will leave the back room and
become a key skill and attribute of our top
intellectual and social classes, just as
reading and writing did in the past.”
—Marc Prensky

programming is the new literacy. (rushkoff’s talk)
i wanted to explore this idea further ...

Technology
==
Tools

anything useful created by the mind

think of a world without technology.
humans might not survive denied technology.
some might argue our evolution from prehuman to human was about
fully leveraging/developing our ability to create and work with technology

we drove many major species into extinction and become the dominant species on earth... all
with just a little bit of basic technology.

The most powerful
force in the world.

kevin kelly concludes (among other things) that technology is the most powerful force int he
world.

pow•er
capacity to cause change

best deﬁnition of power. simple. more useful.

i like to say that a kid with a laptop can change the world.
what is it about the computer?

“The most remarkable tool
we’ve ever come up with.”
—Steve Jobs

why?

Imagination Compiler

Computing is the ultimate sandbox for our mind, allowing us to explore, model and even
execute whatever systems we can *imagine*, as long as we can ﬁgure out how to express
them. This is programming.

don’t have time for this video, but it’s the introduction to the MIT course Structure and
Interpretation of computer programs. Abelson goes over how computer science isn’t really a
science, maybe more engineering or art... he relates it to magic. he also says it’s not about
the computer. it’s fundamentally about formalizing intuitions about process. how to do
things.

Process?

intuitions about ... process?

Knowledge

well it turns out, process is the basis of knowledge. i could go on quite a while about
knowledge, but to keep things on track, we’ll simplify it to this:
knowledge is basically a collection of validated models, allowing us to know how to do
things.
how-to is process.

Knowledge
==
Power

this now trite idea, ﬁrst expressed by francis bacon... is something i had to revisit when i
deﬁned power as the capacity to cause change. because when framed like this it’s obviously
more than a nice correlation: knowledge really *is* the capacity to cause change, therefore in
some way, they actually are quite synonymous.

Programming is the
language of power.

If knowledge is power, then programming is the language of power. Programming is the most
precise expression of how-to knowledge. You don't just program to express so much as you
program to run, to make happen.

Programming is about designing systems within the realm of computing, but as we trend
towards ubiquitous computing, the boundary of "computing" and the rest of our world will
start to disappear.

our idea of what a computer is...

has been unraveling right in front of us.
abelson is right: it’s not about the “computer” ... it’s about something more.
not even the “network”. i’m not exactly sure what it is... but

Programmers are the
most potent technologists.

i would like to make this assertion. the industrial revolution was about mechanization. i think
software and automation are the new mechanization. only this time it’s much greater --
software gives us more bang for buck in terms of change caused by effort. it was software
that allowed celebrity conan obrien to, with one click, change a person’s life.

Technologists shape
humanity.

and i think its undeniable how inﬂuential people are to society that can create and truly wield
technology.
but to bring it back to a little more concrete terms and where things are going:

The world is trending towards
becoming programmable

USA Today on CES: “You’re going to be hard-pressed to ﬁnd a new gadget or gizmo in 2010
that doesn’t also connect you to web services.” That’s just a step away from having apis and
hooks. Imagine a world where everything has an API and webhooks. Programmers can use it
all as building blocks, literally programming the world around them. Magic indeed.

Wizards.

programmers become not unlike wizards ... and wizards are basically gods.

Why should we all learn
to program?

Why should we all learn
to program?
“Program or be programmed.”
The world is becoming increasingly programmable.
The power of programming will eventually
outweigh any reason not to.

3
How do WebHooks
foster programming?

obviously that kind of power, capacity to cause change, will be worthy of seeking out on its
own once it becomes more obvious. what do webhooks and the evented web have to
contribute? i think they’ll accelerate the process by making it more obvious, but there’s more.

this is more generally about education.

“Education is not the filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire.”
—William Butler Yeats

framed my idea of education.
inspiration and motivation are the real secrets to education.
teaching is just a means to facilitate learning; learning happens by the individual.
you need to inspire/convince the individual they want to learn ... and they will

“The truth is that reading, writing, and
arithmetic only take about one hundred
hours to transmit as long as the audience is
eager and willing to learn.”
—John Taylor Gatto

world renowned school teacher corroborates this idea.

ackoff: one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century that you probably haven’t heard of.
greenberg: champion of the democratic school.

Infrastructure as
Education

Village that not only didn't have access to computers, but didn't know English. Left the
computer there with CDs (no Internet) and came back 3 months later. An 8 and 12 year old
were playing a game on it and when they realized he had brought the machine, they said (in
English): "We need a faster processor and a better mouse."

“Creating content is not what's
important. What is important is
infrastructure and access.”

—Sugata Mitra

Montesorri
Natural language
Google.
taking this idea, and returning to programming...

how many of us started programming on something like these?

programming was almost unavoidable on them.
how many of you experience a noticeable physiological reaction to this screen?

Programming is discovered.

today, the closest thing is myspace: css hacks to pimp your proﬁle.
but while this IS programming, it’s doesn’t convey the POWER of programming
even though there’s automator on mac -- its sterile and limiting, pure utility.
myspace style programming has relevance, expression, and... view source

excellent viewsourceposse panel (missed it). my quick idea:
view page source is a huge reason why there are so many web people (esp frontend)
browser as a sandbox to explore and learn.
unfortunately its not the cool stuff. it’s not the stuff that changes the world.



} else if (twitterUser['following'] > 1000 &&
twitterUser['followers'] < twitterUser['following'] / 2) {

twitter.block(twitterUser);
}
})

evented web gives us a sandbox to play with code that actually DOES cool and important things that
are relevant to us. making the apps we use do more in a very personal and expressive way. the
possibility space is much larger, and the language is richer, so it’s just begging for clever and creative
exploration...

How do WebHooks foster
programming?

it gives us a new sandbox to “play” with our web applications together in new and useful
ways.
it provides the infrastructure to *just code* like on apple II or commodore. No dev environs,
nothing to install. building directly on the shoulders of giants to easily achieve cool, useful,
relevant “hacks” that I think would hook anybody on at least the idea of programming.

How do WebHooks foster
programming?

WebHooks and the Evented Web make
programming discoverable again

it gives us a new sandbox to “play” with our web applications together in new and useful
ways.
it provides the infrastructure to *just code* like on apple II or commodore. No dev environs,
nothing to install. building directly on the shoulders of giants to easily achieve cool, useful,
relevant “hacks” that I think would hook anybody on at least the idea of programming.

and that’s how i think, in the long run, webhooks and the evented web will help make us all gods with
the ability to *program* the world around us.

How WebHooks Will Make Us All Programmers

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to How WebHooks Will Make Us All Programmers (20)

More from Jeff Lindsay (13)

Recently uploaded (20)

How WebHooks Will Make Us All Programmers