Microsoft's Hailstorm reappearing in the cloud?

"What is this Windows Live Mesh? It's a way to synchronize files."

Joel Spolsky -- in classic Joel Spolsky style -- takes on Microsoft (but Google is also on his "radar") to task for fueling a round of hype around the whole notion of Cloud Computing.

He picks apart Microsoft's Live Mesh announcement, noting its uncanny resemblance to Microsoft's "Hailstorm" pronouncements from seven years ago. Essentially, it was a method of synchronizing files across platforms then, as Live Mesh is now, Joel says:

"When did the first sync Web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, mydrive, idrive, youdrive, wealldrive for ice cream. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I'm sorry. It seems like it should be. But it's not."

Windows Live Mesh takes the paradigm further this time, from a sample app to an entire architecture, "with an API and developer tools and in insane diagram showing all the nifty layers of acronyms," Joel observes. "It seems like the chief astronauts at Microsoft literally expect this to be their gigantic platform in the sky which will take over when Windows becomes irrelevant on the desktop."

Joel calls the creators of these efforts "architecture astronauts." They generate plenty of hype, not only on Microsoft's part, but across the industry in general around this next permutation of Cloud Computing.

But it's not the hype that has Joel really ticked off -- it's the fact that a whole generation of valuable and highly paid software architects and programmers are being sucked up into this vortex, "working on hopeless and useless architecture astronomy."

Whether you agree with Joel's harsh analysis or not, there is plenty of hype bubbling around Cloud Computing, as it was around SOA, then open source, then SaaS. One thing is clear, though. We are changing the way we look at software, which is evolving from the code you had to shoehorn your business around, to services that conform to the fast-changing needs of the business.

Tom Chamberlain, for one, disagrees with Joel's analysis, noting that perhaps "the world is much better served if every application developer has a minor in 'architecture astronomics' to compliment their major in problem solving." That's because new forces are bringing application and platform developers -- normally two separate categories of professionals -- closer together.

"The coming Internet age requires every developer to think a little more like a platform developer," he says. "Web services allow us to create a global toolbox where the pieces of each vendor's platform can be mixed and matched to provide more and more tools."

Expect plenty of more debate and discussion on what kind of role vendors should play in providing these services.