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> The motivator for these projects is typically something along the lines of, "it would be great if there was just one OS or interface I could use on any device

> The motivator for these projects is typically something along the lines of, "it would be great if there was just one OS or interface I could use on any device." A lot of people do have this dream, but in practice it's horrible. The UI on my watch has to be very different than the UI on my flatscreen TV. This notion that things will move to a web based environment because "engineers want to head towards elegant solutions" has two problems. The first is that "what engineers want" doesn't matter in the least. We saw this with Windows 8: a single OS that tries to scale from tablets through workstations. That's an engineer's design and an engineer's dream, but users hated it, and Microsoft has since backed off. The second problem is this notion that the web is "elegant." It has some nice properties, but it's layered hacks upon hacks. Demos like this are impressive because they work despite the web's limitations. > The sooner we get to an OS just being a glorified web browser, the more we drive development spending way down and cut costs for the consumer. This is frankly delusional. If web apps cost less, it's because they do less, or do it less well.

keithwhor 11y ago
It seems like you read the first couple of lines of my post and then skimmed through the rest of it. :) You reiterated points I made as though you're arguing with me, I'm a bit confused. Re: dev spending. We drive development spending down because it costs far less to write software once and deploy everywhere than it does to write it for two, three or more platforms. The "elegant" goal is one compilation and/or deployment target, whether you like it or not doesn't matter, and it seems like JavaScript (or some related cousin) is going to fill that niche. Pretty silly to think that's delusional when it's already happening.

keithwhor 11y ago

It seems like you read the first couple of lines of my post and then skimmed through the rest of it. :) You reiterated points I made as though you're arguing with me, I'm a bit confused. Re: dev spending. We drive development spending down because it costs far less to write software once and deploy everywhere than it does to write it for two, three or more platforms. The "elegant" goal is one compilation and/or deployment target, whether you like it or not doesn't matter, and it seems like JavaScript (or some related cousin) is going to fill that niche. Pretty silly to think that's delusional when it's already happening.