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I've got nothing against Tcl/Tk. I built my current company's first website with OpenACS and AOLServer, and everything was built in Tcl. I have no major complai
by SwellJoe 11y ago
I've got nothing against Tcl/Tk. I built my current company's first website with OpenACS and AOLServer, and everything was built in Tcl. I have no major complaints about the language or about Tk (I've also built some trinkets with Python+Tk and Perl+Tk over the years). But...that ship has sailed, about 15 years ago.
And, I can't argue with the "JavaScript burnout" problem. I'm currently trying to sort out the front end for our UI rewrite, considering things like React. There's an incredible wordsoup of jargon and new tools to learn, no established best practices (we're in the wild west phase of web UI development, with a thousand competing and occasionally interacting technologies), and no unified way to build a user interface in HTML+JavaScript.
I mean, I can understand someone looking at how bloody simple it is to put a window with a widget on the screen with Tcl/Tk (or almost any other reasonable UI toolkit, for that matter), vs. the huge pile of crud one has to install and poke at to do the same for a browser in a modern way (i.e. without reloading the page every time something changes state, for example), and throwing their hands in the air and saying, "Fuck this! I'm going back to...whatever I was using before." Things have gotten so baroque in the web development space, it can seem impossible to look at a new project and have any clue what's going on (because you have to know all of the frameworks and libraries and transpilers it uses, the tooling it uses like Webpack, SASS/LESS, etc., plus the basics of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript).
And, obviously, I can't tell anyone not to give up on the web and build traditional desktop applications. But, if you want your software to be used by real people, it's almost always going to need to be on the web. And, that will become more true over time, rather than less true.
I find desktop apps charming, but even my stubbornness has run its course. I haven't started seriously using a new desktop application in maybe five years (Mixxx DJ software is the most recent thing I can think of). Even for things that a desktop app ought to do better...like email, there are now better web applications for the task, and I find myself using the web more than the desktop programs for almost everything.
- amelius 11y agoThe problem is that W3C insists to make the web simple for everybody, instead of useful for experienced developers. This is the wrong approach, imho, because when you target developers first, basic economics tells us that they will do the work for you to make the web simple for everybody else.
- kevin_thibedeau 11y agoAnd so they went with a language without so much as a standard string API.
- kjs3 11y agoThere is precisely zero reason to believe this. If you target developers first, you'll get systems that suit developers needs (see: Unix). Quit using trite phrases like "Basic Economics" as an unsupported justification until you learn something about the topic.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoSelf-fulfilling prophecy: "Real people" are using web applications at higher rates because of programmers inevitably using the web as their main platform, creating a self-sustaining feedback loop. But, what the herd can adopt, it can also destroy. FWIW I'm sure people who live in jurisdictions with subpar connectivity would appreciate a renaissance of desktop applications.
- SwellJoe 11y agoDo you honestly believe the success of web applications is merely an accident and not a reflection of how much better they fit our world? Admittedly, many of the benefits of the web, like storage in the cloud and online collaboration, could be replicated with traditional installable applications, but they mostly weren't. And, the lack of "installation" is a big deal. Many people are utterly helpless with computers and would be terrified of installing everything...and maybe should be. Viruses and malware have proven very difficult to defeat in installable applications, while on the web the risk of poor security is usually concentrated on the developer (or the company the developer works for) rather than the consumer. Further, low bandwidth is a reason to use web apps over installables in a lot of cases, and not the other way around as you suggest. Downloading Office on a slow/expensive link would be horrible. Using Google Docs, not so bad. I work on slow internet most of the time (I travel full-time, and use 3G/4G internet, sometimes with weak connectivity and expensive data); I save my "ooh, I want to download this new game/app" moments for when I'm somewhere with free/fast wifi. But, I still do lots of work on the web, and I don't find GMail/Inbox problematic at all on this slow link. Of course "no Internet" is different from "slow/expensive" Internet, but without Internet, you're limited to packaged software purchased at brick and mortar stores, which is not a very wise target market for developers making new stuff, in the general case.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoThe web's lack of "installation" is countervailed by its ad-hoc persistence methods like local storage, cookies, cache and sessions, as well as its forms of authentication in relation thereof. You can hang yourself on the web just as easily, perhaps even more so, and I have seen it happen many times. The web also has the intrinsic problem of unpredictability and unaccountability. Entire layouts can be replaced by developers instantaneously on unwitting users. Most people would not download Office, of course, but use a friend or acquaintance's pre-recorded media. Actually even if it came to torrenting it, it wouldn't be significant of a load.