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I don't get it either. Nothing in history has come close to the current web platform. There has never been a language/runtime/framework/system where you could h

I don't get it either. Nothing in history has come close to the current web platform. There has never been a language/runtime/framework/system where you could have this much flexibility, that "installs" in literally seconds (from a cold cache, never having been there in the first place), and works on every platform under the sun (not just linux/windows, but mac, android, ios, windows phone, ubuntu phone, my TV, my car!). I see people in this thread talking about how it takes them 10X longer to develop for the web than it did for a desktop system, and i'm just sitting here confused as for me it was the exact opposite. I remember having to setup a development environment to get a java swing application ready to start working on. I remember the goddamn readme I needed to write to ensure that the next developer working on my GTK+ project had the right environment, the right libraries, the right platform, and the right compiler. I remember having to find some bullshit bindings to a C library for my python project that really half-assed the implementation, but it's all I had because that C library is the "defacto standard" for what it does, so I need to just deal with it. For me the web has been such a breath of fresh air. A package system that works so effortlessly that I don't need to spend an hour deciding if that package is worth the pain of setting up another virtualenv, I don't need to worry that this library only supports Java 6 while this other one only supports java 7 and I can't have both (even though I only need the Java 7 one on this project). I don't need to worry that the next version of Windows will break GTK and my project won't support that platform and there is nothing I can do about it. I run `npm install`, and in a few minutes, every developer with node.js installed can compile, run, modify, and deploy my code. And when deployed, every person with a browser on the planet can run it in seconds. It's amazing.

goatlover 10y ago
I think it's when you get beyond the niceties of the delivery system that is the web to making complex apps compared to other environments is where the complaints stem from. Also, the JVM, Flash and Silverlight would have have all been able to provide a similarly nice delivery system across all platforms if they had been the equivalent of the web. But instead, they were used as plugins.
- Klathmon 10y ago
  But i'm talking about complex applications. I'm not talking about your average website, but full blown 100k+ loc applications. It's so much nicer than the alternatives that many developers are making desktop-only applications using those technologies. I don't know if that is because of familiarity, or if it's actually a better platform, but I know that when I did the "move" from GTK and swing applications to HTML/CSS/JS based applications, i instantly became almost a magnitude more productive. And I don't buy that JVM, Flash, Silverlight, or any of the others could have been able to provide something similar (or better) that the web world. The biggest benefits of the web ecosystem currently are NPM and the "runs literally everywhere". The JVM/Java ecosystem is closest in that area, but that story gets really ugly when it comes to cross-platform UIs and startup time. And while they could have created their own system that installs/runs instantly without needing complex permissions, without needing to "install" at all, automatically cleans itself up, and can be accessed from anywhere in the world by a simple string, they didn't. Flash/Silverlight tried, but in the end they ended up just being worse versions of the js world (remember the damn loading bar that every single flash application needed for some reason?) Like it or not, the web nailed all the right things, and it became pretty much the most used platform over the course of a few years. Not by accident, but because it did something right.
  - SZJX 10y ago
    This guy gets it. Spot on. I just simply don't understand all those people claiming web is a terrible mistake/fluke or whatsoever. It's nonsense. Big companies with money and might tried all over the decades, and failed. Web is there for a very good reason. It's certainly not perfect but it's not that evil as people make it out to be. Either you unite all the platforms to make them one, which I'd rather not for diversity's sake, or you accept the fact that there has to be something out there that supports all of them, which isn't going to be an easy feat no matter what, and web is already doing quite fine. By the way, I surely also hate CSS, and JS to an extent, but my experience programming UI in other platforms haven't been exactly pain-free either. The hate might have been a bit overblown. The nature of computer programming in its current form just simply fits badly with UI design. That's the fact.
  - 10y ago

goatlover 10y ago

I think it's when you get beyond the niceties of the delivery system that is the web to making complex apps compared to other environments is where the complaints stem from. Also, the JVM, Flash and Silverlight would have have all been able to provide a similarly nice delivery system across all platforms if they had been the equivalent of the web. But instead, they were used as plugins.

Klathmon 10y ago
But i'm talking about complex applications. I'm not talking about your average website, but full blown 100k+ loc applications. It's so much nicer than the alternatives that many developers are making desktop-only applications using those technologies. I don't know if that is because of familiarity, or if it's actually a better platform, but I know that when I did the "move" from GTK and swing applications to HTML/CSS/JS based applications, i instantly became almost a magnitude more productive. And I don't buy that JVM, Flash, Silverlight, or any of the others could have been able to provide something similar (or better) that the web world. The biggest benefits of the web ecosystem currently are NPM and the "runs literally everywhere". The JVM/Java ecosystem is closest in that area, but that story gets really ugly when it comes to cross-platform UIs and startup time. And while they could have created their own system that installs/runs instantly without needing complex permissions, without needing to "install" at all, automatically cleans itself up, and can be accessed from anywhere in the world by a simple string, they didn't. Flash/Silverlight tried, but in the end they ended up just being worse versions of the js world (remember the damn loading bar that every single flash application needed for some reason?) Like it or not, the web nailed all the right things, and it became pretty much the most used platform over the course of a few years. Not by accident, but because it did something right.
- SZJX 10y ago
  This guy gets it. Spot on. I just simply don't understand all those people claiming web is a terrible mistake/fluke or whatsoever. It's nonsense. Big companies with money and might tried all over the decades, and failed. Web is there for a very good reason. It's certainly not perfect but it's not that evil as people make it out to be. Either you unite all the platforms to make them one, which I'd rather not for diversity's sake, or you accept the fact that there has to be something out there that supports all of them, which isn't going to be an easy feat no matter what, and web is already doing quite fine. By the way, I surely also hate CSS, and JS to an extent, but my experience programming UI in other platforms haven't been exactly pain-free either. The hate might have been a bit overblown. The nature of computer programming in its current form just simply fits badly with UI design. That's the fact.
- 10y ago