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"In 1995, when we started Viaweb, Java applets were supposed to be the technology everyone was going to use to develop server-base applications. Applets seemed

by lambda 16y ago

"In 1995, when we started Viaweb, Java applets were supposed to be the technology everyone was going to use to develop server-base applications. Applets seemed to us an old-fashioned idea. Download programs to run on the client? Simpler just to go all the way and run the programs on the server. We wasted little time on applets, but countless other startups must have been lured into this tar pit. Few seem to have escaped alive." p. 227, from scrolling around a bit from the Google Books links in the original post: http://books.google.com/books?id=B4dk0tYPrckC&pg=PA228&lpg=PA228&dq=ipod+cell http://books.google.com/books?id=B4dk0tYPrckC&pg=PA228&#... Also, pp. 228-229: "I would not even use Javascript, if I were you; Viaweb didn't. Most of the Javascript I see on the Web isn't necessary, and much of it breaks. And when you start to be able to browse actual web pages on your cell phone or PDA (or toaster), who knows if they'll even support it." Note that this is just from reading a few of the footnotes from that link; I haven't read the rest of the book, so I can't speak much on it. All I'm saying is that he got some things right, some wrong, and that other people were talking about an iPhone before he did. And I should have said "a few prescient quotes, and a few that are wrong." The "one prescient quote" that I wrote was a mistake on my part, as I had just discussed two prescient quotes (iPhone and open-source browser innovation); not sure why I wrote "one."

philh 16y ago
>I would not even use Javascript, if I were you; Viaweb didn't. Most of the Javascript I see on the Web isn't necessary, and much of it breaks. And when you start to be able to browse actual web pages on your cell phone or PDA (or toaster), who knows if they'll even support it. I read this as being advice for the then-present, not a prediction. "Javascript isn't necessary, doesn't work well, and it's not guaranteed that it will work in future."
- lambda 16y ago
  The part about "when you start to be able to browse actual web pages" sure sounded like a prediction; and by the time mobile web browsers caught up to the point where you could reasonably browse the open web on them, they were perfectly capable of running JavaScript just as well as desktop browsers. This book was published in 2004, the same year that Gmail was released making heavy use of JavaScript to provide a much better webmail experience than previous competitors. So, it wasn't even that great a description of the present, other than the fact that he probably actually wrote it before the release of Gmail. My main point is just that if you look at the one quote about an Apple phone with a web browser, out of context, he does look fairly prescient; but if you look at the rest of them, and the history of iPhone rumors, he has about as good a track record as anyone reasonably bright and paying attention to the industry.

by lambda 16y ago

philh 16y ago

>I would not even use Javascript, if I were you; Viaweb didn't. Most of the Javascript I see on the Web isn't necessary, and much of it breaks. And when you start to be able to browse actual web pages on your cell phone or PDA (or toaster), who knows if they'll even support it. I read this as being advice for the then-present, not a prediction. "Javascript isn't necessary, doesn't work well, and it's not guaranteed that it will work in future."

lambda 16y ago
The part about "when you start to be able to browse actual web pages" sure sounded like a prediction; and by the time mobile web browsers caught up to the point where you could reasonably browse the open web on them, they were perfectly capable of running JavaScript just as well as desktop browsers. This book was published in 2004, the same year that Gmail was released making heavy use of JavaScript to provide a much better webmail experience than previous competitors. So, it wasn't even that great a description of the present, other than the fact that he probably actually wrote it before the release of Gmail. My main point is just that if you look at the one quote about an Apple phone with a web browser, out of context, he does look fairly prescient; but if you look at the rest of them, and the history of iPhone rumors, he has about as good a track record as anyone reasonably bright and paying attention to the industry.