4 ms·
> you're running only part of the software locally, and without the remote component the local part is useless. Of course that's true, but that's not sufficien
by baddox 9y ago
> you're running only part of the software locally, and without the remote component the local part is useless.
Of course that's true, but that's not sufficient for calling the client a terminal, unless you're going to define any client in a client-server architecture to be a terminal.
Again, with most web apps or even simple web sites with static content, the processing power required to render and interact with the site is probably much greater than to serve data on the back end. Web browsers are definitely fat clients.
- throwanem 9y ago> unless you're going to define any client in a client-server architecture to be a terminal Why not? As you say, the general-purpose computers we customarily use have much greater capability than the character or even graphics terminals of yore, but in the decidedly client-server architecture of most of the modern web, these general-purpose computers most certainly act as terminals nonetheless. (Some of the confusion here seems to arise from defining "terminal" at one point in terms of available compute resource, and at another point in terms of role within a distributed architecture. I'm not sure where the former makes sense - save in that it may constrain the roles in which a given device may be used, available resource seems entirely orthogonal to architecture.)
- baddox 9y agoWhy not? Well, simply because I'd prefer to use technical terms as they're widely used and widely understood. If someone wants to argue that the definitions themselves ought to change, then that's a semantic argument that doesn't interest me.
- throwanem 9y agoThe point I'm making about definitions is that the one you use here seems to vary within the space of a single comment.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]