4 ms·

How do you measure that, though? It seems like you have to ignore all value derived from networks in order to come to the conclusion that software is no more p

How do you measure that, though? It seems like you have to ignore all value derived from networks in order to come to the conclusion that software is no more powerful than in the 90s. In the 90s I couldn't have met with my team, with members in Moscow, California, Pennsylvania, and Texas, in any reasonable way...today I can chat, including video and sound, on a whim! Managing source code today is massively more productive than in the 90s. CVS (or, heavens forbid, RCS) on a central server was how it was done back then, if you had revision control, at all. It's not merely a better revision control system (git), it's the web-based infrastructure around it (github/gitlab/web-based CI/whatever). That wouldn't be possible on any platform that's less connected and less widely available than the web. The rise of package managers is another massive productivity booster that maybe goes unheeded (we all love them, but I think their productivity value is wildly underestimated...how else can you add 100,000 lines of code, that probably works, in a couple of minutes, and reliably allow every member of your team to do the same?). Web technologies have enabled that. There's a reason npm has the largest package selection the world has ever seen, and I think it's the massive interconnectivity of the web platform. (This feels sort of vaguely defined, I guess...but, there is a magic to the web platform.) There's so many areas where we're more productive today because of the network effects of the web as a platform. Also, because the web is universal, I don't have to use Windows, ever. Everything I ever want to do has a Linux version. Anything that falls short of complete platform independence is probably a step backward, IMHO, even if it has other benefits like smaller/faster binary builds. Also...WebAssembly is coming. We're going to see a fast/efficient web, long before a new platform could possibly be delivered.

agumonkey 9y ago
"mainstream computer" < I was talking about the average desktop use, not distributed codebases
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  Sure, I was speaking directly to what I know...but, are distributed docs in Google Docs not more productive than passing around a Word doc with annotations? Is banking, accounting, trading stocks, bill payments, buying and selling nearly any product, not more productive today due to the same forces? We (people in tech) are just at the leading edge of it...but, it impacts everyone. But, I would argue that the web platform has produced a bigger productivity boost (in terms of output per unit of time) than any other single paradigm shift in computing history. Who cares if typing is a little more sluggish than the native app if you don't have to email the resulting document to everyone on the team and then converge edits at the end of the editing process?
u801e 9y ago
> In the 90s I couldn't have met with my team, with members in Moscow, California, Pennsylvania, and Texas, in any reasonable way I remember in the mid '90s that there were a couple of applications that would allow you to do that (netmeeting from Microsoft and cooltalk from Netscape). I don't remember how easy or difficult it was to find other users though.
ZenoArrow 9y ago
The Internet != The Web. Many of those benefits you listed are linked to the growth of the Internet. Package managers, video conferencing, distributed version control, all mostly Internet-based. The web is just one part of Internet activity. It's the part that requires use of a web browser. If you can do something online without using a web browser it's because of the Internet. The criticisms that are being levelled at the web are related to it being an inefficient and insecure platform for applications. Note this is not Internet-enabled applications like package managers, but rather applications that run within the web. It might seem like a pedantic distinction, but it's a key one in understanding what's under fire.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  I get that and tried to make it clear that I get that, particularly in the paragraph about npm; Perl has the CPAN, Python has had a half dozen package managers (I don't even know which one finally "stuck"), Ruby has gems, but nothing exploded the way npm did. So, what's different? I would argue it's not that JavaScript is a better language (though it's a pretty strong language today). I would argue that it's a better platform, and that platform, ultimately, is the web. Every package manager works over the internet. Only one represents the web-as-a-platform. And, it turns out that's the one that has dwarfed all others in size and scope, in a quite short time. Nearly everything I mentioned above requires the internet for interconnectivity, sure, but also a platform that delivers it to the user. Any platform for building apps that fails to deliver at least as much as the web will never be as successful as the web. Edit: Also, desktop apps have had the Internet for decades. What have they done with it?
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    > "Also, desktop apps have had the Internet for decades. What have they done with it?" Automatic updates is the answer that springs to mind first. Is there something more they should be doing with the Internet? The only other answer I could think of was 'social connectivity', but in the world of desktop apps, there's no major downside with splitting out social connectivity into separate apps. I don't care if a desktop 3D CAD application doesn't have chat functionality as there are specialist desktop applications for chatting online. Sharing a 3D model in a realtime online conversation is as simple as sharing a file.

agumonkey 9y ago

"mainstream computer" < I was talking about the average desktop use, not distributed codebases

SwellJoe 9y ago
Sure, I was speaking directly to what I know...but, are distributed docs in Google Docs not more productive than passing around a Word doc with annotations? Is banking, accounting, trading stocks, bill payments, buying and selling nearly any product, not more productive today due to the same forces? We (people in tech) are just at the leading edge of it...but, it impacts everyone. But, I would argue that the web platform has produced a bigger productivity boost (in terms of output per unit of time) than any other single paradigm shift in computing history. Who cares if typing is a little more sluggish than the native app if you don't have to email the resulting document to everyone on the team and then converge edits at the end of the editing process?

u801e 9y ago

> In the 90s I couldn't have met with my team, with members in Moscow, California, Pennsylvania, and Texas, in any reasonable way I remember in the mid '90s that there were a couple of applications that would allow you to do that (netmeeting from Microsoft and cooltalk from Netscape). I don't remember how easy or difficult it was to find other users though.

ZenoArrow 9y ago

The Internet != The Web. Many of those benefits you listed are linked to the growth of the Internet. Package managers, video conferencing, distributed version control, all mostly Internet-based. The web is just one part of Internet activity. It's the part that requires use of a web browser. If you can do something online without using a web browser it's because of the Internet. The criticisms that are being levelled at the web are related to it being an inefficient and insecure platform for applications. Note this is not Internet-enabled applications like package managers, but rather applications that run within the web. It might seem like a pedantic distinction, but it's a key one in understanding what's under fire.

SwellJoe 9y ago
I get that and tried to make it clear that I get that, particularly in the paragraph about npm; Perl has the CPAN, Python has had a half dozen package managers (I don't even know which one finally "stuck"), Ruby has gems, but nothing exploded the way npm did. So, what's different? I would argue it's not that JavaScript is a better language (though it's a pretty strong language today). I would argue that it's a better platform, and that platform, ultimately, is the web. Every package manager works over the internet. Only one represents the web-as-a-platform. And, it turns out that's the one that has dwarfed all others in size and scope, in a quite short time. Nearly everything I mentioned above requires the internet for interconnectivity, sure, but also a platform that delivers it to the user. Any platform for building apps that fails to deliver at least as much as the web will never be as successful as the web. Edit: Also, desktop apps have had the Internet for decades. What have they done with it?
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  > "Also, desktop apps have had the Internet for decades. What have they done with it?" Automatic updates is the answer that springs to mind first. Is there something more they should be doing with the Internet? The only other answer I could think of was 'social connectivity', but in the world of desktop apps, there's no major downside with splitting out social connectivity into separate apps. I don't care if a desktop 3D CAD application doesn't have chat functionality as there are specialist desktop applications for chatting online. Sharing a 3D model in a realtime online conversation is as simple as sharing a file.