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There should be a name for the fallacy in this type of post -- perhaps the "boil the ocean fallacy". Something as big as the web is necessarily evolved rather

by chubot 9y ago

There should be a name for the fallacy in this type of post -- perhaps the "boil the ocean fallacy". Something as big as the web is necessarily evolved rather than designed. Obviously every programmer and their mother thinks they can design a better web. But that's not how large systems are built. I take more of a pessimistic view of systems, as in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics This post seems to have a little too much optimism :) In particular one slogan from that book is "large systems operate in a permanently degraded mode". They perform poorly and some part of them is always broken. There is massive redundancy and inefficiency. That couldn't be more true of the web. (It's also true of things like governments and health care systems, but those things also serve their purpose to some extent.) But this post does nothing to convince me why that won't be true of a replacement. It seems oblivious to the facts and forces of technological adoption. There is only one mention of the word "compatibility" in the post, and it's in regard to authentication. I'm not sure where all the binary protocol stuff is coming from. Without compatibility, it's not very interesting to contemplate, because it will never happen. There will be something beyond the web, but it won't be "like the web but with certain of my pet peeves fixed". It will have to have a fundamental new capability, like iOS/Android were to Microsoft Windows, which is another platform with an enormous network effect. Whatever new platform that comes along will coexist alongside the web for decades, just like iOS/Android and Windows do. EDIT: The style and tone of the book can be annoying to some, but there is wisdom there. Here are some nuggets of wisdom relevant to the web: - One of the problems that a system creates is that it becomes an entity onto itself that not only persists but expands and encroaches on areas beyond the original system's purview. -- This is everybody's complaint about the web evolving from a hypertext platform to an app platform. - Complex systems tend to produce complex responses (not solutions) to problems. -- Every new technology introduced on top of the web (e.g. PHP, CGI, Java applets, Flash, CoffeeScript/TypeScript, PaaS, etc.) is better viewed as a temporary response than a solution. - Great advances are not produced by systems designed to produce great advances. -- I believe this applies to the solution proposed in the original article.

inglor 9y ago
I think that's why the web is so successful. No one likes the DOM APIs but they provide important capabilities and people just wrap them anyway. The fact you can take the capabilities and evolve the APIs continuously is the big pro here and it's a lot easier to do on the web than on other platforms. The "binary protocol stuff" is a great example of something the web _shouldn't_ do because it can be solved in a library (and already is) and doesn't add a capability. WebAssembly on the other hand is great since it adds a capability. At this point where Chromium has more LoC than the linux kernel I think "boiling the ocean" is a very good analogy - and the only thing that got a little close were mobile apps.
AlphaWeaver 9y ago
It seems as if the author makes a nod to that point: >We also need to focus on cheapness. The web has vast teams of full time developers building it. Much of their work is duplicated or thrown away, some of what they’ve created can be reused, and small amounts of new development might be possible … but by and large any NewWeb will have to be assembled out of bits of software that already exist. Beggars can’t be choosers.
- chubot 9y ago
  Well, I'm talking more about design than implementation. It's good he acknowledges the point about reusing existing code. But the design still seems to be ignorant of the network effects of the web, or any existing platform. It seems completely incompatible, so I don't see why anyone would use this new platform. A good analogy: to break the Windows monopoly, superior hardware and OS X being superior barely made a dent, if count by percentages. What you really need is iOS, i.e. brand new functionality. That's how Apple "beat" Microsoft. Platforms are generally not "replaced" with something similar but slightly better. (And what he's describing sounds better on some fronts but worse on others.)
  - mike_hearn 9y ago
    When Android and iOS were new, they were completely incompatible with everything else including the web. Yet somehow I find myself using Android apps every day and many mobile websites I visit try to push me towards their app version. Console makers reset their platforms from scratch every ten years or so. New operating system, new hardware platform, often entirely new CPU architecture. Xbox is still around. I think some people may be over-estimating the difficulty of dislodging the web. Obviously it'd be a long term endeavour. But web apps don't have a lot of network effects. If anything it's the opposite; web apps hardly integrate with each other at all, so using one rarely makes another better.
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    - 9y ago

by chubot 9y ago

inglor 9y ago

I think that's why the web is so successful. No one likes the DOM APIs but they provide important capabilities and people just wrap them anyway. The fact you can take the capabilities and evolve the APIs continuously is the big pro here and it's a lot easier to do on the web than on other platforms. The "binary protocol stuff" is a great example of something the web _shouldn't_ do because it can be solved in a library (and already is) and doesn't add a capability. WebAssembly on the other hand is great since it adds a capability. At this point where Chromium has more LoC than the linux kernel I think "boiling the ocean" is a very good analogy - and the only thing that got a little close were mobile apps.

AlphaWeaver 9y ago

It seems as if the author makes a nod to that point: >We also need to focus on cheapness. The web has vast teams of full time developers building it. Much of their work is duplicated or thrown away, some of what they’ve created can be reused, and small amounts of new development might be possible … but by and large any NewWeb will have to be assembled out of bits of software that already exist. Beggars can’t be choosers.

chubot 9y ago
Well, I'm talking more about design than implementation. It's good he acknowledges the point about reusing existing code. But the design still seems to be ignorant of the network effects of the web, or any existing platform. It seems completely incompatible, so I don't see why anyone would use this new platform. A good analogy: to break the Windows monopoly, superior hardware and OS X being superior barely made a dent, if count by percentages. What you really need is iOS, i.e. brand new functionality. That's how Apple "beat" Microsoft. Platforms are generally not "replaced" with something similar but slightly better. (And what he's describing sounds better on some fronts but worse on others.)
- mike_hearn 9y ago
  When Android and iOS were new, they were completely incompatible with everything else including the web. Yet somehow I find myself using Android apps every day and many mobile websites I visit try to push me towards their app version. Console makers reset their platforms from scratch every ten years or so. New operating system, new hardware platform, often entirely new CPU architecture. Xbox is still around. I think some people may be over-estimating the difficulty of dislodging the web. Obviously it'd be a long term endeavour. But web apps don't have a lot of network effects. If anything it's the opposite; web apps hardly integrate with each other at all, so using one rarely makes another better.
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    [deleted]
  - 9y ago