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Not really. It's way harder (and therefore the barrier is higher, they'd be less likely to exist, etc) to develop cross platform native applications than it is
by dymk 8y ago
Not really. It's way harder (and therefore the barrier is higher, they'd be less likely to exist, etc) to develop cross platform native applications than it is to just implement them as webapps.
If it was just as easy to write and distribute native applications, we'd be doing that, instead of bolting it onto the web. But it's pretty clearly not.
- anoncake 8y agoIts the other way round. If web apps didnt exist, there would be more pressure to develop tools that make it easy to write and distribute proper applications.
- dymk 8y agoUnder what circumstances would webapps not exist in some form or another? It's a system for deploying applications via the web, and JavaScript is primarily the language that they're implemented in. I will bet you that in 99% of alternative timelines, we'd end up with something incredibly similar to what we've got today, and you'd still be complaining that applications aren't "native" enough, because practically nobody cares that a taskbar or button isn't a native OS component. They care that their application works, and can be quickly deployed and updated.
- anoncake 8y ago> Under what circumstances would webapps not exist in some form or another? Browsers not supporting nonsense like Javascript.
- geofft 8y agoSerious question: do you remember the late '90s and early '00s? Have you used Visual Basic, or Qt, or anything? There was an era before web apps existed, and there were tools that made it easy to write and distribute proper applications - are you claiming that that didn't happen, or what?
- anoncake 8y agoI didnt, dymk did.
- geofft 8y agoYou're the one claiming that tools would exist to make it easy. I am saying that they did exist, and they were as easy as possible. What remains to be done, and why didn't it happen before the invention of XMLHTTPRequest? Could it get easier, and if so, how?