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It's funny to me that Web OS is being heralded as 'the thing for the future' when all we've really done is reinvent the terminal.
by Qz 16y ago
It's funny to me that Web OS is being heralded as 'the thing for the future' when all we've really done is reinvent the terminal.
- chunkbot 16y agoEverything old is new again.
- axod 16y agoSo much in our industry is about iterative improvement rather than radical new invention.
- haberman 16y agoTerminals did not have: * a client-side data structure (the DOM) and rendering engine that can be manipulated by a client-side platform-independent language/VM. Modern web applications would not be possible without this. * a persistence model (cookies) that allows users to behave as if they have a long-lived session with the application, when in fact they are communicating over a stateless protocol and may be getting directed to different servers every time. One instance of the web server can crash; this does not interrupt the session. * a link structure that allows applications to effortlessly direct users to other applications in a user-friendly way. * a security model that lets different applications interoperate, allowing them to exchange data, delegate authentication, or embed parts of one application into another. * an application loading/launching system where a user can type a short string that they saw on the side of a truck into their browsing application and be instantly running an application that is hosted literally anywhere in the world. We haven't "reinvented" anything, we took an idea that saw limited success due to numerous practical limitations and evolved a better version of it that scales to billions of users and millions of applications. It's like saying "it's funny to me that going to the moon is being heralded as 'the thing for the future' when all we've really done is reinvent the biplane."