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There was a time back not so long ago when there was a craze to rewrite every desktop app as a webapp because the web was going to eat everything. It was the hy

There was a time back not so long ago when there was a craze to rewrite every desktop app as a webapp because the web was going to eat everything. It was the hype cycle of web 2.0. Those days are gone imho. Instead it was mobile that ate everything. The OP that Jeff is commenting on isn't wrong. I see it everyday with junior devs that have very little practical experience with real engineering but they know a little python, maybe a javascript framework and can figure out AWS well enough to deploy it all using serverless. This has been going on in multiple tech stacks - not just desktop programming. There was a time, for example, when people didn't use ORMs or nosql. Working with a real database is becoming a lost skill. One of the dirty secrets of the success of nosql is frankly because new developers are just bad at databases and don't understand fundamental skills. Ditto for AWS and application architecture. I see it as somewhat inevitable that the next gen of developers want to do easier development. The logical conclusion of this will be 'point and click' (LCARS from Star Trek?). 30 years from now we'll be complaining that our kids dont know the 'complexities' of python/javascript development and do nothing but 'low code' development.

arbol 5y ago
I remember agreeing with most of this post when I first read it but I don't think we'll see a continuing dumbing down of code. Blockchain, whatever your view on it, is forcing a lot of developers to write low level code with an understanding of garbage collection, abstraction, etc. This is also being felt in data science in which AI models are getting more and more complicated and the only way to scale them is to write lower level code. Point and click coding will never replace actually typing. Think about how much you can express with your hands versus speech. Unless you're versed in sign language, the gap will be very big.
pornel 5y ago
It has happened. These days desktop apps are Electron. Even in the mobile apps the native UI parts are mostly navigation between various WebViews.

arbol 5y ago

I remember agreeing with most of this post when I first read it but I don't think we'll see a continuing dumbing down of code. Blockchain, whatever your view on it, is forcing a lot of developers to write low level code with an understanding of garbage collection, abstraction, etc. This is also being felt in data science in which AI models are getting more and more complicated and the only way to scale them is to write lower level code. Point and click coding will never replace actually typing. Think about how much you can express with your hands versus speech. Unless you're versed in sign language, the gap will be very big.

pornel 5y ago

It has happened. These days desktop apps are Electron. Even in the mobile apps the native UI parts are mostly navigation between various WebViews.