"Client/Server" killed off desktop and workgroup apps. With it came all that consultancy driven enterprisey crap: n+1 tiered architectures, execrable design pat

"Client/Server" killed off desktop and workgroup apps. With it came all that consultancy driven enterprisey crap: n+1 tiered architectures, execrable design patterns (MVC v MVP v MVCC), meta markup languages, schemas and mappings, yadda yadda. Web development is just the opportunistic parasite that snuck in after enterprisey dev blew apart the industry. Everything that sucks about enterprisey dev also sucks about web dev. Then pile on top the insanity of HTML, CSS, JavaScript... Almost makes one wistful for X-Windows. Web dev didn't have to suck. It could have just been an update to time sharing and smart terminals. But every generation has to reinvent everything from scratch every time. It's some kind of natural law. Lather, rinse, repeat. -- There are precisely two good parts that "the web" bequeathed onto the world: HTTP and URLs (URIs). Those really were game changers. For one, both are "open". All of the alternatives were in the same idea space as Xanadu. Closed gardens, proprietary. At the moment, I don't recall any other contenders for the use cases HTTP and URI solve. The only close analogs I can think of are the SNMP stack based on ASN.1 and MIBs (OIDs). And omg that stuff sucked. Oh, some of it's coming back to me. X.500 (for addressing) and CORBA (for RPC) and the like. We are SO LUCKY HTTP and URIs showed up.