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In a field that includes X Windows, you might want to reconsider "worst design imaginable". There were dozens of serious attempts at a remote GUI applications
by neilk 4y ago
In a field that includes X Windows, you might want to reconsider "worst design imaginable".
There were dozens of serious attempts at a remote GUI applications framework from the 70s to the 90s. HTML + JavaScript is the one that finally succeeded. It is not a coincidence.
Unlike all its predecessors it was conceived in a free software environment, and worked with both degraded and upgraded environments. It was fast-evolving enough for commercial interest, standardized enough for mass adoption, and trivially simple to author.
Yes, the web has grown complex beyond all reason and if you want to make a real state-of-the-art web app today you'll have to use an absurdly deep stack of tools. It's probably time to rethink things. But give credit where it's due. No other system would have even been _able_ to evolve like HTML + JavaScript has done.
- still_grokking 4y ago> In a field that includes X Windows, you might want to reconsider "worst design imaginable". You can implement a XServer in only a few MiB, that runs on a potato (as seen form today). Compare that to current web browser. > Yes, the web has grown complex beyond all reason and if you want to make a real state-of-the-art web app today you'll have to use an absurdly deep stack of tools. It's probably time to rethink things. It's long over due. We should get lost of all this "layers of madness". > No other system would have even been _able_ to evolve like HTML + JavaScript has done. How can you know that? The problem is only, the market takes always the cheapest solution that barely works. And you can't compete with "free" (like in beer).
- BigJono 4y ago> Yes, the web has grown complex beyond all reason and if you want to make a real state-of-the-art web app today you'll have to use an absurdly deep stack of tools. The absurdly deep stack of tools is the reason why the web has grown complex, not the solution to it. If front-end devs applied a bit of fucking YAGNI every now and then instead of churning out tutorial #193859812 on how to get set up in 10 minutes with a WXYZFooBarHyperCSSJS stack then get completely brick walled a few months into your project because now you're committed to tech that would take 15 years of study to actually understand, then front end would be perfectly fine.
- anthk 4y agoEmacs itself does much more than HTML and JS.