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A lot of us have tried very hard to design software this way and afterwards had to admit it did not work. There is a big difference between making a web browser

A lot of us have tried very hard to design software this way and afterwards had to admit it did not work. There is a big difference between making a web browser and a web application, the first needs specs with careful semantics but with the second anything goes. At some point the specs ala W3C just get in the way of the creativity of building something. The comparison to the complex numbers is unfair, they are actually useful and show up in physics in all sort of places.

college_physics 4y ago
> The comparison to the complex numbers is unfair the analogy probably only goes so far but it is meant to suggest that there might be a entire class of useful things that are not yet developed because the machinery for doing so is not fully developed / understood. > A lot of us have tried very hard to design software this way and afterwards had to admit it did not work I can only respect that. But I think we can also take a step back and look at all these web applications that do work (in a certain context) and ask whether they can withstand and evolve to cope with the information explosion that only gets worse. Evolvability, making use of linked data, composing useful things from diverse sources etc. These are not pipedreams or academic pursuits. Having designs that will help build tools adapted to this reality could unlock enormous potential.