5 ms·

"HTTP is not NFS" is a technical challenge that is potentially solvable. With single page apps the reload button is becoming increasingly irrelevant anyway thou

by jacobr 15y ago

"HTTP is not NFS" is a technical challenge that is potentially solvable. With single page apps the reload button is becoming increasingly irrelevant anyway though.

gaius 15y ago
Writing desktop apps within a browser running on a desktop is what's crazy... Pointless layers of abstraction.
- lbotos 15y ago
  It's only pointless because we are still using the "Desktop" model. I'm not advocating one over the other but as we see Mozilla try boot to gecko and Google trying Chrome OS we are seeing the early stages of the "webtopbrowserthing" being refined. We are in that transition state where we are trying to figure out what platform is where the money is.
  - gaius 15y ago
    Those of us who have been around for a while look at what Google are doing with a sense of deja vu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS And NeWS was better in the sense that it used PS for everything rather than an unholy mess of JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc etc.
    - dasil003 15y ago
      It just goes to show that market forces do not care about technical merit and ultimate purpose in the least. NeWS never got traction, yet the advance of the web is inexorable. Why? Well the web is supported everywhere because it was simple. The fact that it is available everywhere (which is actually pretty amazing and unique in the entire history of media if you stop and think about it) meant people kept pushing the boundaries. The limitations caused standards to be pushed forward. Wide use of the standards means no platform can break free from supporting it (Microsoft did their best for almost a decade!). Obviously it looks like a Frankenstein monster from an engineering perspective, but it doesn't matter because that's where the investment is going. The good news is it will evolve and improve, and soon enough the grey beards who remember that there could have been a better way will all be dead; a lot like UNIX actually ;) edit: I'd appreciate if bitter GUI developers would respond rather than misdirect their anger at the down vote button.
      - unimpressive 15y ago
        Well. You're getting downvoted for wishing death on people you've never met. >The good news is it will evolve and improve, and soon enough the grey beards who remember that there could have been a better way will all be dead; a lot like UNIX actually ;) That sounds like some sort of evil plot. For that matter my beard isn't anywhere close to being gray and I know that things could have been better. And if you didn't have +8000 karma I would think you were trolling. That you're not just makes it worse.
        dasil003 15y ago
        Who's wishing death on anyone? It's just a colorful way of saying that people will soon enough take the web heritage of apps for granted.
        unimpressive 15y ago
        >The good news is...soon enough the grey beards...will all be dead... ;) You're the one who asked. If thats what I got out of it it's probably what the people downvoting got out of it too. For what it's worth maybe the intended message would have come through better if you were saying it in your voice with tone and inflection rather than the way I read it as words on the screen.
- benohear 15y ago
  What are the practical issues you're concerned about? Dev time? performance / reliability?
  - gaius 15y ago
    Dev time, you say. Well let me tell you a story. I am quite into 8-bit, I like buying micros from the 80s as junk and fixing them up. Recently, my old lady and I wanted a spreadsheet to track days off, vacations and so on. I could have done it on the quad-core, 8G Mac in Excel or online with Google Docs... But I actually did it in ViewSheet on a BBC Micro. So dev time, well the last THIRTY YEARS of dev time haven't gotten me any anything I didn't have already.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      And today I walked a mile from my grandmother's to my house. The last HUNDRED YEARS of car manufacturing haven't gotten me any anything I didn't have already.
      - gaius 15y ago
        A car could get you there faster, or dryer in the rain, or carrying more stuff. But there's not much Excel can do for the vast majority of users who just want a table with a few dozen records, that ViewSheet (or the granddaddy of them all VisiCalc) can't. Same with wordprocessing.
        icebraining 15y ago
        Except many of those users don't want just a table with a few dozen records - they want that plus a couple of small features. And the real problem is that they don't want the same couple of features. Hence, you end up with huge beasts to support each combination. For example, what if you want to use your spreadsheet when you're not home? Never happened to you? Well, it happened to others.
        15y ago

by jacobr 15y ago

"HTTP is not NFS" is a technical challenge that is potentially solvable. With single page apps the reload button is becoming increasingly irrelevant anyway though.

gaius 15y ago

Writing desktop apps within a browser running on a desktop is what's crazy... Pointless layers of abstraction.

lbotos 15y ago
It's only pointless because we are still using the "Desktop" model. I'm not advocating one over the other but as we see Mozilla try boot to gecko and Google trying Chrome OS we are seeing the early stages of the "webtopbrowserthing" being refined. We are in that transition state where we are trying to figure out what platform is where the money is.
- gaius 15y ago
  Those of us who have been around for a while look at what Google are doing with a sense of deja vu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS And NeWS was better in the sense that it used PS for everything rather than an unholy mess of JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc etc.
  - dasil003 15y ago
    It just goes to show that market forces do not care about technical merit and ultimate purpose in the least. NeWS never got traction, yet the advance of the web is inexorable. Why? Well the web is supported everywhere because it was simple. The fact that it is available everywhere (which is actually pretty amazing and unique in the entire history of media if you stop and think about it) meant people kept pushing the boundaries. The limitations caused standards to be pushed forward. Wide use of the standards means no platform can break free from supporting it (Microsoft did their best for almost a decade!). Obviously it looks like a Frankenstein monster from an engineering perspective, but it doesn't matter because that's where the investment is going. The good news is it will evolve and improve, and soon enough the grey beards who remember that there could have been a better way will all be dead; a lot like UNIX actually ;) edit: I'd appreciate if bitter GUI developers would respond rather than misdirect their anger at the down vote button.
    - unimpressive 15y ago
      Well. You're getting downvoted for wishing death on people you've never met. >The good news is it will evolve and improve, and soon enough the grey beards who remember that there could have been a better way will all be dead; a lot like UNIX actually ;) That sounds like some sort of evil plot. For that matter my beard isn't anywhere close to being gray and I know that things could have been better. And if you didn't have +8000 karma I would think you were trolling. That you're not just makes it worse.
      - dasil003 15y ago
        Who's wishing death on anyone? It's just a colorful way of saying that people will soon enough take the web heritage of apps for granted.
        unimpressive 15y ago
        >The good news is...soon enough the grey beards...will all be dead... ;) You're the one who asked. If thats what I got out of it it's probably what the people downvoting got out of it too. For what it's worth maybe the intended message would have come through better if you were saying it in your voice with tone and inflection rather than the way I read it as words on the screen.
benohear 15y ago
What are the practical issues you're concerned about? Dev time? performance / reliability?
- gaius 15y ago
  Dev time, you say. Well let me tell you a story. I am quite into 8-bit, I like buying micros from the 80s as junk and fixing them up. Recently, my old lady and I wanted a spreadsheet to track days off, vacations and so on. I could have done it on the quad-core, 8G Mac in Excel or online with Google Docs... But I actually did it in ViewSheet on a BBC Micro. So dev time, well the last THIRTY YEARS of dev time haven't gotten me any anything I didn't have already.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    And today I walked a mile from my grandmother's to my house. The last HUNDRED YEARS of car manufacturing haven't gotten me any anything I didn't have already.
    - gaius 15y ago
      A car could get you there faster, or dryer in the rain, or carrying more stuff. But there's not much Excel can do for the vast majority of users who just want a table with a few dozen records, that ViewSheet (or the granddaddy of them all VisiCalc) can't. Same with wordprocessing.
      - icebraining 15y ago
        Except many of those users don't want just a table with a few dozen records - they want that plus a couple of small features. And the real problem is that they don't want the same couple of features. Hence, you end up with huge beasts to support each combination. For example, what if you want to use your spreadsheet when you're not home? Never happened to you? Well, it happened to others.
        15y ago