4 ms·

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. One upon a dark age, we had mainframes and dumb terminals. Then came the first age of the PC - let's pull ever

History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. One upon a dark age, we had mainframes and dumb terminals. Then came the first age of the PC - let's pull everything to the client. Then came servers and "thin clients". With faster processors and cheaper storage came the second age of the PC, with only the permanent data storage left on the server. As the Internet grew, centralization came back: web services and the cloud, with clients just serving dumb web pages. And now we see the beginning of a migration back to client-side computation and storage. Somehow, though, this latest iteration doesn't make a lot of sense. It's hard enough maintaining data consistency on a web service that may be used by hundreds or thousands of people. Imagine when this data is cached in microdatabases in unreliable browsers. On top of that, the browser makes an absolutely horrible programming environment for client-side apps. For the programming part, Javascript is an poor language, so you wind up using heavy-duty frameworks like React to make it tolerable. For the UI representation, that's just not what HTML/CSS were ever meant for. So you get frameworks there as well. Young developers think this is just the way it is. No actually, it's more like the worst of all possible worlds. Using something like JavaFX or (I know, I know) even Visual Basic, you can produce a functional, robust UI with a tiny fraction of the effort.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
years and years ago on a C++ forum someone made an observation that was eerily similar to yours. I still remember it to this day as it stuck in my head. They made an observation that our industry goes in cyclical centralize/de-centralize cycles and that we we were (at the time) entering into a centralization cycle. Now here I am reading a comment that we're going back into a de-centralization cycle and I wouldn't be surprised if you're the same poster. probably 15-20 years ago (maybe more?) I made a prediction that I still think will come true. The OS will become the "browser" and applications will run directly on the OS and will access local resources through standardized interfaces. WebAssembly and things like WebGL are already moving us in that direction. Honestly HTML5 was the first time I recognized standard updates as moving us towards that reality with things like localStorage, etc. I honestly think if someone more imaginative had the helm at MS when the cloud started getting big they would have eaten google's lunch by leveraging their desktop dominance into the web. Instead they dd inane things like display websites on the desktop (win98 IIRC).
- bradley13 3y ago
  Could be - I've been making this observation for a long time. The cycles keep going. On the other hand, probably lots of other people have commented on it as well... You may be right about the browser becoming the OS. Chromebooks were already a step in that direction. But JS/HTML/CSS really is a horrible combination for application programming. If the browser does become the OS, can we please get decent technology to work with?
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    I expect we'll get back to native applications and move away from js/html/css.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    HTML and CSS aren't too horrible as foundational tech. CSS needs a little work, but both allow for a lot of good abstractions. They may be some of the best platform we've ever had. They are bad at just being directly programmable targets.
  - holoduke 3y ago
    Html and css are probably the best, easiest and most effective ui toolkits ever. Name one which is better.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

years and years ago on a C++ forum someone made an observation that was eerily similar to yours. I still remember it to this day as it stuck in my head. They made an observation that our industry goes in cyclical centralize/de-centralize cycles and that we we were (at the time) entering into a centralization cycle. Now here I am reading a comment that we're going back into a de-centralization cycle and I wouldn't be surprised if you're the same poster. probably 15-20 years ago (maybe more?) I made a prediction that I still think will come true. The OS will become the "browser" and applications will run directly on the OS and will access local resources through standardized interfaces. WebAssembly and things like WebGL are already moving us in that direction. Honestly HTML5 was the first time I recognized standard updates as moving us towards that reality with things like localStorage, etc. I honestly think if someone more imaginative had the helm at MS when the cloud started getting big they would have eaten google's lunch by leveraging their desktop dominance into the web. Instead they dd inane things like display websites on the desktop (win98 IIRC).

bradley13 3y ago
Could be - I've been making this observation for a long time. The cycles keep going. On the other hand, probably lots of other people have commented on it as well... You may be right about the browser becoming the OS. Chromebooks were already a step in that direction. But JS/HTML/CSS really is a horrible combination for application programming. If the browser does become the OS, can we please get decent technology to work with?
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  I expect we'll get back to native applications and move away from js/html/css.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  HTML and CSS aren't too horrible as foundational tech. CSS needs a little work, but both allow for a lot of good abstractions. They may be some of the best platform we've ever had. They are bad at just being directly programmable targets.
- holoduke 3y ago
  Html and css are probably the best, easiest and most effective ui toolkits ever. Name one which is better.