5 ms·

All true but I would say the motivations are not same for each cycle. > First there were mainframes with thin dumb clients. Classic client-server. Computers w

All true but I would say the motivations are not same for each cycle. > First there were mainframes with thin dumb clients. Classic client-server. Computers were very expensive so would be too expensive to have smart clients. The driving force is cost. > Then came thick clients, where some processing happened on the local terminal and some on the server. Computers became cheaper and we had to deliver more things to a growing number of users. The driving force is dual combo of declining cost and increasing demand to do more. > Technology advanced far enough to install programs locally that ran only locally. The 80's and 90's were quite the decades. Costs kept going down, computation power kept going up and things became more decentralized so you could do much more at the client side without having to deal with a big server. The driving force was still declining cost and democratization of computers. > Someone had a bright idea to build server-based applications that could be accessed via a dumb web browser. That was in order to deal with the issue of managing at scale. The driving force was software management and focus on velocity of change. > That went on for a while, and people realized that things would be better if we did some processing in JavaScript. To provide the richness of experience they missed from the 80's/90's locally installed programs. > Now the push continues to do more and more computation locally. I would say that in addition to the usual drivers, now there is an aspect of graceful handling of issues introduced by network deficiency (brought due to over-reliance on server-heavy brower-light applications and the generally growing network hungriness) + increased awareness of privacy concerns. > Can't wait for the next cycle. Maybe server-side democratization/aggregation and continued emphasis on strengthening local experience.

koliber 2y ago
Fully agree regarding the motivations. The thing many young devs don't realize that there's a reason for doing things a certain way. It's not "just because this is the best way to build everything."
- reaperducer 2y ago
  The thing many young devs don't realize that there's a reason for doing things a certain way. It's not "just because this is the best way to build everything." 90% of the modern tech industry is monkey-see-monkey-do. Plenty of devs on HN who are vocally proud that they don't think about how the things they build work, they just build.
  - Filligree 2y ago
    That's not the tech industry, that's just everything. And that's generally fine. We're good at imitation. It's not that most people can't have their own thoughts, but they save that for things that are more important than work -- or at least I hope that's the case.
    - jrm4 2y ago
      Sure but the one not fine thing: There's still just about ZERO accountability for harm. We need regulation or liability, yesterday.
- jrm4 2y ago
  I teach IT and the thing I try to drill home; the entirety of IT is NOT intelligent design, it's evolution (for BUSINESS, not for tech) -- which includes a whole lot of vestigial stupidity and awfulness.
franga2000 2y ago
> The driving force was software management and focus on velocity of change That might have been the motivation for some at the beginning, but the reason cloud-only is now dominant is the SaaS + lock-in model that guarantees recurring revenue for the software company.
- carlmr 2y ago
  Also impossible to pirate.
  - homarp 2y ago
    but so much better to 'pirate': from Azure - https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-cybersecurity-hack-raimondo-breach-b0901a93cca2ffaf05edacbfb9ecf3da https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-cybersecurity-hack-raim... to Snowflake - https://archive.ph/WLmYA https://archive.ph/WLmYA
- hobs 2y ago
  Specifically because investors cared more about MRR and ARR than any specific numbers - this conversion is really what turned everything into a SaaS company.
- cjblomqvist 2y ago
  Let's not forget the hassle when you don't have one source of truth. Life before Dropbox and the like wasn't super fun. I think this is an underestimated factor at play. It's super nice to not have deal with that issue, and be able to switch between computers seamless without worrying about whether your data is accurate/up to date. Lock in and recurring revenue is not something new for SaaS. Most ERP systems and similar business systems was sold like this way before. But with the added hassle that you had to manage a server locally yourself. Sometimes I think people just go straight to "corporations must be evil" because of ignorance/it feels good to blame the "Big guy" one can't relate to.
- Spivak 2y ago
  I wouldn't call it because of lock-in and more because we dropped the fiction that software is a thing that has a one-time cost and having people manage license keys is more expensive than its worth from support tickets alone. It's always been ARR it's just that the only software that was able to sell was huge amounts of units of $Software 2023/2024/2025 to smooth over the churn. People get mad at you, the software vendor, if you don't provide indefinite support to bits-in-a-box they paid $60 for 5 years ago (or 10 years ago if it's government) or make them buy a support contract but if you just charge it as in all-in-one subscription for the same price they're suddenly happy to pay it.
willguest 2y ago
As for the next cycle, the internet computer protocol is an interesting punt - a distributed network of servers, with replication and a degree of anonymity, where people host and pay for compute
- reaperducer 2y ago
  a distributed network of servers, with replication and a degree of anonymity, where people host and pay for compute Sounds a bit like Bill Gates' vision from the 90's of people subscribing to Windows, and paying a bit each time they turn the computer on.
darkerside 2y ago
It seems almost too obvious to say that the best model, if cost, size, performance, etc are no longer limiting factors, is to run code in both client and server. Advantages of server: no need to distribute code, and data naturally more consistent. Advantages of client: offline accessibility, speed of light limitation on performance. Of course, in the real world, you have additional tradeoffs, but those I described are probably timeless and universal rules.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
> To provide the richness of experience they missed from the 80's/90's locally installed programs. I agree with GP: the 80s and 90s were quite the decades. Back then it was normal to have, say, a 3D modelling / rendering software on your computer (like 3DS Max). And something to create music yourself. And a software allowing you to do DTP (with the 'D' even standing for Desktop). We already had IDEs and some of us had Emacs / vi(m). Computers were used both for work and leisure and they were certainly used in creative ways, to produce "stuff", to experiment. They were more than simply passive devices made to purely consume AI-generated crap. And we already had BBSes then the Internet. We had Usenet newsgroups. By the mid to late 90s we had Nestcape and "alltheweb", then Google. It was local first, but with access to the world's knowledge, basically. And we had games and networked games: I was playing Warcraft II over the Internet in the mid-nineties and Counter-Strike in beta in 1999. At that point it was kinda peak civilization, before the gamification of search engines / enshitification of everything. Lootboxes weren't a thing. Seeing ten zombies mindlessly consuming poor content at a bus stop wasn't a thing yet. And I don't think the move to web-first / browsers-first / ultra-slow mono-threaded JavaScript first (JS was really pathetic at the beginning) empowered users: it was a step back, going years and years back in capabilities compared to what we have locally on our computers. And, today, if you want to create something in 3D, you'll be using Blender. For music, you'll use something local too. For DTP: same thing. Heck, you'll be creating websites / webapps using a mostly local-first solution. I do think this last quarter of a century the Web has destroyed the experience, not enriched it. It has turned users into dumb consumers of content. Sure, I can order stuff on Amazon in two clicks (which I do) and it's more convenient than using eBay to order that video tape of "Le Mans" in the mid nineties (which I did too): but Amazon is just more consumerism. And it's not just dumb consumerism: it's accompanied with total surveillance and insecurity. To me in the 80s and 90s computers had, compared to their capabilities, way more richness of experience than most experience today. What did I not have back then? Hmmm. Access to my broker in real-time: that's one I use a lot. Oh, wait, I'm using my broker's desktop app. As a fun sidenote, HN would have worked fine on Netscape in the nineties. I could have typed this comment on a 486. The "richness" of the enshitified Web: I just don't see it. We had the Web. And it was a better Web.
- bee_rider 2y ago

koliber 2y ago

Fully agree regarding the motivations. The thing many young devs don't realize that there's a reason for doing things a certain way. It's not "just because this is the best way to build everything."

reaperducer 2y ago
The thing many young devs don't realize that there's a reason for doing things a certain way. It's not "just because this is the best way to build everything." 90% of the modern tech industry is monkey-see-monkey-do. Plenty of devs on HN who are vocally proud that they don't think about how the things they build work, they just build.
- Filligree 2y ago
  That's not the tech industry, that's just everything. And that's generally fine. We're good at imitation. It's not that most people can't have their own thoughts, but they save that for things that are more important than work -- or at least I hope that's the case.
  - jrm4 2y ago
    Sure but the one not fine thing: There's still just about ZERO accountability for harm. We need regulation or liability, yesterday.
jrm4 2y ago
I teach IT and the thing I try to drill home; the entirety of IT is NOT intelligent design, it's evolution (for BUSINESS, not for tech) -- which includes a whole lot of vestigial stupidity and awfulness.

franga2000 2y ago

> The driving force was software management and focus on velocity of change That might have been the motivation for some at the beginning, but the reason cloud-only is now dominant is the SaaS + lock-in model that guarantees recurring revenue for the software company.

carlmr 2y ago
Also impossible to pirate.
- homarp 2y ago
  but so much better to 'pirate': from Azure - https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-cybersecurity-hack-raimondo-breach-b0901a93cca2ffaf05edacbfb9ecf3da https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-cybersecurity-hack-raim... to Snowflake - https://archive.ph/WLmYA https://archive.ph/WLmYA
hobs 2y ago
Specifically because investors cared more about MRR and ARR than any specific numbers - this conversion is really what turned everything into a SaaS company.
cjblomqvist 2y ago
Let's not forget the hassle when you don't have one source of truth. Life before Dropbox and the like wasn't super fun. I think this is an underestimated factor at play. It's super nice to not have deal with that issue, and be able to switch between computers seamless without worrying about whether your data is accurate/up to date. Lock in and recurring revenue is not something new for SaaS. Most ERP systems and similar business systems was sold like this way before. But with the added hassle that you had to manage a server locally yourself. Sometimes I think people just go straight to "corporations must be evil" because of ignorance/it feels good to blame the "Big guy" one can't relate to.
Spivak 2y ago
I wouldn't call it because of lock-in and more because we dropped the fiction that software is a thing that has a one-time cost and having people manage license keys is more expensive than its worth from support tickets alone. It's always been ARR it's just that the only software that was able to sell was huge amounts of units of $Software 2023/2024/2025 to smooth over the churn. People get mad at you, the software vendor, if you don't provide indefinite support to bits-in-a-box they paid $60 for 5 years ago (or 10 years ago if it's government) or make them buy a support contract but if you just charge it as in all-in-one subscription for the same price they're suddenly happy to pay it.

willguest 2y ago

As for the next cycle, the internet computer protocol is an interesting punt - a distributed network of servers, with replication and a degree of anonymity, where people host and pay for compute

reaperducer 2y ago
a distributed network of servers, with replication and a degree of anonymity, where people host and pay for compute Sounds a bit like Bill Gates' vision from the 90's of people subscribing to Windows, and paying a bit each time they turn the computer on.

darkerside 2y ago

It seems almost too obvious to say that the best model, if cost, size, performance, etc are no longer limiting factors, is to run code in both client and server. Advantages of server: no need to distribute code, and data naturally more consistent. Advantages of client: offline accessibility, speed of light limitation on performance. Of course, in the real world, you have additional tradeoffs, but those I described are probably timeless and universal rules.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

> To provide the richness of experience they missed from the 80's/90's locally installed programs. I agree with GP: the 80s and 90s were quite the decades. Back then it was normal to have, say, a 3D modelling / rendering software on your computer (like 3DS Max). And something to create music yourself. And a software allowing you to do DTP (with the 'D' even standing for Desktop). We already had IDEs and some of us had Emacs / vi(m). Computers were used both for work and leisure and they were certainly used in creative ways, to produce "stuff", to experiment. They were more than simply passive devices made to purely consume AI-generated crap. And we already had BBSes then the Internet. We had Usenet newsgroups. By the mid to late 90s we had Nestcape and "alltheweb", then Google. It was local first, but with access to the world's knowledge, basically. And we had games and networked games: I was playing Warcraft II over the Internet in the mid-nineties and Counter-Strike in beta in 1999. At that point it was kinda peak civilization, before the gamification of search engines / enshitification of everything. Lootboxes weren't a thing. Seeing ten zombies mindlessly consuming poor content at a bus stop wasn't a thing yet. And I don't think the move to web-first / browsers-first / ultra-slow mono-threaded JavaScript first (JS was really pathetic at the beginning) empowered users: it was a step back, going years and years back in capabilities compared to what we have locally on our computers. And, today, if you want to create something in 3D, you'll be using Blender. For music, you'll use something local too. For DTP: same thing. Heck, you'll be creating websites / webapps using a mostly local-first solution. I do think this last quarter of a century the Web has destroyed the experience, not enriched it. It has turned users into dumb consumers of content. Sure, I can order stuff on Amazon in two clicks (which I do) and it's more convenient than using eBay to order that video tape of "Le Mans" in the mid nineties (which I did too): but Amazon is just more consumerism. And it's not just dumb consumerism: it's accompanied with total surveillance and insecurity. To me in the 80s and 90s computers had, compared to their capabilities, way more richness of experience than most experience today. What did I not have back then? Hmmm. Access to my broker in real-time: that's one I use a lot. Oh, wait, I'm using my broker's desktop app. As a fun sidenote, HN would have worked fine on Netscape in the nineties. I could have typed this comment on a 486. The "richness" of the enshitified Web: I just don't see it. We had the Web. And it was a better Web.

bee_rider 2y ago