4 ms·

The web can, and will continue to accumulate stuff. You can't clean up a mess by accumulating more stuff. There is no technical reason why a proper GUI framewo

by jules 14y ago

The web can, and will continue to accumulate stuff. You can't clean up a mess by accumulating more stuff. There is no technical reason why a proper GUI framework couldn't be as ubiquitous as HTML+CSS+JS+SVG+etc, except that historically it didn't happen that way. It's definitely not inconceivable that somebody will build Kay's VM vision as an abstraction layer on top of web technologies, so that at least we no longer have to deal with the mess in each and every web application separately. If such a VM becomes popular enough we can implement said VM directly instead of on top of existing web technologies.

dasil003 14y ago
> You can't clean up a mess by accumulating more stuff. You can't clean up a mess by adding layers, but you can replace layers (eg. you can add web sockets and start driving real time apps that way). Therefore incremental improvement is possible essentially forever. > There is no technical reason why a proper GUI framework couldn't be as ubiquitous as HTML+CSS+JS+SVG+etc, except that historically it didn't happen that way. Agreed. However it's not just accidental either. The web is many things to many people. It's not like cross-platform GUI toolkits failed for lack of trying, but the fact is that they could not reproduce the advantages that the web had in the very beginning. Specifically, it was comically easy to create content and even a browser on any platform in those early days. Obviously over the next decade web tech was severely abused to shoehorn application functionality where it was never intended, and ends up being more complex in the long run. However the number and utility of the dead simple documents is absolutely massive. That, combined with a defacto standard for creating server apps without installation that is perfectly accessible to a layman (theoretically with any disability as well) was the wedge that GUI toolkits never came close to having. Your idea about building a new abstract layer on top of existing web technologies and then reimplementing it natively is the most credible idea I've heard about how the web could be supplanted, and I certainly wouldn't bet against that happening over the coming decades. However I think the web should be a textbook example of how worse is better is not just a conciliatory platitude for disgruntled engineers, but as an actual requirement for certain classes of technology to gain critical mass.

by jules 14y ago

dasil003 14y ago

> You can't clean up a mess by accumulating more stuff. You can't clean up a mess by adding layers, but you can replace layers (eg. you can add web sockets and start driving real time apps that way). Therefore incremental improvement is possible essentially forever. > There is no technical reason why a proper GUI framework couldn't be as ubiquitous as HTML+CSS+JS+SVG+etc, except that historically it didn't happen that way. Agreed. However it's not just accidental either. The web is many things to many people. It's not like cross-platform GUI toolkits failed for lack of trying, but the fact is that they could not reproduce the advantages that the web had in the very beginning. Specifically, it was comically easy to create content and even a browser on any platform in those early days. Obviously over the next decade web tech was severely abused to shoehorn application functionality where it was never intended, and ends up being more complex in the long run. However the number and utility of the dead simple documents is absolutely massive. That, combined with a defacto standard for creating server apps without installation that is perfectly accessible to a layman (theoretically with any disability as well) was the wedge that GUI toolkits never came close to having. Your idea about building a new abstract layer on top of existing web technologies and then reimplementing it natively is the most credible idea I've heard about how the web could be supplanted, and I certainly wouldn't bet against that happening over the coming decades. However I think the web should be a textbook example of how worse is better is not just a conciliatory platitude for disgruntled engineers, but as an actual requirement for certain classes of technology to gain critical mass.