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Read my response above; you're not addressing the point he makes that the web should have been based on a VM. That's what I'm saying is wronger than wrong. If

by chubot 14y ago

Read my response above; you're not addressing the point he makes that the web should have been based on a VM. That's what I'm saying is wronger than wrong. If their line of research is based on distributing content over VMs, then that's completely different than the web's design philosophy, and it's probably THE reason his ideas never were adopted while the web was. Those design ideas are diametrically opposed. The design of the web won, for that specific reason. It was BETTER rather than worse, as he claims. I was astonished during the talk that he never reflected on why his ideas in this area weren't successful while the web was. It is NOT because the designers of the web are idiots or amateurs. That is specifically what he claims.

coldtea 14y ago
Your whole premise is that his ideas "weren't successful", whereas I see it more as a case of "Greenspun's tenth rule". That is: tt's not that the VMs lost and the web won. It's the web started from something that wasn't adequate for what we wanted, and after all these years it has been adding all kinds of kludgy, warty and half-baked implementations of VM features. In essence, instead of designing a proper web-as-VM from the start (and slowly evolve it as capabilities of networks and CPUs increase) we started with Lee's document based thing, that we soon found out is barely enough, and we have to have video, sound, app capabilities, process isolation, maybe a common bytecode, networking, real-time, etc. I.e we started from dumb documents we links, when what we wanted was a VM. And now we have twisted the dump document model to sorta kinda look like a VM. How many times have you heard that "the browser is the new OS" and such? So, it's a Greenspun's tenth rule, only instead of Lisp we build an ad-hoc, bug-ridden, clumsy version of Alan Kay's, Doug Engelbart, etc, ideas.
- chubot 14y ago
  Right, so you are arguing exactly what Kay argued, and what the Adobe guys argued. I am saying that is wrong for the reasons above (i.e., exactly what Tim Berner's Lee argued). Anyway, Kay basically attributed it to ignorance and stupidity on the part of the TBL and the web's designers, which I think is incredibly arrogant, especially since he is wrong. You didn't really address the arguments above -- you're basically saying "it would have been nicer and cleaner if we started with a VM". I can sort of see how it would have been nicer in some theoretical world, just like using PDF/PS instead of CSS would have been nicer (in a way). But I am arguing that it would have never happened. If you started with a VM-based system, there would be technical problems that prevented it from being widely adopted. Actually, Java was pretty much exactly that. It was supposed to be a VM that ran anything, and disenfranchised Microsoft's OS. And we know JS is more popular than Java, despite way more marketing muscle behind Java in the early years. It's already been tried. I'd argue that it wasn't just beyond the abilities of Java's designers, but actually impossible (this is as much social problem as a technical one). You make the vague statement as Kay does that "we should have started with a VM", but it would be impossible to come up with a specific VM design (actual running code) that actually worked as well and as widely as the Web does.
  - jules 14y ago
    You're absolutely right that historically, it wouldn't have worked. But the web has since moved beyond plain old static documents. What was good for a 1989 web isn't what's good for a 2013 web. The design by committee of the W3C has resulted in overcomplicated yet at the same time underpowered designs. The model where an ivory tower mandates new things from the top down rarely works well. How many man years does it take to implement a new browser? It's basically an impossible task unless you have mullions of dollars to spend. A much better model for innovation is one where multiple competing technologies get implemented, and the best one wins organically. The web as a VM would have enabled that. You no longer need a committee that mandates HTML5. It can be implemented as a library, and if people like it they will use it. The W3C has a chicken and egg problem: before it standardizes something, there is not much experience with the features it standardizes, so it's hard to do good designs. On the other hand once you standardize something, you're stuck with it. It can (practically) never die. If you have multiple "HTML5 libraries" then it's not a problem to try something out, and pick the best thing. The best solution can win, and the others can slowly fall out of use.
    - chubot 14y ago
      I agree with the problems, i.e. that web standards and implementations are messy, but not with the solutions. It just seems like a big pipe dream -- "oh I wish we could start over from scratch, rewrite the web, and make things clean". Will never happen. I also don't agree in 2013 that moving say HTML5 to a VM is a good idea. There's nothing stopping anyone from releasing a VM now. You could release a new VM and an application platform. I mean that is essentially what, say, Android is. But even Android clients will always be a subset of all web clients. I think people proposing this mythical VM don't have a clear understanding of what VMs are. They are fairly specific devices. Do you think Dalvik, something like v8, or the JVM, or .NET, can form the basis for all future computing? It's an impossible task for a single VM. Even Microsoft is taking more than 10 years to move a decent amount of their own software to their own VM, on a single platform. All VMs necessitate design decisions that are not right for all devices. Even Sun had diverging VMs for desktop and mobile.
      - 14y ago

by chubot 14y ago

coldtea 14y ago

Your whole premise is that his ideas "weren't successful", whereas I see it more as a case of "Greenspun's tenth rule". That is: tt's not that the VMs lost and the web won. It's the web started from something that wasn't adequate for what we wanted, and after all these years it has been adding all kinds of kludgy, warty and half-baked implementations of VM features. In essence, instead of designing a proper web-as-VM from the start (and slowly evolve it as capabilities of networks and CPUs increase) we started with Lee's document based thing, that we soon found out is barely enough, and we have to have video, sound, app capabilities, process isolation, maybe a common bytecode, networking, real-time, etc. I.e we started from dumb documents we links, when what we wanted was a VM. And now we have twisted the dump document model to sorta kinda look like a VM. How many times have you heard that "the browser is the new OS" and such? So, it's a Greenspun's tenth rule, only instead of Lisp we build an ad-hoc, bug-ridden, clumsy version of Alan Kay's, Doug Engelbart, etc, ideas.

chubot 14y ago
Right, so you are arguing exactly what Kay argued, and what the Adobe guys argued. I am saying that is wrong for the reasons above (i.e., exactly what Tim Berner's Lee argued). Anyway, Kay basically attributed it to ignorance and stupidity on the part of the TBL and the web's designers, which I think is incredibly arrogant, especially since he is wrong. You didn't really address the arguments above -- you're basically saying "it would have been nicer and cleaner if we started with a VM". I can sort of see how it would have been nicer in some theoretical world, just like using PDF/PS instead of CSS would have been nicer (in a way). But I am arguing that it would have never happened. If you started with a VM-based system, there would be technical problems that prevented it from being widely adopted. Actually, Java was pretty much exactly that. It was supposed to be a VM that ran anything, and disenfranchised Microsoft's OS. And we know JS is more popular than Java, despite way more marketing muscle behind Java in the early years. It's already been tried. I'd argue that it wasn't just beyond the abilities of Java's designers, but actually impossible (this is as much social problem as a technical one). You make the vague statement as Kay does that "we should have started with a VM", but it would be impossible to come up with a specific VM design (actual running code) that actually worked as well and as widely as the Web does.
- jules 14y ago
  You're absolutely right that historically, it wouldn't have worked. But the web has since moved beyond plain old static documents. What was good for a 1989 web isn't what's good for a 2013 web. The design by committee of the W3C has resulted in overcomplicated yet at the same time underpowered designs. The model where an ivory tower mandates new things from the top down rarely works well. How many man years does it take to implement a new browser? It's basically an impossible task unless you have mullions of dollars to spend. A much better model for innovation is one where multiple competing technologies get implemented, and the best one wins organically. The web as a VM would have enabled that. You no longer need a committee that mandates HTML5. It can be implemented as a library, and if people like it they will use it. The W3C has a chicken and egg problem: before it standardizes something, there is not much experience with the features it standardizes, so it's hard to do good designs. On the other hand once you standardize something, you're stuck with it. It can (practically) never die. If you have multiple "HTML5 libraries" then it's not a problem to try something out, and pick the best thing. The best solution can win, and the others can slowly fall out of use.
  - chubot 14y ago
    I agree with the problems, i.e. that web standards and implementations are messy, but not with the solutions. It just seems like a big pipe dream -- "oh I wish we could start over from scratch, rewrite the web, and make things clean". Will never happen. I also don't agree in 2013 that moving say HTML5 to a VM is a good idea. There's nothing stopping anyone from releasing a VM now. You could release a new VM and an application platform. I mean that is essentially what, say, Android is. But even Android clients will always be a subset of all web clients. I think people proposing this mythical VM don't have a clear understanding of what VMs are. They are fairly specific devices. Do you think Dalvik, something like v8, or the JVM, or .NET, can form the basis for all future computing? It's an impossible task for a single VM. Even Microsoft is taking more than 10 years to move a decent amount of their own software to their own VM, on a single platform. All VMs necessitate design decisions that are not right for all devices. Even Sun had diverging VMs for desktop and mobile.
    - 14y ago