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They're more popular when connected to a network, not the Web specifically. I know many more people use Skype for voice and video instead of Google Talk. Many p

by omouse 17y ago

They're more popular when connected to a network, not the Web specifically. I know many more people use Skype for voice and video instead of Google Talk. Many people still download an MSN IM client and used web-based clients only when necessary (like at a school computer or if the desktop client is messed up). software development only qualifies if you don't think there's going to be a sea-change in collaborative development and application deployment which will make people give up their favorite editors. A few IDEs are already integrated with collaborative tools, and I'm sure someone could hack up some Emacs Lisp or VIM-script to add collaborative features to them. The network, the Internet itself, is more important than any particular subset of it such as the Web/HTTP or SMTP.

tptacek 17y ago
I get that you can collaborate outside of a web browser, but it's so much easier to build collaborative tools that run in a browser that I think that's where the action's going to be. Compare SubEthaEdit to every online document editor.
- omouse 17y ago
  Erm, it's not easier. The level of difficult is roughly the same. You're dealing with the same issues: user interface, network latency, etc.
  - dagw 17y ago
    I wrote my first non-trivial web app a while ago and my first reaction was "wow this is so much easier". Then I started getting into the finer details of actually getting useful performance out of the app with lots of concurrent users and faced all kinds of latency and bandwidth problems, plus problems with javascript behaving differently on different browsers. No longer so much easier. While web apps seemed easier to start with and got me up and running a lot quicker than if I'd written a desktop app, I soon ran into the feeling that was programming on top of a bunch of different black boxes non of them actually designed to do what I wanted to do with them.

by omouse 17y ago

tptacek 17y ago

I get that you can collaborate outside of a web browser, but it's so much easier to build collaborative tools that run in a browser that I think that's where the action's going to be. Compare SubEthaEdit to every online document editor.

omouse 17y ago
Erm, it's not easier. The level of difficult is roughly the same. You're dealing with the same issues: user interface, network latency, etc.
- dagw 17y ago
  I wrote my first non-trivial web app a while ago and my first reaction was "wow this is so much easier". Then I started getting into the finer details of actually getting useful performance out of the app with lots of concurrent users and faced all kinds of latency and bandwidth problems, plus problems with javascript behaving differently on different browsers. No longer so much easier. While web apps seemed easier to start with and got me up and running a lot quicker than if I'd written a desktop app, I soon ran into the feeling that was programming on top of a bunch of different black boxes non of them actually designed to do what I wanted to do with them.