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>The web works best as a document platform. This is only true if you constrain the "web" to mean the Tim Berners-Lee document-centric HTML and its http hyperli

by jasode 11y ago

>The web works best as a document platform. This is only true if you constrain the "web" to mean the Tim Berners-Lee document-centric HTML and its http hyperlinks. The "web" also means the whole internet stack, TCPIP, DNS routing, etc. In that case, the web is a foundational tool for anything that connects people or Internet Of Things. To say the "web works best as a document platform" is like saying "the electricity grid works best as a lightbulb platform." We've gotten past the historical motivations of a interconnected electricity and have done other things with it. Do some "native" apps do nothing more than what a 100% static HTML could do? Yes, abuse of a Javascript widget framework does happen. However, the bad examples don't mean the "web" should be held back by the original visions of HTML or Hypercard. The Google maps app is not traditional HTML+CSS. EDIT: The replies misunderstand my position. I'm not trying to redefine the traditional technical meaning of "web" and make you like it. I'm attempting to explain that "the web" has evolved and what it now means to the world out there. (E.g. see non-document usages like Dropbox, google maps, online Sudoku games, etc.)

rimantas 11y ago
No, the web means web. Internet means internet.
- jasode 11y ago
  Those were the historical and technical divisions. Because http & https is ubiquitous and they have a defacto pass through most firewalls, the modern "web" is the "internet" as far as application interfaces are concerned. The idea of a pure separation of concepts such that http is "documents" and some other protocol on some other port is "apps" is not going to happen. All those IT departments' security teams and Cisco admins at Fortune 1000 companies are not going to adjust their firewall rules to open new ports and protocols. The "http port 80" has become the "internet" on top of the old definition of "internet". It's not ideal but that's where we are today.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    This is sadly true, but I think collapsing the distinction between "internet" and "web" is annoying and needlessly confusing. Maybe things will be different in the IPv6 world.
  - the8472 11y ago
    If you really need to get across firewalls UDP sockets provide much better functionality than HTTP.
  - Dewie3 11y ago
    I don't see how willfully blending these two things is helpful for anyone. In this context, it can be safe to assume that everyone knows this technical distinction (even for those of us who are not web programmers). In other contexts with less computer-technical people, I don't think being annoying and correcting every "technically incorrect" mention of "The Internet" when they mean The Web is helpful. But I think it is helpful to remind them of the distinction if you are actually talking about the subject (as opposed to just saying things like "look at your internet, I just sent you a facebook message"). Computers are magical enough as it is; it doesn't help anyone to make it even more so when they are even slightly interested in discussing some part of computing or IT. Explaining that The Internet is the infrastructure and the Web is just one the things that uses this infrastructure seems simple enough to grasp, and isn't an oversimplification at all. People understand that the electricity grid has to exist in order for them to make toast.
  - stcredzero 11y ago
    I think we need another rule of thumb here: All standards will be modified by public cluelessness, and exist as uglier de facto distortions of themselves.
- coldtea 11y ago
  So, is a HTTP (Hypertext Transfer...) REST API used by a native mobile app "web" or not? How about a native app based on a "web view" that uses HTML, CSS, JS, etc. (the whole W3C stack) and doesn't even talk to HTTP/S but uses some other port and transport mechanism?
pjmlp 11y ago
> ... TCPIP, DNS routing.. Also known as Ethernet protocols, nothing to do with "The Web".
- jasode 11y ago
  I thought I was clear that I'm not using the traditional definition of "web" but to explain what "the web" has become. It's about the evolution of how society sees the web and not about what its original purpose is. Dropbox uses html and http. Drew Houston and his team are not going to submit an RFC so that the internet has a new protocol and port "dropbox://myaddressoffiles:8675". No, Dropbox the application will just use "http://" http://". It's because they did not pursue conceptual purity of having "dropbox://" that allowed everyone inside and outside of corporate networks to use the service and share files. That is "the web" we have today and in that scenario, the non-technical use of "web" includes the underlying internet stack to make web apps possible. What's the alternative? Tell millions of Dropbox users that such a service is outlawed because "the web is best as a document platform?"
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Users don't care about networking protocols as long as the Dropbox application is able to synchronize their documents.
    - jasode 11y ago
      Exactly! The "web" as in Tim Berners-Lee(TBL) "world wide web" is http+html which is "documents". Saying TBL-web is "best as a document platform" makes perfect sense. It was defined that way therefore, use it that way. It's tautology. Back in 1993, if we want to say "X is best though of as a network app platform" we'd have to use the word "internet" instead of "web" for "X" to be conceptually pure and technically correct (the best kind of correct.). But now we have things like Dropbox (and thousands of other "web apps"). Dropbox runs on "http". Dropbox "syncs". Syncing is an app. Dropbox is an app. Dropbox runs on http. Http is "the web". Apps run on the web. The web is platform for apps. That's the reality of where we are today.
weland 11y ago
> The car works best as a transportation device. This is only true if you constrain the "car" to mean the Henry Ford, transport-centric engine-and-chassis. The "car" also means the whole transportation stack: pavement, asphalt, road signaling, etc. In that case, the car is a foundation tool for anything that transports people or inanimate objects. To say the "car works best as a transportation device" is like saying "the electricity grid works best as a lightbulb platform." We've gotten past the historical motivations of a horseless carriage and have done other things with it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mreiland 11y ago
  lmao, stop beating architecture astronauts at their own game!
- jasode 11y ago
  I'm not saying I like for "the web" to be interchangeable with "the internet". Instead, I'm pointing out that the world out there without permission from any savvy HN readers has moved on. The "web" has become the "internet" for both documents and applications. It's descriptive, not prescriptive. (See my other replies to illustrate how usage of http has evolved to coexist with corporate firewalls that lock down ports.)
  - weland 11y ago
    > Instead, I'm pointing out that the world out there without permission from any savvy HN readers has moved on. The world has not moved on. Part of the world has dug itself into a technological hole. Most of the people who work in it have never seen what's outside it, so they think the solution to all their problems is to keep digging. Edit: crap, I sounded so snarky and aggressive. Sorry about that. It's not something personal -- I obviously got the point that you don't think everything about that is a good idea. The point I'm trying to make is that not ever technological move is necessarily a "good" evolution. Every narrow street in technology was once thought to be a superhighway that everyone flocked to. I remember everyone being so bloody enthusiastic about this whole Web 2.0 thing back then (and I was one of them). Then all this data crumbled as people paid less and less attention to information structure and semantics and focused on the flashy stuff. Then it turned out a lot of problems were intractable if you clung tightly to JS, CSS and the web browser. Yet for some reason, people thought those problems happen just because we don't cling tightly enough to JS, CSS and web browsers. Oh -- and twenty years after operating systems that aren't full of memory leaks, security problems (eh...) and performance clunks became reasonably accessible to people everywhere, people are trying to promote ditching those for web browsers. Which, I would estimate, will need another twenty years or so to stop having memory leaks, dubious security and privacy practices, and embarrassing performance clunks.
Dewie3 11y ago
> The "web" also means the whole internet stack, TCPIP, DNS routing, etc. I'm pretty sure there are different protocols for email, torrent, etc. And I don't see how that is a bad thing, or why The Web has to be a frontend to everything that comes from The Internet (desktop email application for instance).
rpcope1 11y ago
>The "web" also means the whole internet stack, TCPIP, DNS routing, etc. In that case, the web is a foundational tool for anything that connects people or Internet Of Things. To say the "web works best as a document platform" is like saying "the electricity grid works best as a lightbulb platform." We've gotten past the historical motivations of a interconnected electricity and have done other things with it. No, absolutely not. The "web" refers only to what you mentioned above. It's only a recent bastardization that we started referring to the "Internet" as the "web", because of the dominant nature of HTTP. You're right though that the Internet is important, but the GP's point stands that HTTP was really only intended as a document protocol (Hypertext, yeah?) and it has seems a somewhat strange perversion that we've bent it to doing so much more. Someone not in the know may call the transmission in a car "an engine", or call the differential a transmission. Just because someone outside of the industry does silly things like that doesn't mean all of a sudden obfuscate the usefulness of terminology at all, as it really helps no one.

by jasode 11y ago

rimantas 11y ago

No, the web means web. Internet means internet.

jasode 11y ago
Those were the historical and technical divisions. Because http & https is ubiquitous and they have a defacto pass through most firewalls, the modern "web" is the "internet" as far as application interfaces are concerned. The idea of a pure separation of concepts such that http is "documents" and some other protocol on some other port is "apps" is not going to happen. All those IT departments' security teams and Cisco admins at Fortune 1000 companies are not going to adjust their firewall rules to open new ports and protocols. The "http port 80" has become the "internet" on top of the old definition of "internet". It's not ideal but that's where we are today.
- pjc50 11y ago
  This is sadly true, but I think collapsing the distinction between "internet" and "web" is annoying and needlessly confusing. Maybe things will be different in the IPv6 world.
- the8472 11y ago
  If you really need to get across firewalls UDP sockets provide much better functionality than HTTP.
- Dewie3 11y ago
  I don't see how willfully blending these two things is helpful for anyone. In this context, it can be safe to assume that everyone knows this technical distinction (even for those of us who are not web programmers). In other contexts with less computer-technical people, I don't think being annoying and correcting every "technically incorrect" mention of "The Internet" when they mean The Web is helpful. But I think it is helpful to remind them of the distinction if you are actually talking about the subject (as opposed to just saying things like "look at your internet, I just sent you a facebook message"). Computers are magical enough as it is; it doesn't help anyone to make it even more so when they are even slightly interested in discussing some part of computing or IT. Explaining that The Internet is the infrastructure and the Web is just one the things that uses this infrastructure seems simple enough to grasp, and isn't an oversimplification at all. People understand that the electricity grid has to exist in order for them to make toast.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  I think we need another rule of thumb here: All standards will be modified by public cluelessness, and exist as uglier de facto distortions of themselves.
coldtea 11y ago
So, is a HTTP (Hypertext Transfer...) REST API used by a native mobile app "web" or not? How about a native app based on a "web view" that uses HTML, CSS, JS, etc. (the whole W3C stack) and doesn't even talk to HTTP/S but uses some other port and transport mechanism?

pjmlp 11y ago

> ... TCPIP, DNS routing.. Also known as Ethernet protocols, nothing to do with "The Web".

jasode 11y ago
I thought I was clear that I'm not using the traditional definition of "web" but to explain what "the web" has become. It's about the evolution of how society sees the web and not about what its original purpose is. Dropbox uses html and http. Drew Houston and his team are not going to submit an RFC so that the internet has a new protocol and port "dropbox://myaddressoffiles:8675". No, Dropbox the application will just use "http://" http://". It's because they did not pursue conceptual purity of having "dropbox://" that allowed everyone inside and outside of corporate networks to use the service and share files. That is "the web" we have today and in that scenario, the non-technical use of "web" includes the underlying internet stack to make web apps possible. What's the alternative? Tell millions of Dropbox users that such a service is outlawed because "the web is best as a document platform?"
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Users don't care about networking protocols as long as the Dropbox application is able to synchronize their documents.
  - jasode 11y ago
    Exactly! The "web" as in Tim Berners-Lee(TBL) "world wide web" is http+html which is "documents". Saying TBL-web is "best as a document platform" makes perfect sense. It was defined that way therefore, use it that way. It's tautology. Back in 1993, if we want to say "X is best though of as a network app platform" we'd have to use the word "internet" instead of "web" for "X" to be conceptually pure and technically correct (the best kind of correct.). But now we have things like Dropbox (and thousands of other "web apps"). Dropbox runs on "http". Dropbox "syncs". Syncing is an app. Dropbox is an app. Dropbox runs on http. Http is "the web". Apps run on the web. The web is platform for apps. That's the reality of where we are today.

weland 11y ago

> The car works best as a transportation device. This is only true if you constrain the "car" to mean the Henry Ford, transport-centric engine-and-chassis. The "car" also means the whole transportation stack: pavement, asphalt, road signaling, etc. In that case, the car is a foundation tool for anything that transports people or inanimate objects. To say the "car works best as a transportation device" is like saying "the electricity grid works best as a lightbulb platform." We've gotten past the historical motivations of a horseless carriage and have done other things with it.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mreiland 11y ago
lmao, stop beating architecture astronauts at their own game!
jasode 11y ago
I'm not saying I like for "the web" to be interchangeable with "the internet". Instead, I'm pointing out that the world out there without permission from any savvy HN readers has moved on. The "web" has become the "internet" for both documents and applications. It's descriptive, not prescriptive. (See my other replies to illustrate how usage of http has evolved to coexist with corporate firewalls that lock down ports.)
- weland 11y ago
  > Instead, I'm pointing out that the world out there without permission from any savvy HN readers has moved on. The world has not moved on. Part of the world has dug itself into a technological hole. Most of the people who work in it have never seen what's outside it, so they think the solution to all their problems is to keep digging. Edit: crap, I sounded so snarky and aggressive. Sorry about that. It's not something personal -- I obviously got the point that you don't think everything about that is a good idea. The point I'm trying to make is that not ever technological move is necessarily a "good" evolution. Every narrow street in technology was once thought to be a superhighway that everyone flocked to. I remember everyone being so bloody enthusiastic about this whole Web 2.0 thing back then (and I was one of them). Then all this data crumbled as people paid less and less attention to information structure and semantics and focused on the flashy stuff. Then it turned out a lot of problems were intractable if you clung tightly to JS, CSS and the web browser. Yet for some reason, people thought those problems happen just because we don't cling tightly enough to JS, CSS and web browsers. Oh -- and twenty years after operating systems that aren't full of memory leaks, security problems (eh...) and performance clunks became reasonably accessible to people everywhere, people are trying to promote ditching those for web browsers. Which, I would estimate, will need another twenty years or so to stop having memory leaks, dubious security and privacy practices, and embarrassing performance clunks.

Dewie3 11y ago

> The "web" also means the whole internet stack, TCPIP, DNS routing, etc. I'm pretty sure there are different protocols for email, torrent, etc. And I don't see how that is a bad thing, or why The Web has to be a frontend to everything that comes from The Internet (desktop email application for instance).

rpcope1 11y ago

>The "web" also means the whole internet stack, TCPIP, DNS routing, etc. In that case, the web is a foundational tool for anything that connects people or Internet Of Things. To say the "web works best as a document platform" is like saying "the electricity grid works best as a lightbulb platform." We've gotten past the historical motivations of a interconnected electricity and have done other things with it. No, absolutely not. The "web" refers only to what you mentioned above. It's only a recent bastardization that we started referring to the "Internet" as the "web", because of the dominant nature of HTTP. You're right though that the Internet is important, but the GP's point stands that HTTP was really only intended as a document protocol (Hypertext, yeah?) and it has seems a somewhat strange perversion that we've bent it to doing so much more. Someone not in the know may call the transmission in a car "an engine", or call the differential a transmission. Just because someone outside of the industry does silly things like that doesn't mean all of a sudden obfuscate the usefulness of terminology at all, as it really helps no one.