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> 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 h

by 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.

jasode 11y ago
>The world has not moved on. To clarify, I'm not saying "moved on" as an objective measure of superior technical progress. The "moved on" is referencing a descriptive (not prescriptive) state of affairs with how the world now defines "the web". The existence of sliding around map tiles in maps.google.com, syncing folders in Dropbox, etc is evidence that the world does not think of "web" the way Tim Berners-Lee thought of hyperlinked documents in 1993.
- weland 11y ago
  Yes, but whatever that is should not be called "web", just like we call "cars"... "cars", not "carriages", though they may look like it. "The web" is defined by a set of traits (hyperlinks etc.). When whatever we're doing stops having those traits, it's no longer the web. Continuing to call it "the web" is not some form of philosophical awareness, it's just ignorance.
  - jasode 11y ago
    But "computer" used to mean a "person who calculates" and not a "machine that calculates". All of us call modern day devices with CPUs a "computer" even though it lost the essence of "human". The usage of words evolve. I 100% agree that ""The web" is defined by a set of traits (hyperlinks etc.)". I'm also adding that "web" also now includes expanded perceptions by everyone else beyond "hyperlinks+http" and that enlarged perception is unavoidable. We could ask the world at large to *not" call it "web" but that's like asking us to quit calling "machine calculator" a "computer". Sometimes we invent a new word, but many times we don't. Yes, a person uses a "web" browser to read a "document" on New York Times. But they can also use that same browser to play a Sudoku game that's not a document at all. To the layman, both actions are "surfing the web".
    - weland 11y ago
      By the time electronic computers became widespread, very few non-electronic computers remained -- and few of them were human. The term was easy to repurpose. But the World Wide Web is very much here and very present. > To the layman, both actions are "surfing the web". To the layman, a server and a computer are the same thing, and yet calling Apache a computer is incorrect.
      - jasode 11y ago
        >The term was easy to repurpose. But the World Wide Web is very much here and very present. And educated programmers call various text styles, "fonts" even though technically, a font is actually a specific size, and specific weight of a "typeface". The "font" is a subset of "typeface". Even though typefaces still exist, almost everyone uses the word "font." And programmers will also call SQL (without CTE) a "programming language" even though it's not Turing Complete. Even binary black-&-white-thinking programmers will exercise a lot of leeway with how words are used. I want to emphasize that this all started with my response to the "web is best as a document platform." I think most of us can substitute "web" to say "http+html is best as a document platform." That's what TBL meant. Today... if we have Dropbox/GoogleMaps/Sudoku/etc, with millions of users as reality, what does "web" in "web app" really mean? The "http+html" has become a universal transport mechanism (with some apps even tunneling through http to do interesting things.). As the years progress, there are more examples of http becoming a "dumb and dumber" generic transport pipe for things that are not documents. Let's say a startup company wants to create a website to crowdsource music promotions. They want the service to offer programmable access so people can write open source clients. The presentation slide / whitepaper will not use the phrase "internet api". Instead it will use "web api". If every corporate firewall and user' homes computers with Microsoft Firewall had wide open UDP ports, it's possible for the phrase "internet api" to have more currency than "web api". But that's not how history has played out.

by weland 11y ago

jasode 11y ago

>The world has not moved on. To clarify, I'm not saying "moved on" as an objective measure of superior technical progress. The "moved on" is referencing a descriptive (not prescriptive) state of affairs with how the world now defines "the web". The existence of sliding around map tiles in maps.google.com, syncing folders in Dropbox, etc is evidence that the world does not think of "web" the way Tim Berners-Lee thought of hyperlinked documents in 1993.

weland 11y ago
Yes, but whatever that is should not be called "web", just like we call "cars"... "cars", not "carriages", though they may look like it. "The web" is defined by a set of traits (hyperlinks etc.). When whatever we're doing stops having those traits, it's no longer the web. Continuing to call it "the web" is not some form of philosophical awareness, it's just ignorance.
- jasode 11y ago
  But "computer" used to mean a "person who calculates" and not a "machine that calculates". All of us call modern day devices with CPUs a "computer" even though it lost the essence of "human". The usage of words evolve. I 100% agree that ""The web" is defined by a set of traits (hyperlinks etc.)". I'm also adding that "web" also now includes expanded perceptions by everyone else beyond "hyperlinks+http" and that enlarged perception is unavoidable. We could ask the world at large to *not" call it "web" but that's like asking us to quit calling "machine calculator" a "computer". Sometimes we invent a new word, but many times we don't. Yes, a person uses a "web" browser to read a "document" on New York Times. But they can also use that same browser to play a Sudoku game that's not a document at all. To the layman, both actions are "surfing the web".
  - weland 11y ago
    By the time electronic computers became widespread, very few non-electronic computers remained -- and few of them were human. The term was easy to repurpose. But the World Wide Web is very much here and very present. > To the layman, both actions are "surfing the web". To the layman, a server and a computer are the same thing, and yet calling Apache a computer is incorrect.
    - jasode 11y ago
      >The term was easy to repurpose. But the World Wide Web is very much here and very present. And educated programmers call various text styles, "fonts" even though technically, a font is actually a specific size, and specific weight of a "typeface". The "font" is a subset of "typeface". Even though typefaces still exist, almost everyone uses the word "font." And programmers will also call SQL (without CTE) a "programming language" even though it's not Turing Complete. Even binary black-&-white-thinking programmers will exercise a lot of leeway with how words are used. I want to emphasize that this all started with my response to the "web is best as a document platform." I think most of us can substitute "web" to say "http+html is best as a document platform." That's what TBL meant. Today... if we have Dropbox/GoogleMaps/Sudoku/etc, with millions of users as reality, what does "web" in "web app" really mean? The "http+html" has become a universal transport mechanism (with some apps even tunneling through http to do interesting things.). As the years progress, there are more examples of http becoming a "dumb and dumber" generic transport pipe for things that are not documents. Let's say a startup company wants to create a website to crowdsource music promotions. They want the service to offer programmable access so people can write open source clients. The presentation slide / whitepaper will not use the phrase "internet api". Instead it will use "web api". If every corporate firewall and user' homes computers with Microsoft Firewall had wide open UDP ports, it's possible for the phrase "internet api" to have more currency than "web api". But that's not how history has played out.