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It's pretty telling that everyone wants to be the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, but very few want to be the next Niklaus Wirth, Alan Kay or Ga

It's pretty telling that everyone wants to be the next Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, but very few want to be the next Niklaus Wirth, Alan Kay or Gary Kildall. Far fewer are interested in computing so much as a gold rush that happens to use computing as its backdrop, which is overwhelmingly heading towards web-based media companies.

walterbell 11y ago
> gold rush that happens to use computing as its backdrop, which is overwhelmingly heading towards web-based media companies. Yet Gates' and Jobs' gold came from edge clients, not web media. Clients have never been more powerful, why is there no modern gold rush in client software? Is it merely that SaaS/hosted software does not suffer from piracy?
- virmundi 11y ago
  I think is part of it. It's hard to pirate something you can't get a copy of. Other things is that the web is more universal. Say I have a great client app. It works perfectly on a client Windows machine. If I want to tap the larger market I have to have an OS X version, an Android version, iOS (depending if I didn't target both when doing the OS X version), and a Linux version. To keep all of these people happy, the versions should be pretty much the same. That's hard to do with client software on multiple targets. The web targets the lowest common denominator: browsers. Fortunately as those go, the VM that is the browser is pretty powerful. Sure I might not be in my preferred language, but I can get things done. If done right, powers are added as the device becomes more capable my leveraging existing frameworks like Bootstrap, etc.
  - boomzilla 11y ago
    I think there are two other factors as why web apps are dominating client apps. The first is distribution cost. Even with AppStore and Android market, it's still very hard to get your app to the users. People browse to hundreds of different websites everyday, but very few try out tens of apps in their phone. The second factor is that the web is intrinsically a lot more connected. One web page/app can easily link to another with, doh, a link. The linking/back button semantics are well understood by all the users.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  "not suffer from piracy" really means "has more power to lock in and control people", and yes, that's a major factor.
jeswin 11y ago
It's mostly social conditioning. Gates and Jobs are pop-stars of technology. A few hundred years into the future, we're more likely to see Charles Babbage and Alan Turing in text books than Gates and Jobs. Those text books are unlikely to be read by humans in the same physical form we exist today (unless something catastrophic happens), and the class of intelligent beings dominating that period will trace their lineage directly to inventors and scientists than businessmen.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  It's often the people who popularize ideas that are remembered for them (however unjustly), so I wouldn't care to predict who will turn out to be important to folks hundreds of years hence. If it's like today, there'll probably be popular figureheads and a bunch of academics trying to belittle them in favor of a pet forerunner, just as we can argue about whether, say, Alan Kay or Douglas Englebart should be the person people bring up to claim Apple didn't invent the GUI, or Smalltalk or Simula should be worshipped (or ridiculed) as the first OO language. Whom should we remember: Gödel, Turing, or Cohen? http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec3.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec3.html
  - DougMerritt 11y ago
    > It's often the people who popularize ideas that are remembered for them Unfair, that is not an answer to what he actually said: > Those text books are unlikely to be read by humans in the same physical form we exist today You're talking humans, he is not.
    - Tloewald 11y ago
      How does it matter whether it's humans or uploaded humans or pure AIs that we're talking about. You think that AIs will necessarily be driven by pure logic and all agree on the fundamental root of any given idea? I love how computer scientists seem to decide they've "solved" AI because neural nets can sorta- kinda- do something that we do unconsciously (like see) and blithely assume that we just need a bigger net to get "thinking". When have we ever built something more complex than, say, a bunch of rocks piled on each other, without understanding its basic workings?

walterbell 11y ago

> gold rush that happens to use computing as its backdrop, which is overwhelmingly heading towards web-based media companies. Yet Gates' and Jobs' gold came from edge clients, not web media. Clients have never been more powerful, why is there no modern gold rush in client software? Is it merely that SaaS/hosted software does not suffer from piracy?

virmundi 11y ago
I think is part of it. It's hard to pirate something you can't get a copy of. Other things is that the web is more universal. Say I have a great client app. It works perfectly on a client Windows machine. If I want to tap the larger market I have to have an OS X version, an Android version, iOS (depending if I didn't target both when doing the OS X version), and a Linux version. To keep all of these people happy, the versions should be pretty much the same. That's hard to do with client software on multiple targets. The web targets the lowest common denominator: browsers. Fortunately as those go, the VM that is the browser is pretty powerful. Sure I might not be in my preferred language, but I can get things done. If done right, powers are added as the device becomes more capable my leveraging existing frameworks like Bootstrap, etc.
- boomzilla 11y ago
  I think there are two other factors as why web apps are dominating client apps. The first is distribution cost. Even with AppStore and Android market, it's still very hard to get your app to the users. People browse to hundreds of different websites everyday, but very few try out tens of apps in their phone. The second factor is that the web is intrinsically a lot more connected. One web page/app can easily link to another with, doh, a link. The linking/back button semantics are well understood by all the users.
quadrangle 11y ago
"not suffer from piracy" really means "has more power to lock in and control people", and yes, that's a major factor.

jeswin 11y ago

It's mostly social conditioning. Gates and Jobs are pop-stars of technology. A few hundred years into the future, we're more likely to see Charles Babbage and Alan Turing in text books than Gates and Jobs. Those text books are unlikely to be read by humans in the same physical form we exist today (unless something catastrophic happens), and the class of intelligent beings dominating that period will trace their lineage directly to inventors and scientists than businessmen.

Tloewald 11y ago
It's often the people who popularize ideas that are remembered for them (however unjustly), so I wouldn't care to predict who will turn out to be important to folks hundreds of years hence. If it's like today, there'll probably be popular figureheads and a bunch of academics trying to belittle them in favor of a pet forerunner, just as we can argue about whether, say, Alan Kay or Douglas Englebart should be the person people bring up to claim Apple didn't invent the GUI, or Smalltalk or Simula should be worshipped (or ridiculed) as the first OO language. Whom should we remember: Gödel, Turing, or Cohen? http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec3.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec3.html
- DougMerritt 11y ago
  > It's often the people who popularize ideas that are remembered for them Unfair, that is not an answer to what he actually said: > Those text books are unlikely to be read by humans in the same physical form we exist today You're talking humans, he is not.
  - Tloewald 11y ago
    How does it matter whether it's humans or uploaded humans or pure AIs that we're talking about. You think that AIs will necessarily be driven by pure logic and all agree on the fundamental root of any given idea? I love how computer scientists seem to decide they've "solved" AI because neural nets can sorta- kinda- do something that we do unconsciously (like see) and blithely assume that we just need a bigger net to get "thinking". When have we ever built something more complex than, say, a bunch of rocks piled on each other, without understanding its basic workings?