Just realized, web apps mean....



  • PC acts like a terminal, downloads lightweight GUI, sends commands to server, which shares time between terminals to perform business operations.

    We're moving backwards!!!

    That's not considering "the cloud" which under one interpretation is time-sharing for the apps server itself.

    Ah.... now I understand why our app interfaces have gotten so inefficient. All this power, idly doing nothing!!!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    With great power comes great IDLE_WAIT


  • FoxDev

    mainframecloud

    That's web apps in a nutshell 😄


  • kills Dumbledore

    Phones are getting bigger. In a few years they'll be the size of a room


  • BINNED

    @xaade said:

    We're moving backwards!!!

    For what it's worth, the app interfaces look better now even if they don't run any faster.


  • Banned

    @antiquarian said:

    the app interfaces look better

    Only on mobile.



  • Actually, we're done moving backwards. Now we're retracing our steps from the 1980's and building application platforms from scratch inside web browsers. In JavaScript. On top of the still-broken DOM. Without multi-threading. Without a strong concept of multi-window applications. With the ability for every teenager on earth to tweak internal app state by pressing F12.



  • @Jaime said:

    Actually, we're done moving backwards. Now we're retracing our steps from the 1980's and building application platforms from scratch inside web browsers. In JavaScript. On top of the still-broken DOM. Without multi-threading. Without a strong concept of multi-window applications. With the ability for every teenager on earth to tweak internal app state by pressing F12.

    All because some [s]draconian[/s]idiotic network admins want to seal off every port in their firewall they possibly can, and refuse to budge no matter how many "I need XYZ app for ABC!" mails they get -- they'd close port 80 (and 443, too) if not for the outrage it'd cause, but practically no other port is immune to them.



  • They'll BE the room, we'll all live inside our phones. What an age we (will) live in.



  • Because..... browsers weren't made for business applications?

    The only reason we are doing it is because of portability, no install, and universal access.

    All things that stuff like Java was supposed to give us.

    If unix had real support for .NET, we'd have that option too. But, just to punch that in the gut, microsoft put out silverlight, then abandoned that too.



  • The future of phones:



  • What do you mean future.

    That's right now!

    Take any videophone software, try to avoid ads.

    Now take into account people text people right next to them.


  • Java Dev

    @xaade said:

    PC acts like a terminal, downloads lightweight GUI, sends commands to server, which shares time between terminals to perform business operations.

    We're moving backwards!!!

    Yes. This has been common knowledge for at least a decade.



  • @xaade said:

    Because..... browsers weren't made for business applications?

    Tell that to every business application vendor whose current version of software is web based (which is 90% of them), or every C-level IT manager that wants every dev team to make everything web based.
    @xaade said:
    The only reason we are doing it is because of portability, no install, and universal access.

    That reason has failed. Portability across browsers is just as hard as portability across operating systems. Also, the "installation problem" isn't that big of a problem.

    Universal access is an independent issue and native mobile apps prove that universal access isn't incompatible with non-web apps.
    @xaade said:

    All things that stuff like Java was supposed to give us.

    Java did give us those things 19 years ago. Since then we've discovered that making a fat apps run everywhere is a bad idea. Java did it great, we just realized that we didn't want it after we tried it. The better idea is to put most of the logic in a middle tier and deploy a simple front end. Modern web apps are "giving it another go" hoping the answer is different this time.


  • Considered Harmful

    Obligatory Rosie O'Donnell:



  • That sounds clever until you realize that most of what an install does has nothing to do with running the program. For example, every photo sharing app will add a hook so the camera app can send a photo directly to cloud storage.



  • What a weird time you would have with Citrix and light workstations (or whatever they were called).



  • But you can accomplish thin apps in pc native apps too. How is that different from mobile apps?
    Don't get me wrong, I am not anti web app.

    For me, it is mainly dealing with a loss of richness and the added layers needed to accomplish the same things. For example, a data grid seems to be a big problem for the web. We've had silverlight, flash, and active x, all defeating the purpose of thin apps, just to accomplish a basic control.
    Nothing compares to excel.
    And don't even get me started on sap.

    There are heavy apps that need to be heavy. I don't see a non-subscription based web-based Photoshop working.



  • Once again... everyone agrees with you... we have taken many huge steps backwards.

    One correction I would make is that Silverlight, Flash, and ActiveX weren't innocent attempts to enhance the richness of the web. They were three different "embrace, extend, and extinguish" campaigns intended to divert web development to their proprietary technology.

    I am "anti web app" only in that I will recommend a web app when it makes sense rather than by default.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @xaade said:

    We're moving backwards!!!

    No, we're spinning on the spot. Wait ten years or so and watch as the same old ideas get recycled.



  • Pretty sure we went over Citrix here once before, but goddamn Citrix is a blight. I absolutely love the overhead it adds to every single thing and inability to interface with our local scanners.

    'Computing Power is so cheap now! Every workstation can do whatever it needs quickly, and locally! How do we leverage this?'
    'Centralise everything to run on a single overworked server somewhere on the other side of the country while all the local processing power sits idle, and then wonder why our single point of failure keeps failing'



  • @Jaime said:

    With the ability for every teenager on earth to tweak internal app state by pressing F12.

    Which is a good thing, unless you're an idiot who depends on this state to stay right server-side.

    Actually, for all the performance drawbacks, I'd say that alone makes them worth it.

    @xaade said:

    For example, a data grid seems to be a big problem for the web

    I don't think it technically is. The real problem for the web is that lingering belief that everything needs to be shiny and flashy and use at least ten frameworks, twenty libraries and a million design patterns.

    @xaade said:

    I don't see a non-subscription based web-based Photoshop working.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    The real problem for the web is that lingering belief that everything needs to be shiny and flashy and use at least ten frameworks, twenty libraries and a million design patterns.

    So… junior programmers? Seems reasonable to me.


  • Banned

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    The realpartially relevant problem for the webwhole industry is that lingering belief that everything needs to be shiny and flashy and use at least ten frameworks, twenty libraries and a million design patterns.

    FTFY. The real problem of the web is that DOM is not very good tool for laying out application interface, as opposed to walls of text the webpages originally were.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Gaska said:

    The real problem of the web is that DOM is not very good tool for laying out application interface, as opposed to walls of text the webpages originally were.

    That's very true. The HTML5 <canvas> is nicer, only a few things with it are completely wrong-headed. Alas, changing the colour that you're drawing with is one of them… :wtf:



  • @Gaska said:

    The real problem of the web is that DOM is not very good tool for laying out application interface, as opposed to walls of text the webpages originally were.

    We've had Flash for complex GUI and see how that went. Heavy, complex and non-standard.

    Also, it's not a fault of the DOM since we are describing complex GUI everyday in DOM like structures in iOS and Android. The problem is historic, and is basing one of the most important aspects of human history in a platform not designed to be used as it's done this days. Every single aspect of modern web applications is a hack on top of HTML: JavaScript, AJAX, forms, canvas. Hell, we have hacks (jQuery) for the hacks and hacks for future hacks (modernizer)

    Can something be done? I don't think so. Adobe, MS, Sun and more have tried and failed.


  • Banned

    @Eldelshell said:

    We've had Flash for complex GUI and see how that went. Heavy, complex and non-standard.

    None of this is inherent problem with browser plugins.

    @Eldelshell said:

    DOM like structures

    This. Read it over and over again until you understand how it's different from DOM.

    @Eldelshell said:

    The problem is historic

    As is every other problem in IT history. But we've (mostly) solved IPv4 exhaustion problem. We've (mostly) solved text encoding problem. We've (mostly) solved dependency hell problem. Why can't we at least partially fix the web problem?

    And no, hacks aren't fixes.

    @Eldelshell said:

    Can something be done? I don't think so. Adobe, MS, Sun and more have tried and failed.

    None of them tried to fully replace HTML ecosystem in whole AFAIK. And that's what has to be done.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Gaska said:

    None of them tried to fully replace HTML ecosystem in whole AFAIK. And that's what has to be done.

    Either you've got a plan for doing it incrementally, or you'll be going nowhere with that. The sheer quantity of content in HTML is enough that big-bang approaches aren't going to work.


  • Banned

    @dkf said:

    Either you've got a plan for doing it incrementally, or you'll be going nowhere with that. The sheer quantity of content in HTML is enough that big-bang approaches aren't going to work.

    What about putting a compatibility layer that will let HTML run on the new technology? Something like emulator. It wouldn't be much different from what people are doing nowadays, except the other way around - instead of building new cool stuff on top of old shitty stuff, let's make the old shitty stuff work on top of new cool stuff - and eventually move to the new cool stuff only.


  • Java Dev

    @Gaska said:

    What about putting a compatibility layer that will let HTML run on the new technology? Something like emulator. It wouldn't be much different from what people are doing nowadays, except the other way around - instead of building new cool stuff on top of old shitty stuff, let's make the old shitty stuff work on top of new cool stuff - and eventually move to the new cool stuff only.

    Like every single smartphone platform ever?


  • Banned

    @PleegWat said:

    Like every single smartphone platform ever?

    Yes, except multiplatform.



  • @Gaska said:

    The real problem of the web is that DOM is not very good tool for laying out application interface

    Yes!

    That is the problem. The reason I made this thread.

    I mean, it's in the name. DocumentOM.


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