Killing My Career: Not Buying the HTML 5/Java Hype
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I must be getting old. I just refuse to buy the HTML 5/Java Hype. I hate the whole web programming model from start to finish, which doesn't help. Having one langauge for server side code and another for client side code, along with a mass of libraries, CSS, and a dozen other considerations makes my head hurt. It would be fair to call me lazy or unwilling to learn at that point - I won't hate you for that. The thing is, it goes beyond just the ridiculous complexity. The fact is that after 15 years of browser wars the browsers are no closer to behaving the same than they were in 1995. Can you blame them? There is no finalized standard to work against and they trip over themselves in the never ending one-up-manship game. But it gets worse in that the browser isn't the only consideration. Now you've got different hardware that could include anything from a 3" screen up to a 40" screen and beyond. The primary promise of HTML 5/Java is that of program once, run anywhere. I don't see that as deliverable for anything beyond a static web page - at least not without a ridiculous amount of effort and complexity. This is less a failing of the technology and more the result of the various companies refusing to work together to make a developer's life easier. If I had to guess, I'd say in 2020 we'll have just as fractured of a model as we have right now. I think people who write for a specific screen size/hardware/nitch are going to kick the pOOpie out of those who try to cover all bases with a one size fits all solution. That and hopefully most businesses will wake up and realize that for most applications most form factors aren't needed. Just because you can view finanical reports on your iPhone doesn't mean you should. It's okay to get all fanboi over it if you want. I'm just not seeing it. Looks like a great deal of smoke and mirrors to me.
I have been in this industry since 1991 as developer, designer, pm ... successfully. I completely agree to your idea. The problem is, the big companies are making decisions for making more money. If programmers were comfortable in developing software, then their margin of profit would reduce a lot plus having more and stronger competitors! This is a reality and unfortunately who has more money can lead the market.
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Paul Watt wrote:
What apps do you use that are not natively developed that are on your desktop?
I used to use Outlook or Thunderbird for my email. Now I use Gmail and haven't been happier. I used to use MS Office or Open Office for my documents. Now I use Google Docs. I used to use AIM or Windows Messenger to chat with people. Now I use Facebook, integrated Google chat, etc. I used to store pictures on my computer and email them to people. Now I use Facebook, blogs, and cloud storage to share and preserve photos. I do believe native apps will have a role in the future. But, as of 2011, Windows apps suck monkey balls[^]. We'll see if MS can reverse this trend with WinRT/Metro.
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
That's all good for data you can afford to lose. If those sites went down and your account was lost, it shouldn't be a big deal to you.
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MehGerbil wrote:
Furthermore, if you like HTML 5 that's fine.
I don't particularly like it; it's just that it's abundantly clear that the web won. XAML is a superior technology, but if you want reach, HTML is the way to go. Likewise, C# is clearly superior to JavaScript, but if you want reach, you'll have to bite the bullet and use HTML+JavaScript.
MehGerbil wrote:
FPS games like BF3 aren't going to be in the browser anytime soon.
Why not? WebGL[^] is becoming ubiquitous. Imagine never having to run an installer. Imagine never having to download and install patches. There's no reason that full 3d immersive experiences can't be delivered over the native web.
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
When I was in college, everyone knew that Pascal was going to take over the computing world. End of story. The CS Professor told me I was wasting my time learning that new fangled language 'C'. It was a just a fad. I've heard similar pronouncements about COBOL, RPG, Lisp, TurboBasic, etc... So I think I've seen this movie before. It looks like a remake of an old plot.
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I must be getting old. I just refuse to buy the HTML 5/Java Hype. I hate the whole web programming model from start to finish, which doesn't help. Having one langauge for server side code and another for client side code, along with a mass of libraries, CSS, and a dozen other considerations makes my head hurt. It would be fair to call me lazy or unwilling to learn at that point - I won't hate you for that. The thing is, it goes beyond just the ridiculous complexity. The fact is that after 15 years of browser wars the browsers are no closer to behaving the same than they were in 1995. Can you blame them? There is no finalized standard to work against and they trip over themselves in the never ending one-up-manship game. But it gets worse in that the browser isn't the only consideration. Now you've got different hardware that could include anything from a 3" screen up to a 40" screen and beyond. The primary promise of HTML 5/Java is that of program once, run anywhere. I don't see that as deliverable for anything beyond a static web page - at least not without a ridiculous amount of effort and complexity. This is less a failing of the technology and more the result of the various companies refusing to work together to make a developer's life easier. If I had to guess, I'd say in 2020 we'll have just as fractured of a model as we have right now. I think people who write for a specific screen size/hardware/nitch are going to kick the pOOpie out of those who try to cover all bases with a one size fits all solution. That and hopefully most businesses will wake up and realize that for most applications most form factors aren't needed. Just because you can view finanical reports on your iPhone doesn't mean you should. It's okay to get all fanboi over it if you want. I'm just not seeing it. Looks like a great deal of smoke and mirrors to me.
Nope, web apps will take over, because every business wants their internal data transferred around the world and back with every mouse click....
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It's irrelavent anyway. I'm a professional software engineer. My business is in B2B. I don't give a damn about facebook, twitter and angry birds. All 3 were banned anyway in just about every company I've been to the past 2 years. You need to make a distinction between actual computing and killing time. I write software for people who actually need to get some work done. And for them, these silly crippled web gimmicks are not enough. They don't even show on the map. It's ridiculous.
BubingaMan wrote:
I'm a professional software engineer. My business is in B2B.
I don't give a damn about facebook, twitter and angry birds.Exactly. There are tools, and there are toys.
XAlan Burkhart
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I'm gonna do you one better. I'm forming a new HTML language authority. We'll work on defining HTML 6 and we'll bill ourselves as the people responsible for this new version from start to finish. We'll get all of our friends together and give them high paying jobs, set a 'due date' of 2030, and then sit back and do nothing for the next two decades while enjoying our own sense of self appointed, self aggrandizing importance. Oh sure, we'll actually employ a couple of code monkeys to dribble out a spec now and again - or better yet, write imaginary specs and see what the web makers do with it and just copy their work. This is great because the browser manufacturers would want us to copy their work and I bet they'd pay us to copy their work. What would Microsoft pay under the table to be able to author the ACID6 test for IE 15? I'm thinking somewhere north of 9 figures - or probably half of what the European Union would be willing to pay for the privilege if it allowed them to sue Microsoft again. The money wouldn't be in our salaries - it would be in the sheer power of doing absolutely nothing while cutting deals to keep it that way. Which hints at credibility - we'd give ourselves credibility by putting a few Europeans on the board and we'd frequently trash talk Microsoft. We'd keep pointing toward some future date on the horizon when "harmony" would be acheived. Heck, even if we failed I'd be ready to retire after 2 decades of wine and cheese. Who wants in as a founding board member?
MehGerbil wrote:
Who wants in as a founding board member?
I excel at writing buggy, useless code. I'm your guy! :)
XAlan Burkhart
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Agree completely and absolutely. The alternative could be Silverlight which is technically more appealing (C#, virtual machine and so on) but it's also very fragmented and doesn't run on all platforms. So in the while I will stick to my old good desktop apps and let other people do the web programming
My thoughts as well. Most of what I write is either for my own use or a specialty app for an individual. Desktop apps work fine for me.
XAlan Burkhart
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That's all good for data you can afford to lose. If those sites went down and your account was lost, it shouldn't be a big deal to you.
Same argument for your computer. How often have I lost data on, say, Amazon due to system failure? Zero times. How many times have I lost data on my own computer due to system failure? 20? And that's just a small exaggeration. :)
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
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Because everyone IS storing their stuff on the web, the future is here, and MS Windows native apps are becoming irrelevant. MS hopes to reverse this trend with WinRT/Metro apps in Win8. Keep your eyes on that: if they succeed, there will be a lot of money to be made as a Windows app developer. If they fail, MS will have to start thinking about a future where Windows (and by extension, Office) are no longer cash cows for the company.
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
MS Windows native apps are becoming irrelevant.
That's hilarious. I'ld love to hear your definition of "irrelavent".
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They may be relevant for niche industries, I understand. But what I'm speaking of is the general population. For the general population, Windows apps are becoming irrelevant, for a wide variety of reasons[^]. Windows 8 is aiming to reverse that trend and make apps relevant for regular people again. We'll see if they succeed.
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
For the general population, Windows apps are becoming irrelevant
That's quite a different story. The "general population" (ie, the consumer that wastes his time on failbook and twitter) are not of our concern. They aren't the ones paying us millions of dollars for an analysis application. They aren't the ones paying thousands of dollars a year to be able to use an application to manage their retail business. No, they are the ones that are paying 0.99 $ for fart apps. Yeah, I don't really care about what they do. However, if one of those people decides to start using his pc for something usefull, they'll quickly realise that the "online" versions of decent applications have a lot of shortcomings. But let's be serious here... an application like Excel is not really meant for them in the first place. And a full blown excel is not gonna become a winRT application either for the simple reason that there are far too many commands to be exposed to the user for small screen applications that need to be controlled with fat fingers. You simply don't have the real-estate necessary to accomplish such a thing. Your point is void.
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Convenience is another big factor, bigger than financial aspect. If you have to research around the internet for 10 minutes, hunt and peck through a maze of ads to find a download link, answer a browser security prompt, then a UAC security prompt, then type your password, then dismiss a registration dialog, then skip the donate page of the install wizard, then install, then... Or, you go to the app store and click "buy now" on the app with the 5 star rating. The app store model of Apple and Google has proven convenience is something people will pay for.
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
Or, you go to the app store and click "buy now" on the app with the 5 star rating.
Which would result in downloading a native application, not a web-based one. Weren't you trying to make a case for why the internet is winning? Because here, you are arguing for the opposite.
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Member 8492445 wrote:
I wouldn't trust the cloud, blogs, and especially not Facebook for anything
:laugh: Well, the tin foil hat party is alive and well. What matters is what regular people do. That's what makes an app relevant or not. And the tin foilists are in the minority, fine sir! :-) Most people have no issue letting Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or Apple store their data, back it up, and make it available over the web. For you, a distrusting technologist who can backup your data, mirror it across servers all over the world, and access it even on mobile devices (you do all that, right?) then by all means, have at it. :)
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
Judah Himango wrote:
Most people have no issue letting Google, Amazon, Microsoft, or Apple store their data, back it up, and make it available over the web
That's because most people are a bunch of idiots.
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MehGerbil wrote:
I'd have to wonder why anyone would want to burden HTML 5/WebGL with the necessary libraries/structure/specs to handle high end gaming when it really should be about a useable web.
The whole point of WebGL is making 3d, including gaming, available on the opened web. I don't see the validity in this argument.
MehGerbil wrote:
The demands of gaming change so fast and dramatically there is no way a standards body could keep up with it in any meaningful way. I purchased a gaming laptop 2 years ago (6GB of RAM, Duo Core) and it does a choppy job with BF3 (I bought a new one with 16GB of RAM and QuadCore).
This is a hardware concern more than an WebGL concern. WebGL will have its own evolution, as does DirectX today, and games will have to choose, as they do today, what cutting edge features to use, or what high-end features are optional. But they already do that today.
MehGerbil wrote:
You are thinking in terms of level based play - predetermined paths that a single player must take. In that case, I'd agree - however, games like Battlefield 3 allow a player to chose any one of number of maps which means all 16GB of data needs to be available.
I'm a big gamer. I've played BF for years, and it could work this way: you choose a map, and the assets for that map get streamed to you. It's not as if you have to download all the maps and all the assets to play a single map. On a more general scale, technology finds a way. :) So let's not rule things out because we can't think of a way to do it easily today. If the past has taught us anything, it's that people will find a way to make these things work technologically. It was only a few years ago when people thought web apps would always have to refresh the whole page to show dynamic data. But now we have AJAX, data-binding, and all kinds of tech that didn't exist then, but is now so common, people have grown to expect web apps to work without refreshing the page. Technology finds a way.
MehGerbil wrote:
Also, I can play alongside veteran players who have high end gear which means all textures/stats/etc. for all weapons/outfits/gear must be available at all times and at every level.
No - the assets those players are using (and need to show up on your machine) are the ones that are streamed to you.
Judah Himango wrote:
How much more readily will they throw their money at a game they can instantly play, instead of one they have to physically travel to a store, purchase with physical money, install, and patch before playing?
Your whole argument is based on the idea that a freaking browser can deliver the same experience as high-end native games. You are delusional, sorry.
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They may be relevant for niche industries, I understand. But what I'm speaking of is the general population. For the general population, Windows apps are becoming irrelevant, for a wide variety of reasons[^]. Windows 8 is aiming to reverse that trend and make apps relevant for regular people again. We'll see if they succeed.
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
The 'general population' may think that computing is apps on smart phones etc. but they actually are using more mainframe / midrange systems than they think. Even the much lauded Siri (sp?) is actually running on a server farm, not a toy phone. Your banking details, whilst visible on a browser, is on a mainframe or set of servers somewhere; all the general population sees is the end result. Browsers are the teletypes of the late 20th / early 21st century - just display mechanisms. OK, you can do some clever tricks with them, so they are more like the PCs of the early '80s - intelligent terminals. What is sad is the number of back end systems written in PC / browser technologies because they are designed and written by people who have grown up as 'general population' and not as computer scientists / engineers. Why do people have GUI based servers? I hope I never see the day when air traffic control, nuclear power stations, etc are run as apps!
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Judah Himango wrote:
For the general population, Windows apps are becoming irrelevant
That's quite a different story. The "general population" (ie, the consumer that wastes his time on failbook and twitter) are not of our concern. They aren't the ones paying us millions of dollars for an analysis application. They aren't the ones paying thousands of dollars a year to be able to use an application to manage their retail business. No, they are the ones that are paying 0.99 $ for fart apps. Yeah, I don't really care about what they do. However, if one of those people decides to start using his pc for something usefull, they'll quickly realise that the "online" versions of decent applications have a lot of shortcomings. But let's be serious here... an application like Excel is not really meant for them in the first place. And a full blown excel is not gonna become a winRT application either for the simple reason that there are far too many commands to be exposed to the user for small screen applications that need to be controlled with fat fingers. You simply don't have the real-estate necessary to accomplish such a thing. Your point is void.
BubingaMan wrote:
fart apps
:) Good one.
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MehGerbil wrote:
Who wants in as a founding board member?
I excel at writing buggy, useless code. I'm your guy! :)
XAlan Burkhart
You may be over qualified. I'll put in you charge of process design. Yvonne will be your secretary. As you can see, her dress doesn't fit her very well. Why don't you two do lunch- maybe take her clothes shopping? Try to be back by 4:00 so that you can turn off your computer before you go home.
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Entertainment is a real part of our industry. Social media is, too. It's true they're distractions. But people like distractions, pay money for distractions. The distractions industry is a billion dollar business. :-) I work for 3M. I've been in software for over a decade. Here, they mandate Lotus Notes. I would *love* to trade that piece of crap for a "crippled web gimmick" like Gmail For Business. So let's not pretend everything on the web is just a timewaster. People use the web to get crap done. Increasingly, the web is displacing old style native apps. BaseCamp, Office 365, GDocs, Zoho, WebEx -- people rely on these things today to get crap done. And they're on the web.
BubingaMan wrote:
You need to make a distinction between actual computing and killing time.
As you write an angry reply in the CodeProject lounge. ;P
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
You need to stop changing your goal post. Your entire rant on this thread is to claim that desktop goes away and the web takes over. And you claim that in such a way as if it completely changes our business. It doesn't. Because we aren't into consumer software. We are into enterprise software. Also, it's extremely wrong to make blanket statements about consumer software as well. I can easily imagine DOZENS of scenario's where the web simply won't get the job done. I'ld also like to remind you that I haven't seen a SINGLE chrome OS laptop. If you are correct in your claims, we SHOULD be seeing them pop up everywhere. I even have trouble finding a store that is willing to order them (not that I want one though).
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Nope, web apps will take over, because every business wants their internal data transferred around the world and back with every mouse click....
JackDingler wrote:
Nope, web apps will take over, because every business wants their internal data transferred around the world and back with every mouse click
Newsflash: you don't need a web application to be able to use web services.
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JackDingler wrote:
Nope, web apps will take over, because every business wants their internal data transferred around the world and back with every mouse click
Newsflash: you don't need a web application to be able to use web services.
Then you're just talking about a desktop app with more layers than native apps.
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JackDingler wrote:
Nope, web apps will take over, because every business wants their internal data transferred around the world and back with every mouse click
Newsflash: you don't need a web application to be able to use web services.
Sort of like having a peanut butter sandwich with no peanut butter?