Killing My Career: Not Buying the HTML 5/Java Hype
-
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.
-
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!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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).
-
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.
-
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.
-
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?
-
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).
BubingaMan wrote:
Your entire rant on this thread is to claim that desktop goes away and the web takes over.
No. It's that Windows apps, as they stand today, are becoming irrelevant to the average consumer.
BubingaMan wrote:
And you claim that in such a way as if it completely changes our business.
It's changed the industry, particularly among the Microsoft-tech stack.
BubingaMan wrote:
I can easily imagine DOZENS of scenario's where the web simply won't get the job done.
Let's hear just a single dozen.
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.
I disagree with this. The last two companies that I have worked for paid me to build just what you are talking about on the web. The web sites are internal to their network. They could have easily asked me to write these as desktop applications but they didn't. For many reason. It is easier to deploy web applications. They don't have to install it on each users computer. They can just have the user visit the web page. It is also easier to update web applications than desktop applications. I came from a desktop back ground and now I am a web developer.
-
I think your posts here reflect an uninformed view. Java is to Javascript what Poo is to Shampoo. Totally unrelated technologies. Java, Silverlight, Flash are all dying. Web plugins are dying. HTML5 is now powerful enough for 99% of apps out there. I used to hate web development, as I came from a desktop dev background. Now, I've grown to like web development and see it as the future. The only viable native app development for consumers is mobile, and eventually HTML will be powerful enough to overtake that, just as it did desktop apps.
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
Could it be that HTML5 is the new XAML? They both look like XML.
-
I disagree with this. The last two companies that I have worked for paid me to build just what you are talking about on the web. The web sites are internal to their network. They could have easily asked me to write these as desktop applications but they didn't. For many reason. It is easier to deploy web applications. They don't have to install it on each users computer. They can just have the user visit the web page. It is also easier to update web applications than desktop applications. I came from a desktop back ground and now I am a web developer.
Sure. We do intranet development regurarly as well. But those are internal systems. It's quite different from the general picture that is being drawn here... Their databases are internal. Their data is internal. And I'll bet you everything I own that, next to the administrative intranet, they'll all have office installed, along with a range of other desktop applications. It's called the "right tool for the right job". I never claimed that web-based applications don't have a place. I'm merely arguing that it's asanine to think that everything will simply move to the browser. Also, I reject the notion that it's "easier" to deploy a web application. This is simply not true. We have an update mechanism for our desktop applications (built it ourselves, I admit). All it takes to deploy a new version: create zip file with new db scripts and the release build and place that file on the FTP. Done. Next time the application is started, it will find the new version and update itself. And last but not least, an intranet is hardly something new. We've been implementing intranet applications for at least 8 years now.
-
Could it be that HTML5 is the new XAML? They both look like XML.
I'm not sure what you mean by "new XAML." They are both markup languages that describe a UI. HTML5 adds some new tags since HTML4, like <audio> and <video>, that make it more appealing for consumer apps.
My Messianic Jewish blog: Kineti L'Tziyon My software blog: Debugger.Break() Judah Himango
-
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.
As an amateur I'm so glad to see this post. Javascript was the pre-compiler stage of my programming endeavors. Now I've parced 37MB of dumptext into a database-import using 20 seconds of C-code I really don't want to go back to javascript. Anything with Java in the name, 'cept perhaps the island, is eligible for garbage-collecting I feel. The fact that microsoft is ARM-ing it's Windows 8, nullyfying my x86 efforts has pushed me towards exploring Linux for the first time. F*ck mobile look&feel, give me functionality & data generation/retention/treatment. Are you going to finger-swipe your finances on an Ipad - html- cloud application? Or are you gonna sit and type the numbers into a tool that will guard your data, allow you to encrypt/back it up, and tell you the bottomline? Are we going to see scripting tools developed for the power user/ hacker on the Iphone? How are we going to 'opensource-project' applications on mobile devices: "This is freeware, use at own responsibility, BTW: Pay Apple on your way out."? This Angry bird feels like the mobile-world has forgotten what 'application' and 'computer' stood for. I remember before Java (IL) made programs portable to other platforms that native apps worked identical every time. You relied on it as a tester. Today it's like : "try it again, it'l probably work a second time around!" Mobile 'browser-based', really?, they couldn't make it to run on your favorite text-editor? Evolution: stone-knife - typewriter - electronic memory - 4G Ram Computer ... and back (add 'mobile-').
-
Sort of like having a peanut butter sandwich with no peanut butter?
JackDingler wrote:
Sort of like having a peanut butter sandwich with no peanut butter
No. Kind of like having a peanut butter sandwich with butter from another brand then usual.
-
Then you're just talking about a desktop app with more layers than native apps.
JackDingler wrote:
Then you're just talking about a desktop app with more layers than native apps.
Eum, no. Instead of calling a business or datalayer, you just call a webservice. That's all. The number of layers doesn't change, the layers merely change location. And then off course, there still is VPN tunneling. So I don't really see what the problem is.
-
JackDingler wrote:
Then you're just talking about a desktop app with more layers than native apps.
Eum, no. Instead of calling a business or datalayer, you just call a webservice. That's all. The number of layers doesn't change, the layers merely change location. And then off course, there still is VPN tunneling. So I don't really see what the problem is.
So you're compiling directly to the native processor code with no sandbox then? There's no interpreted layer in a sandbox, like Java? I guess I've learned something new.