On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:55 AM, dimitris chloupis <[email protected]>wrote:
> Frankly , I don't find web development that much useful and certainly > don't believe that web is the future. My money is on the desktop. > I wouldn't put your money on the desktop. While reports of the desktop's demise are premature, it's no longer growing. The desktop is alive and well but in a niche. The future (actually the present) is on the smart phone, or embedded in almost anything. We may spend or time in front of a desktop but the world is watching, touching, feeling, listening and speaking to their phone. The phone however is a mobile device and hence it needs the internet and the web is the internet's gui, at least its non-proprietary gui (iTunes, appStore et al being the proprietary guis). The iPhone shows that framework is more important than programming language, and that js isn't necessarily important for mobile, but it is considered neutral compared to e.g. flash. > > The very fact that the most popular web app, by far nowdays is facebook > and the very fact that if you took facebook out today people would lose > nothing in practicality tells so much about what web is all about. Web is > not all bad of course, its still without any doubt the library of > Alexandria but most of it , its just pointless way of killing your free > time. > > The trend is to push web to the desktop and I think that has been proven a > very bad idea. Web technology is based on some very bad design decisions > and it makes me laugh when technologies like node.js take the web world by > storm when desktop has similar technologies for far too long. > > If you looks carefully you will also see that Desktop is more and more > pushing to the web, so for me it looks like web development is not going to > have much of a chance. Many existing programming languages are already > compiling to js, but even in that case why even bother ? IT makes sense for > mobile devices , but what will happen if for example pharo and squeak start > making ports for those mobile devices . Why bother with JS at all ? > > I try to make a visual coding project and I did consider amber and some js > libraries and to my surprise the only dynamic graphic library I found of > some serious usefulness was processing.js and its just too slow for what I > want to achieve. And if you think about all those so called web > technologies are really sandboxed , limited and slow desktop technologies. > > I still find the fact that a browser can run anywhere extremely tempting > but in the end I dont think its really worth it. And yes I disagree with > the video of trying to say that web is like electricity. When electricity > came out there was nothing like it, with the web its very diffirent because > not only desktop can do many of the things that web can , all web > technologies are practically desktop technologies. Also even if you take a > look at how much Desktop has progressed 10 years and how much the web , > even though the web is super hyped those past 10 years you will get a very > clear picture of how things really are. > > I dont think squeak or pharo should turn their backs to the web > technologies , js and all others (and I love the fact that projects like > amber do exist) but I would prefer if more effort is spent on making sure > that they work on all platforms equally good. > > From where I am standing there is no competitiveness in usefulness when it > comes to JS and web technology there is just competitiveness in popularity > and hype. And I would rather prefer if pharo and squeak dont play that game > and continue being actually useful , innovative , easy to use , > technologies. Web is certainly tempting but in the end its an empty > promise. > > ------------------------------ > *From:* "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > *To:* [email protected] > *Sent:* Monday, 15 October 2012, 23:02 > *Subject:* [Pharo-project] A trend and an unfair comparison about js > everywhere > > Hi guys, > > all comparisons are unfair I know but this is only to make you guy aware > of this (please ignore if you're already). > > Here is the thing: > > The Jeff Bezos' Electricity Metaphor: > http://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_bezos_on_the_next_web_innovation.html > > Makes (probably) any smalltalker remember the Alan Kay's talk about having > in the internet an IP for every object and spectacular computer science > ideas like that. > > The js everywhere trend makes a lot of sense. Once it achieves critical > mass it might tempt intel and friends to do some hardware accelerator for > js VM's. Who knows. We have a long way to go but, in the meantime, all js > staked frameworks make a lot of sense and WILL get traction because of > that. Example: > > http://www.wakanda.org/ > > A talk here: > https://vimeo.com/31603156 > > So.. the unfair question here would be: > > What we'll have to match that competitiveness? > > sebastian > > o/ > > PS: Pharo + WebSockets + Amber sounds in that line doesn't? > > > > -- best, Eliot
