I enjoyed that article - I agree with Tim on almost everything.
I love that besides the nuisance of developing for two different proprietary platforms, he also mentions briefly how apps are kinda sorta ruining the web. The whole app ecosystem right now, and the single-minded focus on "apps" in general mildly disgusts me. Beneath the beautiful interfaces and pleasant UX lurks a paternalistic, centralized, locked-down vision of the world that's an affront to the legacy of the web to this point. He discusses some ways in which the browser platform sucks, but doesn't even get to the next step of the chain: how much mobile browser platforms suck. Android < 4 is currently the new IE (not even being hyperbolic here). Developing for the web browser in older Androids is just an awful, awful experience. iOS is better in general, but "better" != "good". Undiagnosable performance problems. Arcane non-standard CSS keywords that no one can explain the actual function of but we pass them around because sometimes using them mysteriously makes things better (and sometimes, with no discernible pattern, it doesn't). Bizarre, mind-sucking CSS quirks. Emulators that do not accurately emulate the devices. And you're on a perpetual development treadmill because every new version is slightly different, and you cannot assume that a new release like, say, iOS 7 won't come with a whole bunch of unannounced regressions for no good reason. So while I really really want the PhoneGap model to win out, right now it's not a great option either. Honestly, I'm mostly holding my breath waiting for a third independent platform to claim a non-negligible share of the market. I'd love if it was FFOS, but any platform is okay. If it's Windows Mobile, good for them (and I am so genuine in that sentiment that I will stick to it despite having just spent an hour trying to reconcile IE8 and Foundation 5). I'm predicting that three will be the magic number for supported platforms for most companies, the point at which people say "this is absurd, we're not building a different app for each of these." Once business starts resisting, mobile web solutions get a lot more attention and importantly, people start pressuring the platforms to suck less at the web experience. I am convinced that Apple simply does not care about making webviews a great experience right now (why *should* they?), but enough angry voices and they will have to care, even if they never openly admit to changing policy. On the web suckiness side of things, I don't think we're ever getting rid of JavaScript or CSS. I spent years dreaming utopian dreams, and I've finally given up on that. But I'm hopeful that soon, we will reach a point of sophistication where the ongoing suckiness of JS/CSS doesn't bleed over into our daily lives. For more on that, I'm planning to give a talk on "The Future of the Front End" in March at Full Stack North County. Should be fun! On Thu, Jan 9, 2014, at 10:18 AM, Chris McCann wrote: If you didn't see it, here's a great article by Tim Bray. Pay particular attention to the latter half about mobile and web development: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/01/01/Software-in-2014 What are we in the SD Ruby community using for frameworks to ameliorate the pain points, both on the mobile and server sides? Cheers, Chris -- -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] [1]http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SD Ruby" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit [2]https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. References 1. http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby 2. https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out -- -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SD Ruby" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
