It doesn't matter. Really. Just do something. Anything. What you learn (about everything) from the doing will be way more important than any (temporary) technical skills you acquire.
Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
11–20 of 32 posts
Re: Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
#12I've actually grown weary of the whole browser/css/javscript crap that I have to deal with to make things work... I've been playing with Flex lately. It's a step back in some ways, but it is nice in others. Feels more like thick client development than thin client.
Re: Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
#13This (http://gears.google.com/) has a lot of potential. But only time will tell what new technology really makes a difference.
Trying to figure out what is the best technology and then learning that is a great goal but I think it's more important to learn a variety of technologies and be ready to adapt quickly to new things.
Learn HTML, the document object model, and Javascript (while those do change the change is slow because of the huge installed base.) Unix is going to be relevant for a long time. Relational databases have been around since the beginning of time (Jan 1, 1970) and aren't going away any time soon. If you're good with the fundamentals then you'll be able to adapt to anything else.
Re: Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
#14If you'd asked this question ten years ago, the 'answer' would have been Java applets. Yeah.
Unless web browsers somehow become obsolete in the next ten years, you're looking at an evolved version of what we have now. HTTP, CSS, XHTML, and JS have plenty of room for improvement. It takes years for the standards to be worked out and longer for browser support, which is never 100%. Add a few more years for developers to take full advantage of the new capabilities.
What we'll have in ten years will be another iteration or two on what we have now.
Re: Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
#15flash
Re: Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
#16Not-AJAX.
Re: Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
#17I've actually grown weary of the whole browser/css/javscript crap that I have to deal with to make things work... I've been playing with Flex lately. It's a step back in some ways, but it is nice in others. Feels more like thick client development than thin client.
How so a step back?
Re: Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
#18If I had to guess what would be big, I would guess that it could be some sort of push technology [read: not http in its current form] Currently it's difficult to create efficient multi-user systems on low bandwidth and high data rates, with RSS clients pinging servers every three minutes to check for new content and ajax calls every three seconds to check page changes and do autosaves, etc, that is a lot of undue stress on a server. Developers will start packing as much data into a single packet as possible, doing micro-optimizations, while somebody else is going to come along and re-desgin the protocol. It could still use XML and Javascript in general, with some other methods to accept data pushed from the application server(s) [bittorrent anyone?], and not the other way around. It could be huge...but alas, doesn't exist yet.
Re: Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
#19People here are smart, but smart doesn't mean they can predict the future with any degree of accuracy.
Yet..
Re: Ask YC: Whats better than AJAX?
#20Flex, undoubtedly, for more involved stuff.