It’s time to kill the web app

Whenever an OS depreciates, but not kills, something in an API, somebody ignores that it is depreciated, doesn't use the new method, and writes new software against the now-depreciated function.

There are people still using legacy software that got was first written in the 1970s. Someone took that software and converted it from punchcards to hard drives and from memory that was a spinning drum to memory that is solid state.

Somewhere, there are COBOL developers still maintaining stuff older than many of the folks that frequent HN.

I suspect you're right, in that it will be superseded - but I am willing to wager that it is going to take a long time and never be completely done. There is stuff that hasn't been updated since the 486 days and is mission critical. Fortunately, it works - because nobody has any idea how to fix it if it stops working.

As a society, we've accumulated so much technical debt that we may have reached a tipping point where it's simply impossible for us to catch up and it's unrealistic to think we will burn it to the ground and rebuild.

I suppose some external force could crash the house of cards but I suspect we'd just rebuild it with new faults or the same old faults.

Like you say, HTTP and HTML weren't meant to do this. Now we have webassembly, HTML5, and JavaScript libraries that nobody fully understands. We've now tacked on DRM to the standards, put the real functionality in the hands of ICANN, and crammed our data into towering silos of proprietary goodness.

We had a brief moment where we largely owned our devices and our data. Now, we lease supercomputers for our pockets while giving control of our data to a mysterious entity known only as The Cloud. 100 years from now, nobody is going to know how it works and we will attend churches where we pray, sacrifice, and tithe to the god known as The Cloud.

It will be superseded, but it will be just another kludge patched on top. It's like cars in Cuba. They are old and functional, but contain engines from a Lada, bumpers from a bus, seats from three different cars and a horse drawn cart, an exhaust made from tin cans, and four different size wheels.

And you know what? Those cars are a testament to the resiliency and skill of the Cuban mechanic. They are awesome. It's not amazing that they break down, of course they do. It's amazing that they run at all.

On a more serious note, I suspect well just keep patching and tweaking. Eventually things will get better. It has been steadily getting better this whole time.

I like to complainand point out the flaws, but it really does function. It's great and the immediacy of information has been a great asset for humanity.

The Internet really is better than it has ever been. Searches used to be done by a human. As in, you'd send them your question and they'd go through their directory, make phone calls, contact institutions, and get back to you with an answer - usually 3 days latter. Yup... Three days to get an answer. Sometimes, you had to wait for a system to come online, usually a small localized network, and only then would your email be delivered.

It works. It's like a dysfunctional family. Loving, possibly abusive, but our family. I suspect it will continue to improve, slowly but surely. Smart people are constantly innovating and improving. Standards and specs get refined.

The Internet, being vast, means there is a place for pretty much everybody. It has it's warts and there are legitimate complaints, but sometimes it actually does what it is supposed to do, when it is supposed to do it. Sometimes, possibly by accident, people make good choices that result in good things.

Also, cats... So long as we have cats, the Internet will be just fine. Gotta love it, warts and all.

I refer to these as "unstable industries" - they all exhibit the dynamics that the consequences of success undermines the reasons for that success in the first place. So for example, the key factor that makes an editor or new devtool popular is that it lets you accomplish your task and then gets out of the way, but when you've developed a successful editor or devtool, lots of programmers want to help work on it, they all want to make their mark, and suddenly it gets in your way instead of out of your way. For a social network, the primary driver of success is that all the cool kids who you want to be like are on it, which makes everyone want to get on it, and suddenly the majority of people on it aren't cool. For a review site, the primary driver of success is that people are honest and sharing their experiences out of the goodness of their heart, which brings in readers, which makes the products being reviewed really want to game the reviews, which destroys the trustworthiness of the reviews.

All of these industries are cyclical, and you can make a lot of money - tens of billions of dollars - if you time your entry & exit at the right parts of the cycle. The problem is that actually figuring out that timing is non-trivial (and left as an exercise for the reader), and then you have to contend with a large amount of work and similarly hungry competitors.

Most if not all webapp security problems come from an attack of servers, not clients...

It's just one of these assertions that throw a dark shadow on the whole article. But "Flux is Windows 1.0" is my favorite.