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It’s time to kill the web app

blog.plan99.net

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Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#581

Post by pjmlp »

gregmac wrote: post #460
x0x0 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used vb6 20 years ago and have recently (quite unfortunately) had to learn html/js/css basics. The web is hot garbage for displaying form data compared to microsoft tools circa 1996.

The big problem is they are trying to solve different problems. Microsoft stuff was going for fixed screen size/resolution, fixed layout, and using a quite limited set of controls. Web browsers try to be accommodating by default - any screen size (including mobile), zoom built in, and significantly more powerful control primitives that allow enormous flexibility in the way to design things. If you're building forms a…

Super easy, VB.NET with WPF or UWP layouts.

Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#582

Post by pjmlp »

api wrote: post #263
x0x0 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used vb6 20 years ago and have recently (quite unfortunately) had to learn html/js/css basics. The web is hot garbage for displaying form data compared to microsoft tools circa 1996.

MS really had rapid GUI development absolutely nailed in the late 90s. For some reason we forgot all that.

The milenials never learned it because Web is so cool!

MS tools are still here for those of us doing native Windows development.

Also the Apple and Google GUI tooling for their mobile OSes are quite good.

Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#583

Post by a_imho »

On the contrary, from the users pov the vast majority of mobile apps are inferior to a webapp. Downloading apps instead of pointing a browser to an address, while giving all kinds of control (permissions and access to the device itself) to app publishers is just silly.

Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#584

Post by yorwba »

nostrademons wrote: post #312
mwcampbell wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there no possibility of steady progress without having to continually discard good solutions and reinvent things (e.g. web development catching up with the 90s)? Someone on this thread said that our field has no institutional memory. Can we at least fix that ?

You run up against Gall's Law [1]. The root cause is that many of our desires are actually contradictory, but because human attention is a tiny sliver of human experience, whenever we focus our attention on some aspect of the system we can always find something that, taken in isolation, can be improved. (I'd be really disappointed if we couldn't, actually; it'd mean we could never make progress). However, the "taken…

> Move to a binary protocol and you can't do "view source" or open a saved HTML file in a text editor to learn what the author did

I disagree with that. Using binary formats to exchange data between programs doesn't preclude using textual formats at the human/machine boundary. Yes, "view source" needs to be more intelligent than just displaying raw bytes, but that is already the case with today's textual formats. Everything is minified and obfuscated, so the browser dev tools already have to include a "prettify" option. Moving to a binary protocol would turn that into "decompile" and make it mandatory, but it effectively already is.

Requiring a compiler to author and distribute a web page is no different than requiring a web server or a CGI framework or the JS-to-JS transpiler du jour. It adds another step in the pipeline that needs to be automated away for casual users, but that's manageable. Even if the web world moves to binary formats (as WebAssembly seems to indicate), your one-click hosting provider can still let you work with plain HTML/CSS/JS and abstract the rest; just like it abstracts DNS/HTTP/caching/whatever.

Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#585

Post by MarkMc »

suixo wrote: post #310

One advantage of the web is that you can browse, discover, and test new apps directly inside your browser without needing to install anything on your system. Image you had to install a software any time you visit a new interactive website or check out a new webapp. I'm curious to see the second part of the article!

Sure, that is an advantage but I wouldn't say it is a strong advantage.

With app stores I can view screenshots and videos before installing the software. The app runs in a sandbox and I can uninstall it very easily.

Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#586

Post by pendar747 »

usr1106 wrote: post #553
Fej wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be the biggest dichotomy I've yet seen on HN. An opinion piece voted all the way to the top of the front page (with a clickbaity title, might I add), yet the top comment soundly debunks the article's arguments. Yeah, this is why everybody clicks on the comments link first.

We can assume that many HN readers are closely related to Web programming. Either they do it themselves or their wage gets paid because their employers' business depends on Web apps. If the article is right that it is close to impossible to hire a Web developer that understands all Web security issues and knows to mitigate them, it does not come as a surprise that there is fierce criticism to the article. It basicall…

The author definitely has valid arguments about web's security but I think the rest of his arguments are all lazy, anecdotal and not accurate. Comparing Google Docs to an old version of Office for example. They are incomparable firstly because they are running on completely different platforms. Office would take a long time to install while Google Docs are available almost instantly, they can be updated almost instantly and secondly include many more benefits that come with being part of the web.

I have myself developed GUI application using author's beloved C++ and Qt and I can admit its a far better designed and convenient experience compared to the web, but it's hardly possible to achieve the same amount of flexibility in UI/UX design that is available on the Web. I think the fact that things are changing so fast, standards are badly designed (at least initially) and there are so many inconsistencies are all only because web is a fast moving platform that requires the consensus of many players to happen and move forward. Also the amount of commercial interest and developers working on the web is incomparable to other platforms, hence the fast moving nature.

Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#587

Post by gmueckl »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #295
tannhaeuser wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If so I'm in full agreement. It's truly mind-blowing how much energy has been wasted on trying to shoehorn the web into an app delivery platform over the last decade. To what end? To make the browser a general purpose platform? We have that already, it's called an "operating system". Edit: that said, I disagree with many points and the general negativity in TFA

Are you comfortable running arbitrary binaries built by arbitrary people? If not, then I fail to see how an operating system is a sensible general purpose computing platform. It worked OK when we just wanted to run software written by a handful of trusted parties... Microsoft, Adobe, id Software. But as soon as there were 1000s of companies writing software that we wanted to try, running binaries ceased to be a good…

The web isn't a solution to this problem. Drive by attacks are real and easy to place via malicious ads.

The only real "fix" to this situation would be to make software vendors actually liable for the correct functionality of their product. Imagine no more warranty disclaimers or other bullshit in the licenses for "final" products (compiled binaries, executable JS in websites...). All other engineering professions are legally held to their respective standards. It's time we start raising that bar for software as well.

I'd like to see some software company execs soil their pants because they know that their products are lousy crap.

Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#588

Post by Brakenshire »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #520
crooked-v wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 95-era Word didn’t have to handle real-time collaboration over the Web between an arbitrary number of users.

No, it didn't. But is it so complex it requires 10x+ the resource use? I don't think so.

You can say the same about Windows 2016. Recommended RAM has gone up more than 100-fold, from 16MB to 2000MB. Developers use the resources made available to them, that has nothing to do with the web.

Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#589

Post by Brakenshire »

blub wrote: post #562
erikpukinskis wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you comfortable running arbitrary binaries built by arbitrary people? If not, then I fail to see how an operating system is a sensible general purpose computing platform. It worked OK when we just wanted to run software written by a handful of trusted parties... Microsoft, Adobe, id Software. But as soon as there were 1000s of companies writing software that we wanted to try, running binaries ceased to be a good…

"But I will open basically anything in a web browser because I don't have to trust it." That's incredibly funny. I guess sooner or later you'll learn why it's a losing strategy. The web is probably the largest malware infection vector nowadays.

It's the largest malware vector because it's the largest software vector. It still remains true that running a random website is a million miles away from running a random exe.

Re: It’s time to kill the web app

#590

Post by pendar747 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #529
hutzlibu wrote: post #270

I rather think, It's time, to completley ignore sensationalistic rant's like this one. First of, killing a technology does not solve anything. It just means less options. So do propose your better solution (and build it) - then we can talk about killing the current thing. But the way it is today, the web works. Definitely not flawless and in large parts really ugly (just browsing with open dev-tools is horrifying, wh…

> But the way it is today, the web works. Does it really? What would you hold up as an example of a powerful web app with significant usage? All the major players these days (like Facebook) get the overwhelming majority of their traffic through their native mobile app, not through their web app. The web's primary stronghold is in publishing platforms (news, articles, etc...), which are not really what you'd call "app…

I think the fact that most facebook users only access it trough mobile is because of the general shift to mobile. Even most web usage is now on mobile: example source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/11/01/mobile-web-...
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