Thu 14 Jun 2007
Want to understand what is happening in technology? You need to read Stephen O’Grady ‘97. Example:
Once upon a time, the notion of delivering application functionality over the web seemed fanciful. The misguided thinking of some web zealots. I should know, having worked in shops that did both client/server and portal/web development. Shops that left me similarly skeptical (in the distant past).
But of course that was then, and this is now. The application landscape circa 2007 is, of course, heavily web oriented. As some of the gray beards in our midst have pointed out, it’s as if we’ve come full circle back to our green screen mainframe days. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And so on.
Over the last quarter or more, however, we’ve seen a resurgence in interest in what are often termed Rich Internet Application technologies, or RIA. Between the high profile vendor announcements (Apollo, JavaFX, and Silverlight) and some lower profile alternatives (RCP, XULRunner), the number of available paths for would be web application developers to walk down are proliferating rapidly. That much is clear.
What’s less clear is where some of these paths might lead to, the degree to which they stray from the major web thoroughfare, and what it might cost over the longer term to walk them. Or, in some cases, why there’s a separate path in the first place.
While I’m certainly not in a position to answer all of the above, perhaps by exploring some of the questions in more detail we can make tracks towards some answers.
Read the whole thing. You are bound to understand more than I did.
June 14th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Seemed clear to me; but, of course, this is the world I live in.
OK, to draw on my Williams education, the translation from techie talk to plain English is: A lot of developers are on a crusade to create Rich Internet Applications–apps that run in a browser but that have a user interface that mimics the rich functionality of PC or Apple applications. Stephen is saying that developers are getting excited about techie stuff that real world users don’t want. End users he talks to are happy with more basic web applications.
Good marketing on Stephen’s part. A post like this, saying the emperor has no clothes, incites all kind of discussion in the techie world and drives traffic to his blog.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
And I have trouble booting up.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
On to more important things now that we know Frank survived his reunion. For example, did Frank cop the coveted “Best Preserved” Award, as he usually does at his Williams Reunions. As they say in the Main thread from time to time: some one should report on Reunion, how’d it go, did the Alums come through with Bankrupt-the-Retirement-Kitty size gifts? etc.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Most Closely Ressembling a Blivit.
June 17th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
with all due respect to Guy, i’m not smart enough to determine what will and won’t drive traffic. if i could, i’d be retired.
but for the non-techies in the audience, the short version of the discussion is this: different tools for different jobs. if you’re happy with Gmail and so on, don’t sweat it.