[Baypiggies] native GUI vs. web browser

[K. Richard Pixley]

Keith Dart wrote:
> So, what is the future of native GUI development? Is there one, or will
> every custom interface move to the web technologies?
For some technologies, native interface is already dead.  You probably 
won't see any more of the traditional business applications using 4gl 
databases, forms, reports, etc, being done on native interfaces.  
There's just no point.  Web based interfaces are sufficient, more 
portable, more flexible.

For other technologies, native interface is very much alive.  Witness 
all mobile devices.  Witness any embedded applications.  Witness the 
fact that web based interfaces are /only/ working on the big name 
general purpose OS's.  That is, you can't, in general, run your 
companies salary or vacation database programs on your mobile phone, or 
your text reader, or on a 1lpc xo device, on your ps3, on your TiVo, or 
on anything other than the major web browsers, so people can be lost 
simply by running opera or camino or seamonkey.  Witness the gaming 
industry which surpassed the movie business in revenues several years 
ago.  Witness the explosion of applications available on TiVo, on ps3, 
on xbox360, on stand alone blu-ray players, on set top boxes.  Notice 
that these are captive embedded devices which, unlike mac or windows, 
can actually enforce DRM successfully.

Native interface is still very much alive in many arenas, especially 
embedded, but also for things like development.  IDE's are still 
native.  Web based IDE's are lousy.  Limitations on the web browser like 
memory footprint, security restrictions, lack of memory protection, 
clumsy multitasking, non-native code, balkanization of browser 
interfaces, etc, mean that the web browser is a terrible sandbox for 
anything that requires tight integration with your computer's IO 
devices, local disk usage,  heavy resource usage at all, or relies on 
specific properties of your underlying operating system like fault 
tolerance, parallelism, specialized rendering hardware like 3d graphics, 
or floating point coprocessors like GPU's, or (in the case of 
macintosh), superior user interface.  If you use any mac based 
applications, you'll generally find web based applications to be sorely 
lacking in user interface, standards, and simplicity.

SQL and databases didn't obviate the need for actual source code 
programming in other languages like C, or even java.  And the analogy 
here is extremely close.  For some extremely well solved problems, like 
simple database business applications, we now have extremely familiar 
answers.  That's what made 4gl's possible and that's what's making web 
based applications possible.  However, this is just a portion of the 
digital market place.

I used to think that the programming language BASIC was one of the worst 
things to ever happen to the world in our life times.  But then, one 
day, I realized that as long as BASIC existed, I'd always have a job 
because there are /so/ many things that just simply can't be done in 
BASIC that people who use BASIC would need to call me in to solve.  I 
feel the same way about 4gl's.  And I feel the same way about web based 
applications.

--rich
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