
Why is the default answer always a web app? - nreece
http://davidvancouvering.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-is-default-answer-always-web-app.html
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martian
Agreed. There are many things still not possible on the web.

Office/productivity apps? I'd say Google Docs is a far cry from the
performance of MS Office or OpenOffice.

Likewise, 3d performance on the web is miserable at best. You might get a bit
of help from Papervision or Java's 3d engine, but it's not suitable for large,
interactive, 3d applications.

How about copying and pasting from one web app to another? :-)

I love web apps, don't get me wrong, but I'm agreeing that there are many
times when they just won't work.

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jcapote
I copy paste between web apps all the time...

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mattjung
Why Web-Apps? Ease of use, ubiquity, no installation. Why not Java-Webstart?
Because Java is not cool enough. Why not Flex/Silverlight? Hold on, that might
be the next hype. Fad always plays an important role in main-stream
utilisation of technology!

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known
Because it is the default platform on every computer.

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Niten
"But today there is Java (write once, run anywhere) and Java Web Start (auto-
upgrade to all your client machines). [...] You can use traditional
client/server, with rich clients written in Java and deployed by Java Web
Start talking directly to your database using JPA/Hibernate/JDBC. [...] But
even then you can use Java and Java Web Start, and your client application can
talk to the middle/web tier using a service API."

Why is the default answer always Java?

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trezor
_Why is the default answer always Java?_

This is adressed:

 _If you have Java antibodies, you can use Flex or Silverlight. Or take a look
at Cappucino._

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mseebach
Cappucino is a web-framework.

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davidvc
Cappucino delivers an entire application in JavaScript. It doesn't use HTML or
CSS or any of that stuff. When I say "web app" I assume an HTML-based web app.
Flex and Silverlight and even Java are also "web frameworks" if you mean that
they talk with the server over the Internet...

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MaysonL
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail..."

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RobGR
I suspect that we are too focused on web applications as potential businesses
to the exclusion of other ideas.

I recently attended a "Startup Camp" barcamp thing. We had an idea session,
and it started with the reading of a prepared list of ideas -- the audience
stopped that, and requested first that the list be filtered to only software
ideas; then when a desktop app idea was read out, requested the list be
filtered to "server software", and when one of the ideas was a rsync type
backup system for your servers, they further explained that by "server
software" they meant only web apps.

I think this is mainly because web apps are perceived as requiring little
capital to launch, compared to other ideas, especially hardware. Desktop
software is (rightly) suspected of being a morass of weird APIs and hard work.

Java and Java-Webstart are not the correct ways to write desktop software, in
my opinion. If you only know Java and your application is mostly a one-off or
demo, it will probably get the job done. But it is not encouraging to see most
American programmers, when faced with the task of writing a computer program
to run on the desktop, immediately get off in the weeds exploring various ways
to make web apps run on the desktop. There is a large body research on how do
to that, going back 30 years now, and lots of good ways, and systems to make
it easy -- it's sad to see a supposedly technical person fiddle with trying to
port web apps instead of just cranking out a program.

But back to the narrowness of current startup ideas: the cost of doing a
hardware product is often over estimated. Don't knock it till you have checked
out mfgquote.com. One of the major trends in hardware has been making things
customizeable, such as FPGAs instead of ASICs, so no matter what you think up,
it is probably not as hard as you immagine.

A common objection to hardware ideas is that "I will put a lot of capital into
the idea and then cheap chinese manufacturers will copy it and rip me off."
This is silly because webapps and software are even easier to copy.

The hardware idea that triggered the barcamp audience to request only web
apps, was to take the "Mr. Lee catcam" and commercialize it. Unknown to people
there (including myself), the guy who did that hack was already selling it --
check out <http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/pe_cc_o1_en.htm>

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Novash
Got me until he said "Java". What's with the evangelization?

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davidvc
Doesn't have to be Java. That's just what I use. It's not evangelization, just
a preference. Java is a distraction, my point is more about architecture than
any particular manifestation of the architecture.

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johnrob
I'm not sure the author has tried deploying signed java applets on multiple
platforms. The results are wonderfully varied.

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tom_rath
Have you tried using Java Web Start? It's wonderfully simple to deploy and
(almost) lets you forget about past nightmares with applets.

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huherto
I also think that Java Web Start is a pretty good solution when you have
control of the computers where it is going to run and you need dynamic
behavior. But I saw the same problem, people wanted a webapp.

Since then, the best solution I've found is GWT.

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tjpick
Because web apps are on the web. Things that are on the web can be indexed.
Things that are indexed can be found. Things that get found get users and make
money.

In some cases.

