
Michael Arrington argues silverlight is the future of the web - Sam_Odio
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/01/take-time-to-understand-silverlight-its-important/
======
pg
The interesting thing to me in this story is that MSFT spent _ten hours_
selling Arrington on this. They must really care what the startup community
thinks of them.

If I were in his position, though, I'd be cautious about saying stuff like
"Silverlight will be the platform of choice for developers who build rich
Internet applications." If this turns out to be true, it will be the first
time since the mid 1980s that Microsoft has produced a platform voluntarily
adopted by good hackers (as opposed to something they had to use to make stuff
work on Windows).

~~~
jey
I'm no MSFT fanboy, but Silverlight does seem to be a real step up from Flash,
which is the next closest thing out there. I agree that it's extremely
premature for anyone to say something like "Silverlight will be the platform
of choice for developers who build rich Internet applications", but it would
not surprise me if Silverlight gains wide adoption (as long as it truly is as
cross-platform as Microsoft claims).

Of course, it's possible that the APIs and development tools suck despite all
the hoopla and good features. I haven't looked at the beta SDK.

~~~
create_account
But will they open source it, like Adobe did with Flex?

Making it cross-platform (in the short term) is a great strategy, because
then, if it gains acceptance, they can force you back on Windows in the long
run (assuming it stays closed during that time span).

------
stuki
Dudes, unless the silverlight demos was pure smoke and mirrors, and all
involved blatant liars, this is pretty cool stuff. Especially coming from a
bunch of dead guys :). This is something I have been hoping for from MS for a
decade: website like ease of app delivery combined with a non stone age client
programming model. MS is the only one with the size and reach to have any kind
of shot at pulling it off. Nice to see they are finally taking their 'monopoly
responsibilities' seriously. Supposed monopoly or not, size really does matter
when it comes to providing us little guys with assurances that decent codecs
and runtimes are present on our target market's computers ( and phones, gaming
consoles etc. ). How any developers not in direct competition with MS can not
like being able to do rich clients in .net + assorted tools instead of the
current mix of hacked together technologies is beyond me. This doesn't mean
every app has to utilize a rich client, just that for the ones that do, we can
build them in a modern development environment and expect modern runtime
performance. Now..... arc.net? Orders of magnitude faster than JS...

------
mynameishere
Ease of deployment/integration is the crucial issue, of course. The
Javascript+DOM+xmlhtmlrequest model is just so horrendously, hackishly
chicken-wired I'm always ashamed to even touch it...much less use it
professionally. Flash and java applets from day ONE were superior in every,
single way...utterly superior...except when it comes to
deployment/integration. Java applets have the habit of seizing up the machine
and mysteriously failing to load...flash is a bit better, but is gradually
turning into this decade's popup launcher. Neither work well with webpages.
Their failure to really become platforms just shows that an extra second or
two of wait time can be a competitive killer.

But, if MSFT can do this right, goodbye javascript.

~~~
paul
Applets were superior in every way except those that mattered: they never
worked.

~~~
bsaunder
And they were slow to load... and they had a default UI akin to Lotus Notes...
and they didn't fit in seamlessly with the rest of the page.

------
mxh
Question: Is silverlight really part of "the web"? For that matter, is Flash?
(Were applets?) It seems to me that "the web" consists of things built around
W3C standards, to a first approximation.

Just because something plugs into a browser doesn't make it part of "the web";
that's just a sneaky way to put a thick client on the user's computer.

I'd argue that Silverlight _might_ be the future, but it's not the web.
(Whether that would suit MSFT just fine is, of course, open to speculation.)

~~~
paul
If it appears in my browser window and works pretty much anywhere, then it's
part of the web. Technical details are irrelevant.

~~~
ralph
But it doesn't appear. There's this odd jigsaw piece and stuff about
"plugins".

------
staunch
On behalf of Linux users: MS can lightly kiss my silver ass.

~~~
lupin_sansei
"cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of
.NET"

So it will work on Linux: <http://silverlight.net/Default.aspx>

~~~
dpapathanasiou
But even Flash for Linux seems like a low priority -- the latest version (9?)
for Linux was released _long_ after the Windows and Mac versions were done.

------
usablecontent
A lot has already been said, but I want to participate as well:

For those who think Arrington likely didnt took money from MSFT, for the past
couple of months I was seeing MIX ads on the top banner, below the first post
and on the sidebar. Is this not giving money albeit more subtly ?

For PG If you were in his position, having an exclusive interview with Ray
Ozzie, a high profile lunch and ten hours of selling to go with months long ad
campaigns on TC, I am not sure you would have done something different.

But I havent said here that you would have wanted to be in this position,
that's a totally different thing.

I cant really understand this statement of Arrington "it blows away native
Javascript routines - without exaggeration, Ajax looks like a bicycle next to
a Ferrari when compared to Silverlight"

The other reason for writing this post I guess is that the previous post from
Nik didnt got enough page views "Nik wrote a very long post yesterday
afternoon on Silverlight, long after the initial news broke. From a pageview
standpoint, the post was a loser for us. We would have been far better off
doing a one-paragraph post at 10 am announcing the news, and by the time we
wrote in the late afternoon the buzz had worn off somewhat."

------
pg
Anyone else keep seeing a jockstrap when they look at the logo?

~~~
jsjenkins168
Yeah, lingerie or something. Kinda subconsciously enticing.

------
mojuba
(1) Java is dead. (2) MS recognizes Firefox and Safari - really good news. (3)
MS is not dead. (4) MS should thank Anders Hejlsberg for not being dead. (3)
Adobe is f...ed. (2) I hate numbering, it looks like a Basic program. (1) Is
Lisp on Silverlight possible?

------
gibsonf1
I can't believe it - Now I need to see what all this buzz is about. Could
Silverlight from none other than MS be that good? Has anyone here tried it
out? Will MS now rise from the dead?

~~~
jward
The killer features I see with Silverlight is it's ability to run javascript
four orders of magnitude faster than the current average browser. Firefox 3 is
apparently taking Adobe's ECMA script engine which kicks the speed up a few
notches, but for browsers on the market, this is amazing.

The other one that makes me giddy is the fact that Silverlight can control the
DOM outside of its shell... and I can code in Python.

~~~
paul
I doubt that it actually runs JS four orders of magnitude faster. It may run
JS 2-5 times faster, but 10,000 faster is very unlikely. I'd love to run some
tests though -- is there a silverlight demo with a eval loop somewhere?
(something I can type js into and see how fast it runs)

------
nickb
Arrington has completely lost his credibility. He doesn't know what he's
talking about. I remember hearing him at Future of Web Apps saying that
Adobe's Apollo is the greatest thing ever. Now this nonesense...

Is he being paid by MS to push this crap?!? Either that or he's the most
gullible blogger alive.

~~~
staunch
Arrington is not technical. He's being sold on these things by slick guys in
suits, with even slicker demos. He's good at evaluating new consumer products
but there's no reason to assume that extends to evaluating new technologies.
His lack of knowledge does make him extremely gullible.

~~~
nickb
I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'd like to sell him ;).

You're absolutely right, he's just too gullible. I don't think he's taking
money from these companies which products he's pushing but to someone else it
might look that way.

ANY dev environment that requires you to download and install a runtime before
you can run an app is bound for failure. Web apps will be impossible to
beat... and they run on anything! You think you'll ever be able to run these
RIA on a phone?! Not any time soon.

------
danielha
I'm reading promising things about Silverlight. Blowing it off because it's
from Microsoft would be a mistake, though it'd be wise to be wary considering
failed promises of the past.

I want to read more on hands-on SDK experiences before I think any more of it.

------
mattculbreth
So I know that they're trying to say it's not just "applets 2007", but how is
it all that different? There's a 4MB download, it's running a VM (a mini-CLR),
and it's probably going to have security limitations.

~~~
omouse
It's only a 4mb download. Java is 100mb+ last time I checked and no one uses
it much for applets.

Security limitations? I would expect them to be the same as the Java applet
security limitations. Or no limitations at all since this is Microsoft we're
talking about :P

~~~
Tichy
It seems to be a 13MB download: <http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp>

100MB is probably the SDK, which you don't need for running applets.

The problem with plugins is not so much the size, though, it is the
administrator rights. A lot of people surf the net from their offices in big
corporations, where they might not have the rights to install anything on
their computers.

------
reitzensteinm
I for one am very interested in this. I make games, and this would mean I
could use the same code (Ruby!) on the desktop and web versions (right now
it's not really an option unless I use Flash).

~~~
reitzensteinm
Or, of course, just an ActiveX control and other similar technologies on other
platforms, but it's a bit of a nightmare.

------
andre
Prediction: Silverlight will turn out to be something like Frontpage.

