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Not at all. Dead serious. If HTML/CSS/javascript had been properly developed we wouldn't even have to deal with all the issues surrounding web dev. All these issues have been addressed by OS development decades ago (e.g. duplex connectivity, UX layout, MVC split, performance, just to name a few), yet we still have to deal with them now. Million of man-hours have been wasted due to them.. So no, this is not trolling.

Mobile apps have been an absolute blessing and finally enabled proper mobile development. I don't see a need to go back to html other than legacy..



(in response to marknutter's comment below, for some reason the reply button was previously not available. HN bug?):

You can (and we do):

iOS: http://xamarin.com/monotouch android: http://xamarin.com/monoforandroid

You should give it a shot. And as much as I like HN and its content, its mobile UX is pretty shabby (dare I say incompatible? ;)).


I actually use http://cheeaun.github.com/, which is entirely web based and works wonderfully well. No updating of the app required, no mini-browser within the app, etc.


I think you mean http://hackerwebapp.com/ ? ;)


oh, haha, right!


Mobile apps have made it possible to write your app once and have it work on multiple platforms? Gee, I must have missed that (as I post to HN, a web app that works on multiple platforms).


Don't kid yourself. Anyone writing web app "once and have it work on multiple platforms" is just writing different workaround for the different platforms into the same codebase.

HTML was created to markup structure of the document, CSS was created to style the look of that document. JavaScript was created to add some interactity. The idea of the HTML web was about documents, not apps.

Now compare that to the native SDK's which were created for apps develpoment and specifically targeted to solve specific problems. Anyone claiming that web technologies today or tomorrow will be a good replacement for native SDKs has very little idea about native SDKs. Myriad of frameworks trying just so hack some MVC with webtech is a good indicator about the suitability for the task.

Sure, with enough time you can bolt-on enough feature on the top of HTML and JS to make it bearable for apps development: but it will be just that — stuff bolted on the tool created to solve completely different problems.

I don't know why looking at every problem like a nail just because all you have is a hammer is suddenly a good idea.


> I don't know why looking at every problem like a nail just because all you have is a hammer is suddenly a good idea.

Uh.. because it's cross platform. The ubiquity of the web is literally the only reason why people use HTML/CSS/Javascript. All your points are valid except for the fact that you are blatantly disregarding the single biggest downside of native development: multiple-platform support. I'm sorry, the world isn't made up entirely of iPhones or Android phones.


You mean a mix of server side generated code full of CSS, JavaScript and HTML hacks so that it behaves in a similar way across multiple browsers?


You mean webkit?


Ah the web engine that has a different set of features depending on the browser that uses it.


I read this on the YC iPhone app. I prefer the native app because it's a vastly more suitable experience than the browser version.


In addition to that, you can deploy your apps on your own terms, rather than Apple's or Google's.


If only I could write web documents in yaml + python.

I do agree, and I hope people aren't downvoting you like crazy, because the only reason html/css/js exist is because it is entrenched. Same reason people use C and C++. They both took a market you can't easily shift away from (by both being effectively an ABI) and are now indisputable.

Fuzzy XML with a curly braces C style semicolon delimitered design language? A programming language with no standard library besides a math module, so your website ends up being 3mB of JS libraries and 100kB of actual document?

Though I wouldn't say mobile apps are absolutely a "blessing". The Android XML + Java morass is barely a step above html + javascript, and I'd argue it has even less productivity. I end up getting the most freaky bugs in layouts trying to get them working on multiple devices and waste so much time on that blasted syntax.


> the only reason html/css/js exist is because it is entrenched

It wasn't entrenched in the mid 1990s, heck, it arguably wasn't entrenched into the early 2000s when some people were trying to move apps to *ML, or another VM besides the one that failed in the 90s. None of the alternatives won out.

I'm not going to argue that making in-browser apps is a walk in the park, but I do think that a lot of people making arguments about how app development was a solved problem for native OS are both (a) overstating their case (b) seemingly blind to the advantages that html/css/js have along with the liabilities.




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