future of programming

[sindikat]

A year ago when i was in Berlin we discussed with Michiel the future of
the web, and he mentioned that he envisions (among other things) the blurring between
"installed" and "uninstalled" programs. Due to higher-level abstraction,
regular users will not deal with files and program installation directly, but rather
execute the software from the browser (ex: clicking on the link saying
"Open in LibreOffice"), and the computer storage will become a cache for
frequently run software and documents.

I stumbled upon an article by Paul Chiusano, written in December 2011. I
don't know whether any of you read it, but it mentions the following:

"This will be combined with a signed code caching and dependency
tracking mechanism, so that for instance, you can distribute an
application that downloads the entire Java virtual machine and other
dependencies, but only if they aren't already cached on your local
machine (and the signatures match, of course). This changes how we think
about software. Software won't be something you "download onto our
computer and then run". Instead, software exists "out there", and you
run it. As an implementation detail of running it, it may choose to
download some additional code it needs to do its work."[1]

I recommend reading the whole article, it mentions many other ideas, and
author speculates on dissolution of JavaScript and DOM and replacement
by in-browser compiled languages (or VMs) and standardized web
application APIs respectively.

So, what are your thoughts on all of this?

--

[1] http://pchiusano.blogspot.com/2011/12/future-of-programming.html

[Michiel de Jong]

hadn't read it, thanks for the link!

[Melvin Carvalho]

You may be interested in some work under way

http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/

The W3C Web Applications (WebApps) Working Group is chartered to develop specifications for webapps, including standard APIs for client-side development, and a packaging format for installable webapps. This work will include both documenting existing APIs such as XMLHttpRequest and developing new APIs in order to enable richer web applications.

I think it's one of the largest working groups out there part of the "Rich Web Applications" initiative.  Could perhaps chat to these guys if anyone is going to TPAC.
 

--

[1] http://pchiusano.blogspot.com/2011/12/future-of-programming.html


--

[Nathan Rixham]

> chartered<http://www.w3.org/2012/webapps/charter/>to develop

> specifications for webapps, including standard APIs for
> client-side development, and a packaging format for installable webapps.
> This work will include both documenting existing APIs such as

> XMLHttpRequestand developing new APIs in order to enable richer
> *web applications*.

>
> I think it's one of the largest working groups out there part of the "Rich
> Web Applications" initiative. Could perhaps chat to these guys if anyone
> is going to TPAC.

Agree, you may also be interested in the Widgets specifications, as they
cover a lot of the functionality required (but don't work in the main
browser context yet, without extension) - the more people who feel this
is the right way to go, the more chance it has of coming to a browser
near you in the near future, since most browsers support widgets
already, and it's spec'd, just not in the main context.

[Melvin Carvalho]

On 8 October 2012 18:02, sindikat <sind...@mail36.net> wrote:

The release notes [1] for Firefox 16 include "Initial Web App Support [2], which seems to be an appcache-like mechanism, but with a JSON manifest file. I'm sure this is no news to people who work on this stuff regularly, and I've likely misunderstood nuances of the relationship to appcache, but it's another piece of support that's available, and no longer considered experimental.

Also, per [1], CSS3 Animations, Transitions, Transforms and Gradients are now unprefixed.

Noah

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/16.0/releasenotes/
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Apps/Getting_Started