The software industry has moved to the Web, why?

[Skrim 11]

I read here and there that the industry has moved to the Web (programs running in the browser) and it's a must if you want to stay in the industry and be relevant.

 

I get it if you are developing personal apps that target smart phones and tablets, but I really don't understand why program/applications for the proffesionals working on an ordinary pc should use a browser.

 

What I often hear from customers is "It's better". I ask, what is better? The answer is often "eeerrr... eeerrr... not sure" My answer is, the Web is better for the software industry and not neccasarily for the enduser.

 

I'm also an accountant and I use browser based programs every day in my work, I can sum it up with three words: slow..slow..slow and a LOT of mouse clicks. A task in my main Win32 program takes 4 clicks, in a brower based program I use the same task takes 15 clicks. That program is made by one of the "big players" in it's field.

 

Please help me understand, what is "better"?

 

[programmerdelphi2k 237]

each epoch has a new approach! this is the life.

in this epoch, web is consolidated and for each season, a new approach!

 It's the cycle of life.

 For this time, the market says this is the way things should be.  The web is more mature in technology.

 The human being may still need more time to get used to it, but it will.  

When industry seniors asked: "Who wants to have a computer at home, on the table?"  ... time answered, decades later: "Everybody, and at the same time, nobody..." because, the era of "mobile" had arrived.

 So "Better" is just a momentary concept until nothing else replaces it.  As Einstein said: this is relative...

So, it's "better" for some, and not so much for others.  

But certainly, it is the market that has always dictated the rules for the middle-man.

Edited February 19, 2023 by programmerdelphi2k

[programmerdelphi2k 237]

before.... Microsoft hated Linux!  Today they are in love.

(not necessary Linus)

Edited February 19, 2023 by programmerdelphi2k

[Dorian C 0]

Web is far better for the software vendors and not for the enduser.

Now that "big players" left the desktop, there is an incredible business opportunity for startups in making new desktop accounting software. Moving to the web is not determinated by a real request for the majority of users, but pushed by some software vendors.

 

Edited February 19, 2023 by Dorian C

[programmerdelphi2k 237]

who m$ove the world?

indu$try or endu$er?

 

I think there is a pact here...

one says: "I want this!"  

the other responds, "I have this..."

Edited February 19, 2023 by programmerdelphi2k

[Skrim 11]

6 hours ago, Dorian C said:

 Moving to the web is not determinated by a real request for the majority of users, but pushed by some software vendors.

Exactly what I mean too.

[Brian Evans 109]

On the iPhone web apps were considered subpar and replaced with native applications as soon as Apple allowed it. Web apps have some advantages but are not the be all and end all of application development. 

 

 

 

 

[Skrim 11]

"I want this". Yes, 15 clicks versus 4 clicks is exactly what the enduser wants 🙂

 

Why do programmers market such stupidity? I thought the whole idea using some software was to make the workload less, not worse.

 

The list why a browser is less suitable for complex programs is endless.

 

An example: In a browser based program (salary) I use there is a list (grid) and I want to edit row 25 and 26. I scroll down to row 25 and do my editing and save. Now row 26, but the list has moved back to row 1, scroll down again..... Why not stay in row 25 so I can easily choose row 26. (As it did in the "old" Win 32 program)

 

Not a problem if you do the task 1-2 times a day, but what if you repeat 50 times a day?

 

According to the Marketing Department, this is what an enduser wants.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2023 by Skrim

[Lars Fosdal 1793]

The enterprise loves this because of zero deployment

As long as your desktop/laptop has the appropriate browser, all you need is the URL.

No need to install, update, patch, and you can work from anywhere without an high-powered laptop.

 

Rolling out apps to thousands of PCs is a chore - and maybe the user have installed something that interfers with the new version.

Rolling out a new web version is simply a tweak of a URL redirect, rolling back - the same.

No deployed files that can be copied and reverse engineered or used without credentials.

 

As for the quality of the web apps - that varies a LOT - but the good ones are on par with the desktop editions.

[Fr0sT.Brutal 900]

3 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

zero deployment

Yes, unbeatable argument. All this mess of multiple OS-dependent builds, OS incompatibility, outdated versions and users that don't want to upgrade because they like everything and the new version is a piece of bell&whistle shit (I am the one!)... Moreover, multi-device adaptation is built-in. All you have to do is check UI on different types of devices and that's all.

[Stano 143]

Reading is interesting. Only no one mentioned:

• the internet goes down
• connection is slow - for whatever reason

At that point the program is unusable. If its creator didn't think of it.

[Fr0sT.Brutal 900]

4 minutes ago, Stano said:

Only no one mentioned

I guess the domain is enterprise-level apps residing in LAN and using DB/remote services anyway. Of course, ultimately moving stuff like IDE, notepad or office to 3rd party cloud is pretty bad idea (however, they are nice working in parallel with traditional software)

[Lars Fosdal 1793]

On the contrary, more and more of our services are off-prem in-cloud.

Yes, there are situations where this is bad - but there are ways to remedy this - f.x. with on-prem caches for production related data.

As for loss of connection to internet - with multiple diversely routed ISPs as well as 4G/5G backup - that scenario is not really present for us.

 

As always, there is no one-solution-fits-all, but right now, the pendulum is way over towards cloud hosted web apps.

[Stano 143]

11 minutes ago, Fr0sT.Brutal said:

Of course, ultimately moving stuff like IDE, notepad or office to 3rd party cloud is pretty bad idea

I think the big companies have a different opinion. See MS and its 365.

I totally agree with the rest.

[Fr0sT.Brutal 900]

2 minutes ago, Stano said:

I think the big companies have a different opinion. See MS and its 365.

As Dorian said:

11 hours ago, Dorian C said:

Web is far better for the software vendors and not for the enduser.

 

[programmerdelphi2k 237]

11 hours ago, Skrim said:

Now row 26, but the list has moved back to row 1, scroll down again.....

well, the web app is stateless... then each requirement is the only one... no exists "before"... exists "now" and only this.

for sure, it's not appreciated but is this... I hate Youtube reload it each time when im in my screen with 100...200th item  aaaaahhhhhhh 🤬

Edited February 20, 2023 by programmerdelphi2k

[Skrim 11]

well, the web app is stateless... then each requirement is the only one... no exists "before"... exists "now" and only this.

for sure, it's not appreciated but is this...

 

Exactley why I "hate" to do work using a browser. I wold estimate my workload has increased by 30% over the last two or three years because of "The world is moving to the web".

Even worse, a lot of software companies no longer offer support by phone, you have to talk to a robot or fill in a contact form, lucky you if you get an answer in only 1-2 days

 

I'm so glad my main program is developed in Delphi by myself 🙂

Edited February 20, 2023 by Skrim

[David Schwartz 430]

A few years back, everything shifted to a "mobile-first" approach. That required companies to keep their existing staff to maintain existing software while hiring new teams for each mobile platform they want to target. it's not like you can use one code base and just put in $IFDEFS! Android and iOS are totally different environments and typically use different programming languages and toolsets. So they now have THREE dev teams instead of one. Then someone says, What about Macs? And what about Linux? 

 

Well, browser-based apps solve that problem for the most part. It requires a different programming paradigm and the problems being cited are what happens when people familiar with desktop programming paradigms carry them over to web-based apps -- the results are not very good.

 

Back in the 80's and 90's, some Really Big Companies hired big consulting firms to advise them on how to best migrate their paper-based systems over to online systems. After spending 6- and 7-figures on these guys, what they got back, predictably enough, was "just turn all of your paper forms into online forms and everything will be fine." Yeah, right. It took these industries more than a decade to correct the problems THAT bad advice caused.

 

You cannot carry forward an existing paradigm to a new platform that requires a different paradigm and expect it to work the same; it just won't. But that's what everybody seems to do.

 

I mean ... even though everybody SAYS "we're now mobile-first", in reality, there are features they're paranoid of including in mobile apps for security reasons, so most mobile apps are not as fully-functional as their desktop brothers -- or even, OMG, full web-based apps! 

 

Look how many vendors interact with us consumers ASSUMING we're using a mobile app, and if we're using their web app instead, they have no idea what to suggest! There are features missing from mobile apps that can only be set on their main site's web app ... and in some cases, vice versa.

 

Why can't you run their web apps on your mobile devices? Well, there's that paradigm-shift they haven't figured out how to deal with yet. Their main web apps are designed to replace their DESKTOP apps, not run on mobile devices.

 

I had a bank account that had a web app and a mobile app that was also a web app, but it was different from their main one. WalMart bought them up as an in-house bank and one day their main web app suddenly looked just like their mobile app! All kinds of features had disappeard that were previously only available on their main web app. All they had to say about it was, "we've made our services easier and more accessible for all of our users."

 

Web apps require a different usage paradigm than desktop apps, and the industry is still trying to figure out what that is. In the mean time, they're sticking to what they know and using the older desktop app paradigm, as ill-fitting as it is at times.

 

(A big one they haven't figured out yet is how to get the benefits of "hovering the mouse cursor over something" to see some meaningful information. You cannot do that with a touch-screen, and nobody has implemented a consistent approach to providing this feature.)

 

But at the end of the day, browser-based apps represent a single common platform that pretty much all computing devices can access now and in the future, regardless of their CPU, OS, and physical UI characeristics. We've been through these kinds of paradigm shifts in the past, and the only real surprise to me is why people always expect them to be painless and not require any changes.

[programmerdelphi2k 237]

more and more I am sure that David, after retiring from commercial life, urgently needs a new occupation to unload all that accumulation and the need to get out so many things that were imprisoned and, who knows, suffocated in his mind.  

This can be seen in the length of her texts and the need to lay out his view of things in such detail...

I try to imagine how troubled his mind is.  

maybe it's time to write a book, no? 😁

Edited February 21, 2023 by programmerdelphi2k

[David Schwartz 430]

Very astute observation. Do a little research on autism and Asperger's if you're interested in understanding it better. I was diagnosed two years ago and am still learning about it and how it affects how I interact with the world. Autism is a genetic condition that affects about 2.5% of the population, and about 20% of that is on the "Asperger's" end of the spectrum. So it's not exactly rare, but not easily recognized.

 

More to your point, there's something in my mind that seems to make me feel that I'm constantly misunderstood, and I have lots of evidence of that, so I over-compensate. Psychologist said it's "normal" for how my brain works and is never go away, so I gave up trying to "fix" it.

 

The easiest way to think of it is that people with Asperger's are relatives of Mr. Spock and have some Vulcan heritage. Observant Star Trek fans might recall that Kirk got along well with Spock, but McCoy had a really hard time dealing with him. I'm pretty sure his character was modeled a lot after someone with Asperger's.

 

And there's no need to apologize. Just consider that there's a common believe most people have that says, "Everybody thinks the same way I do." Even a lot of certifiably crazy people think that. It's not true. In fact, most people do tend to think alike. That's called "neuro-typical". But a lot of people are what's called "neuro-divergent", including those with autism, and our brains just don't seem to be wired the same as most "neuro-typicals". 

Edited February 21, 2023 by David Schwartz

[Mike Torrettinni 198]

2 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

We've been through these kinds of paradigm shifts in the past, and the only real surprise to me is why people always expect them to be painless and not require any changes.

For me it's surprising that after so much time, most of the online solutions are quickly sluggish and awkward to use compared to desktop solutions.

 

 

And don't let warez-king bother you about your posts, I find them always interesting to read.

Edited February 21, 2023 by Mike Torrettinni

[David Schwartz 430]

2 minutes ago, Mike Torrettinni said:

For me it's surprising that after so much time, most of the online solutions are quickly sluggish and awkward to use compared to desktop solutions.

 

I'm guessing you weren't around when Windows 3.0 came on the scene, or even Windows 3.1. People said the exact same thing when comparing it to DOS, which was exactly what you see in a (DOS) Command Shell today on Windows, or the Terminal on Macs.

 

Given how much stuff is moving into the browser, the most surprising thing to me is how horribly bad web browsers are at leaking memory. Or that nobody has figured out how to organize the damn things so we don't need so many windows and tabs open all the time. I have a Mac Mini with 36 GB of RAM, and about every 4-6 weeks it runs out of memory (due to browser leaks) and spontaneously reboots. As the fragmented memory accumulates, the entire system slows down. It's like driving a car with a steady oil leak that's ignored because the mechanics are so busy adding new features to it and racing around town testing it -- eventually it just dies and everybody keeps scratching their head and mumbling, "Boy, we sure didn't see THAT coming!" REALLY?

 

That's part of the performance issue. But the other part, IMO, is that devs have gone overboard in terms having too much stuff on a page polling external servers with inefficient queries, instead of just caching a bunch of data and waiting for something to deal with. I worked on a regular Delphi app at one place that did that, and it was just slower than crap. My team spent about 6 months redesigning it to reduce the number of queries it sent to the back-end, as well as improving the indexing. When it was originally written, there wasn't much data being manipulated; but over a decade of use, some customers had nearly a million records in their DB that weren't indexed efficiently, and these pages were just constantly hitting the back-end with SQL queries that returned HUGE result sets when they only needed a couple of records. You'd tab from one field to the next and it would send a request then get back 50k records when it just needed a single integer. I suspect that's what a big part of web-based front ends are doing today.

[Skrim 11]

Time to sum up this thread

• The enduser is not the most important part
• Most important, the "computer guy" Zero deployment, no local installation etc.
• Most developers are not capable of reviewing a program from the enduser's perspective

 

 

[Attila Kovacs 631]

5 hours ago, Mike Torrettinni said:

And don't let warez-king bother you about your posts, I find them always interesting to read.

👏😜

[Stano 143]

OT
I don't have any mental disorder. But I have yet to meet a person who understands my thinking. Some told me directly.
Simply, every person has a unique mindset. There is always something different from others. Some more and some less. I more.