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People Don't Hate to Make Desktop Apps, Do They?

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the all-not-yet-lost dept.

Annie Peterson writes "Paul Graham has been making the argument that desktop development is dead — That's his premise for declaring Microsoft dead as well, and he claims that no one out there likes to develop for the desktop anymore. But that's not true, or is it? Desktop development is easier, faster, more productive, and infinitely more enjoyable — right? The question is, since web apps were originally built on desktop applications themselves, have the tables flipped? Or is it just wishful thinking?"

2 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Firefox 3.0 by PIPBoy3000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wait for Firefox 3.0. Soon you'll be able to use your web apps, even if you're connected at 0 Mbps.

  2. Re:Might be in the minority here.. by The+Bungi · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It's just a different paradigm and mindset. They both have their unique advantages and shortcomings. Get a good IDE, a good framework and some Dr. Pepper and you can probably pull it off once you "grok" the shifts.

    Having said that, a web application will never have the level of control that a forms-based one has, no matter how fancy your JavaScript is. Truth is, the browser is a crappy platform no matter how you look at it. The web illuminati proclaimed the desktop dead ten years ago and now again on the tails of GMail and the half million good and bad "rich" applications developed apparently for the specific purpose of showcasing how utterly screwed up the browser as a platform is.

    But if you work for a living you probably have to go with the flow, so "Ajax" it is until the next fad comes around. Personally I think Java/.NET/Mono and the like with a good forms front end and a really powerful matching backend infrastructure is going to be the next big thing along with XCOPY deployment and zero impact installs. CPUs and memory are catching up to managed frameworks and writing a web service (or a client) is laughably simple now (I remember hand-coding my WSDL and walking in the snow uphill both ways, etc).

    In any case, the fun part is being int he middle of it all =)