The Long Death of Fat Clients

Um... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 07:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

Isn't this whole HTML 5 business basically Browsers becoming fat clients, by your definition?

Re:Um... by Johann+Lau · 2012-06-28 07:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

Yeah, but *heavily* crippled ones.
28c3: The coming war on general computation
Re:Um... by Old97 · 2012-06-28 07:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

Exactly. "Fat" doesn't refer to the footprint as much as it does the proportion of the workload executed in the client. A thin client renders and perhaps it formats, but does it also maintain state? If it does (e.g. HTML5) or you rely on it to do a lot of cross-field validations then I'd say your client is getting "fatter". Its a continuum, but if you lose enough hair at some point we will all agree that you are bald.

--
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Re:Um... by mcgrew · 2012-06-28 07:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

Isn't this whole HTML 5 business basically Browsers becoming fat clients, by your definition?
They want all your data on their servers is why they keep pusing the "fat client is dead" meme. I doubt they'll ever give up; just like Intel was soundly trounced for suggesting something like UEFI fifteen years ago, followed by Microsoft being soundly trounced for Palladium (UEFI ten yeras ago), and now they're still at at, the bastards.
The "fat client is dead, the cloud is better!" bullshit is no different. They want to control YOUR computer and YOUR data.
Rise up and fight this absurd madness!
What's worse is the "phone apps are making phones fat clients." No, what's making phones "fat clients" is the same thing as making your PC a thin client -- their desire for control over your data. "Want to listen to our radio station on your Android or iPhone? We have an app for that!" when a simple web page served to your browser should work. Point your phone's browser to WQNA and click the aac or mp3 link, you should hear them on your phone. Why can't other stations do that? (BTW, in about five hours they'll be playing ska and raggae; it's a local college station that you can never be sure what genre is going to be played. I once heard Johnny Cash followed by the Dead Kennedies on that station).
If the data is coming from the internet, like a radio stream, you should need no app. When your data is produced locally, you should need no internet.
Why are we letting these people from Bizarro World fuck everything up, anyway?

--
Free Martian Whores!
Re:Um... by cpu6502 · 2012-06-28 07:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

I can't watch youtube at work. Is there a text version of this?
I like the old "plugin" model of web browsers. If you want to see a JPEG, install JPEGview. If you want to hear an MP3 or AIFF, install a player. Over time though I guess all these plugins have been buried inside the browser code. Now the browser is expected to do it all automatically in one large massive program that eats a gigabyte of RAM.

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Re:Um... by fermat1313 · 2012-06-28 08:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

I can't watch youtube at work. Is there a text version of this?
I like the old "plugin" model of web browsers. If you want to see a JPEG, install JPEGview. If you want to hear an MP3 or AIFF, install a player. Over time though I guess all these plugins have been buried inside the browser code. Now the browser is expected to do it all automatically in one large massive program that eats a gigabyte of RAM.
If someone came out with a browser out of the box that could only display HTML text with no pictures, sound, etc, do you really think it would get enough use to become traction? Images, sound and video are part of the modern day web browsing experience for the vast majority of users. It's time to get over the origins of the web as a text-only system
Also, most browsers do have the capability for plug-ins, which meets some of your needs. Ultimately, though, plug-ins present their own privacy and security concerns (think Flash). I'd rather have my basic services provided by a trusted vendor with the resources to properly test their software and with a reputation I can trust.
Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 08:11 · Score: 1, Insightful

http://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html
Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 08:14 · Score: 1, Insightful

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
Re:Um... by CubicleZombie · 2012-06-28 08:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm currently working on a large JavaScript based application. It's just like every rich client I've ever done, except it's not type safe, or compile safe. Debugging is a pain in the ass. It's slower. I have to make it work in multiple browsers. It's enterprisey and web 2.0ish and pretty, but missing all the powerful UI tools I have under .NET or Swing. As a developer, It just seems like a huge step backwards.

--
:wq
Re:Um... by w.hamra1987 · 2012-06-28 09:00 · Score: 2

compile your own firefox, without the built-in libraries

--
my sig pwns your sig
Re:Um... by Bucc5062 · 2012-06-28 09:03 · Score: 1

Thank you!!! I feel the same way. Program development in a browser was never fully fleshed out, but brought to us in pieces and we get to try and "make it work". I love that smartphone apps are really nothing but shrunk down desktop apps just more function specific. Web development is kuldgy and limited, because of the browser and while it allows "cross platform" execution, we code to the lowest denominator.

--
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Re:Um... by icebraining · 2012-06-28 09:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Letting" them? What exactly do you propose? That we set their offices on fire because they make apps instead of websites?
They want control over the experience and data, and most people do not want control over their own experience and data. You can warn about the current and potential dangers, but otherwise it's their stuff, if they want to give it away, who are we to decide otherwise?

--
Dilbert RSS feed
Re:Um... by icebraining · 2012-06-28 09:10 · Score: 4, Informative

So? Machine code isn't typed either. Much like for native applications, you can use a statically (and strongly) typed language and compile it down to JavaScript.
List of languages that compile to JavaScript.

--
Dilbert RSS feed
Re:Um... by foniksonik · 2012-06-28 09:15 · Score: 3, Interesting

Would you want to download and install every web based app you use to your desktop? How about every commerce site?
Just asking. Actually want to know.

--
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Re:Um... by johnwfran · 2012-06-28 09:22 · Score: 2

Here's a transcript: https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcript.md
Re:Um... by matrim99 · 2012-06-28 09:27 · Score: 1

I believe the goal for this idea was to have a browser that uses very few resources and is very fast, and the user has the option to add only the functionality that they desire. The effect is to allow the user control over how much of their system's resources their browser uses.
There are many people who would like to use the web who have slow or unreliable internet connections, or have impairments that force them to access information differently than the rest of us. Thus, a text only browser makes sense for a blind user with text to speech software installed. A browser without sound capability installed isn't wasting resources for playing sounds for a deaf user. Not enabling video makes sense for those with limited network connectivity, such as folks in developing countries or those who travel to remote areas for a living.
We're not all the same, so this idea makes a lot of sense to me.

--
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
Re:Um... by JamesRing · 2012-06-28 09:29 · Score: 1

Where is the +1 (Hilariously Paranoid) button?
Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 10:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

I totally agree.
Last week, I posted a comment bemoaning the lack of type safety in JavaScript. I got ruthlessly blasted by people who claimed that it hasn't been proven that type-safety-checking languages are better and that I was a crusty old fart for hanging onto the old ways and refusing to embrace the new paradigms of purely-dynamic typing.
I have 25 years of experience that tells me that I've avoided hundreds of nasty bugs throughout my career by having C or C++ catch all my type inconsistencies. Those are hundreds of bugs that I didn't have to spend time tracking down in the debugger. I'm dead serious when I say that if I didn't have a strong type-checking compiler all these years, I probably wouldn't have remained a software engineer for more than a couple of years. I would have long ago lost interest in using a debugger all day long to catch my own stupid-ass typing errors that could have been totally preventable if the language had been better designed. It would have been like digging ditches with a spoon -- fuck that job if they're not going to provide you with the proper tools.
I'm very concerned that the future of the Web seems to rest on a language that doesn't have even the OPTION to use convenient type-checking -- not even at run time. (It would be possible to add this to JavaScript, but they refuse to do so. Note that later versions of PHP bolted on run-time type-checking as an after-thought, so it's obviously possible to do.)
I'm sure I'll get mercilessly criticized again for posting the most powerful lesson that I've learned in my past 25 years of software engineering: "having the option to use strong typing is FUNDAMENTALLY BETTER than not having that option". Static type checking is luxurious. But if static type checking isn't possible, then at least allow me to specify the type so that it can be dynamically checked. More generally: if you can lock something down without taking away functionality, then DO IT. Use "const" when you can. Use "private" when you can. Use an enum instead of an int if you can. Open files read-only when you can. Have the compiler check types and issue warnings if you can. Etc., etc., etc. It's amazing to realize that the single most important principle in all my years of experience can really be summarized in just a single paragraph.
And it's so sad to see the web's language of the future (JavaScript) deliberately ignore my most important principle.
Re:Um... by Nethemas+the+Great · 2012-06-28 10:04 · Score: 3, Interesting

I thought I had lost this argument on ./ Good to know there are a few of us out there still retaining our sanity. HTML5/JavaScript isn't the WORA technology we should be pursuing. It works reasonably well for small, simple clients but trying to apply it to anything requiring a even modest sophistication causes them to get unreasonably expensive to develop, ensure quality, and maintain when compared to Java, C#, C++, etc. and their respective presentation technologies such as WPF and Swing. This really has less to do with "maturity" of the supporting technology and more to do with the fundamental nature of the languages.
Part of the appeal of HTML5/JavaScript I think are the low barriers to entry, and the "pioneering" or "frontier" romanticism brought out by the anything goes, blank slate, fiddle and tinker until it works approach that's required. In many ways it actually reminds me of the appeal that Minecraft has to so many people. The mature, safe, predictable, and structured/formal languages and technologies just don't carry the same appeal.

--
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
Re:Um... by Johann+Lau · 2012-06-28 10:19 · Score: 1

I can't watch youtube at work. Is there a text version of this?
You know what, there actually is!
https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcript.md
that doesn't include the Q&A section though, which is just as long (30 minutes talk, 30 minutes Q&A) and interesting, if not to say important :)
Re:Um... by Johann+Lau · 2012-06-28 10:23 · Score: 1

oops, sorry.. mod parent redundant, heh :P
Re:Um... by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 10:32 · Score: 1

I believe internet explorer still has the option to turn off image rendering, displaying those ugly square boxes instead. I don't have to worry about video right now because there is no flash installed on the Firefox I use at work.
Re:Um... by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 10:35 · Score: 2

I think you're confused. If you use a service via a thick client, you still end up sending your data to the provider of that service. Otherwise it's not a client, its a standalone application. Put your tinfoil hat back on.
Re:Um... by Cryacin · 2012-06-28 11:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

I think it comes down to the serious question of how much you are going to use it. For an online ordering system where you are only interesting in placing an order once every few months/years, such as business cards or something along those lines, you'd want a web experience. For something like timesheets which you use every day/multiple times a day, a desktop deploy is warranted.

--
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Re:Um... by Cryacin · 2012-06-28 11:19 · Score: 1

I must be part of the crusty old geek category too my friend. But it's not just the basic OO principles that are out the window. Have you looked into traits? The basic paradigm is, why not let the user implement their interfaces, you know, like an abstract class, but still allow for multiple inheritance. It's like these guys have never heard of the Deadly Diamond of Doom. It was further confirmed to me when I was at a conference with one of these guys, and when I asked the speaker about it, he looked at me puzzled and fired up wikipedia.

Oh well. At least we'll know some good answers when the pendulum swings back again.

--
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Re:Um... by Sayjack · 2012-06-28 11:33 · Score: 1

Despite the demise or imminent demise of Flex. It did have a superb integrated debugging environment that I have yet to find in the Javascript world. Firebug, however, is getting there but I still find it clunky compared to the other integrated IDEs I have worked with in the past.

--
-- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.
Re:Um... by Raptoer · 2012-06-28 11:34 · Score: 1

My suggestion is to switch to GWT whenever you can. Google Web Toolkit lets me write and debug in java but the end product is in JavaScript with no plugins required.
I used to use flex and gwt is superior in my opinion.
Re:Um... by twisted_pare · 2012-06-28 11:37 · Score: 1

Sounds like you're doing it wrong. Try GWT. I've done many other RIA frameworks (ASP.NET, C#.NET, WP, JQuery, Prototype, CakePHP, ExtJs), but GWT is just perfect. You get every possible optimization to your application and you just program in delightfully typesafe Java. Plus, who cares about AJAX calls and handlers? GWT just autowires that for you. To really take advantage of the modern browser, you need a modern approach like GWT.

--
HTFU
Re:Um... by Pf0tzenpfritz · 2012-06-28 11:43 · Score: 1

Why are we letting these people from Bizarro World fuck everything up, anyway?
Because "we" are too bloody stupid to know the difference between client-side and server-side. "We" don't even know jack about remote or local. All "we" can do with our fancy phone (which makes us smarter than everyone else by the simple action of buying one) is push a single button telling us to agree & continue. What, BTW, do you mean with "Bizarro World" - is there an app for that?

--
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Re:Um... by dzfoo · 2012-06-28 11:52 · Score: 1

Have you heard that Google is phasing out GWT in favor of AppEngine?
dZ.

--
Carol vs. Ghost
...Can you save Christmas?
Re:Um... by Sayjack · 2012-06-28 12:18 · Score: 1

I switched long ago. Flex was just an personal exploratory activity, not a long term commitment. Sure, I thought about buying it a promise ring, but backed out before I was in too deep. All joking aside, I was pleasantly surprised with the environment built around Flex, and thought that it was much superior to the applet. Why Adobe thought developers would pay for the right to build application effectively on it through FlexBuilder licenses is a New Coke type of decision.
GWT may be great, but Google is too fickle in it's long term support of anything. If I build a significant application around a technology, I want something with longevity. No offense but I hesitate to plug into anything Google for this reason. Just yesterday it seems that Google Wave was going to overtake the world -- and it was cool actually. I'm actually surprised they didn't continue to back it in the form of android or HTML5 technologies aimed at mobile devices and tablets.

--
-- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.
Re:Um... by Lennie · 2012-06-28 12:23 · Score: 1

Not only that, but when it is a plugin, the browser can't get at the content.
When the player is the browser, you can use javascript to for example create snapshots or do other fancy things like make it better viewable for the visual impaired.

--
New things are always on the horizon
Re:Um... by Lennie · 2012-06-28 12:27 · Score: 1

Webdevelopers that are building apps for mobile feel that it is a step backwards too.
So I think the problem is somewhere else.
People should do what they are good at.

--
New things are always on the horizon
Re:Um... by Lennie · 2012-06-28 12:28 · Score: 1

Sorry, wrong thread.

--
New things are always on the horizon
Re:Um... by Lennie · 2012-06-28 12:30 · Score: 1

Webdevelopers that are building apps for mobile feel that it is a step backwards too.
They know the browser environment like the back of their hand.
So I think the problem is somewhere else.
People should do what they are good at.
So why are you trying to developer a JavaScript based application ? You obviously are the wrong person to do so.

--
New things are always on the horizon
Re:Um... by TheDarkMaster · 2012-06-28 13:07 · Score: 1

IS a huge step backwards... Web developer and normal, compiled application developer here. Web "app" works, but is a pain do make then right in a shitfull language (javascript)

--
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Re:Um... by cpu6502 · 2012-06-28 13:44 · Score: 1

>>>There are many people who would like to use the web who have slow or unreliable internet connections
Good point. I don't use a text-only browser, but when I'm on dialup I load Opera and turn everything off. No images, no flash. It loads very speedily. (Flash is the main culprit for why dialup is almost unusable. What a bandwidth hog.)

--
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 14:35 · Score: 1

Isn't that what mobile apps are all about?
Re:Um... by MrSteveSD · 2012-06-28 14:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

I agree with you totally there. The lack of static typing (or even the option of static typing) seems to be almost universal in scripting languages. The issue goes further than just type safety and avoidable bugs though. Static typing allows you to better express your intent, not just to other programmers (which you can do with comments) but to the program itself. This makes it easy for a development environment to provide useful things like auto-completion. Auto-Complete saves so much time and also helps you broaden your knowledge of the available classes and functions.

Another issue that sometimes pops up in scripting languages is a lack of constants. I remember bringing this issue up on a python forum and they just told me to use variables instead. When I pointed out that you could easily change the value of the "constant" in code by mistake, I was told something along the lines of "well that would be your own stupid fault."

There seems to be a general attitude in certain circles that the basic protections you get with static typing and constants etc are somehow pointless or unnecessary. Google seems to recognise their importance though, which is no doubt why they created Dart. I believe they have been using some kind of enhanced Javascript internally for some time. I know there was a push to add things like static typing, classes etc to Javascript but it was resisted.

It seems bizarre to me that with more and more being done in the browser, we are still stuck with a Javascript, a language that increasingly seems ill-suited to the tasks it is being used for.
Re:Um... by UnknownSoldier · 2012-06-28 15:18 · Score: 1

This has been my experience as well. You are 100% correct and succinct. While the text-string pragma-hack
"use strict"
helps, it doesn't solve the root problem. Who knew that we'd come back 100% full circle back to Basic (lack of type safety) after all these years. :-)
If you think debugging JavaScript is fun, try debugging WebGL! gl.GetError is so broken it is not even funny. One the same hardware as a native C/C++ app you can get descriptive error messages. On WebGL you are lucky to get _anything_. Fortunately you only have to debug your WebGL base shader code once.
Yes, I'm aware of:
http://www.khronos.org/webgl/wiki/Debugging
Now if only we could get a proper mouse-lock for web applets...
Re:Um... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 18:59 · Score: 1

"Letting" them? What exactly do you propose? That we set their offices on fire because they make apps instead of websites?
They want control over the experience and data, and most people do not want control over their own experience and data. You can warn about the current and potential dangers, but otherwise it's their stuff, if they want to give it away, who are we to decide otherwise?
Mod parent: -1: Idiot. Users don't want it to be a complicated thing requiring specialised knowledge but no user wants other people controling their lives. Every time some idiot forces a change of interface you can hear the cries globally. The thing is you shouldn't need to edit a goddamn properties file and have to have esoteric knowledge to have control over things. There should be easy to find options and sensible defaults.
Re:Um... by jones_supa · 2012-06-28 19:20 · Score: 3, Interesting

I would happily install some of the big ones (Slashdot, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) as standalone applications. Especially the ones that use a lot of AJAX or Flash would benefit a lot -- at least I'm sick and tired of the sluggish bubblegum.
Re:Um... by kikito · 2012-06-28 20:10 · Score: 1

Your post works both ways.
"I'm currently working on a large Java based application. It's just like every rich client I've ever done, except it enforces me to write a lot of redundant type information, and I have to compile every time I change something. Waiting for the VM to start is a pain in the ass. It's slower. I have to make it work in multiple operative systems. It's enterprisey and web 2.0ish and "secure", but I have to use this huge IDE I'm not familiar with and navigate through miriads of submenus to make the most simple tasks. I'm missing all the flexibility I'm used to in a console-friendly environment. As a developer, It just seems like a huge step backwards."
Re:Um... by evilviper · 2012-06-28 21:11 · Score: 1

Images, sound and video are part of the modern day web browsing experience for the vast majority of users.
Sure... That's why millions of users install browser ad-ons which do nothing else but to BLOCK those images, sound, and video.
Browser plug-ins like Quicktime were infinitely better than the current crop of Flash or HTML5 browsers. You just gave it a URL or a file, and a LOCAL, NATIVE player would handle it however it wanted to. Instead we have everyone reinventing the video player, writing a new Flash app to handle it, poorly. And the performance? We had "hardware acceleration" (overlay), full-screen video, zero tearing, etc., back in the early '90s, but now every website designer out there thinks he can invent a better video player app in Flash (with the buttons slightly moved around) than what we've had for decades, and we're all paying for it.

Ultimately, though, plug-ins present their own privacy and security concerns (think Flash).
Flash is the big exception, NOT the rule. When you're just embedding images, sound, or video, there's no privacy concerns, and the only security issues are basic buffer overflows that we'd have to handle wherever the player is. But with Flash, it's a whole language in there, which doesn't inherently operate within the confines of the browser. Plugins for images, audio, and video would have no such problems.

--
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Re:Um... by syockit · 2012-06-28 21:35 · Score: 1

Those are totally different things, dude. In fact, you can use GWT in AppEngine!

--
Democracy is for the people; you only vote once per season and we'll do the rest of the work for you don't have to.
Re:Um... by Hognoxious · 2012-06-29 03:09 · Score: 1

Webdevelopers are backward

FTFY

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:Um... by hackertourist · 2012-06-29 06:41 · Score: 1

There is one web app that I'd like to see replaced with a local application: video. You know, way back when, websites would just put a hyperlink to an .avi, you'd click on it and it'd open in VLC.
Today, you get a bloody Flash video that stutters on my 3 year-old computer, won't allow me to seek or fast-forward properly, won't allow me to change the aspect ratio, won't do a million things that were easy in VLC. Video on the Web is back in the stone age thanks to web apps.
Re:Um... by Aighearach · 2012-06-29 07:10 · Score: 1

From a crusty old slashdotter to the newcomer in the old hat, people have been successfully using dynamic typed languages since before you started. 25 years?? Dynamic typed languages were already one of the old ways of doing things you should have been schooled in.
And as somebody who has been using dynamic languages for over half of 26 years coding, I can point out, different bugs are natural in one or the other, there is not less bugs in one or the other.
Debugging uses different methods, but there is not a difference is ability to debug, or ease of debugging.
Re:Um... by Aighearach · 2012-06-29 07:17 · Score: 1

Static typing allows you to better express your intent, not just to other programmers (which you can do with comments) but to the program itself.
In Ruby instead of worrying about static typing, we worry about duck typing. Not only is the type dynamic, but we don't worry if something is the same type. We worry if it has the part of an interface that we are attempting to use. I highly recommend you look into duck typing and the benefits before you decide that static typing allows more introspection and knowledge of intent. In reality introspection is an area where we knock it out of the park, not an area where we are behind. It is almost laughable to claim that static typed languages are better at code introspection.

This makes it easy for a development environment to provide useful things like auto-completion.
IDEs that are good at code completion are often good at it for many languages, including dynamic languages, especially if the language gets the same amount of support from the IDE authors. I know that if I am editing a Ruby class in emacs my editor knows all about what methods are defined in that class. Being static typed that information would be aquired in a different way, but there isn't any more information available.
Re:Um... by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 08:46 · Score: 1

That was also my experience. GWT is really fantastic, especially because it is free and you can use it in the way you decide. For example, you can have server code in any language you chose..
Re:Um... by icebraining · 2012-06-29 11:34 · Score: 1

I never said people want to be controlled. I said people don't want to control it themselves, and are willing -even if they don't particularly appreciate it, as those occasional "cries" show- to let others control if it means they won't have to.
And there's plenty of stuff which is open and easy -sometimes easier than proprietary solutions- yet people still won't use them. They're not interested enough to even look around for alternatives, because that requires taking some control over their stuff, and as I said, they don't want that.
And I understand them, really, I do. Besides for technology, which I really enjoy, I'm the same. I'll pay a plumber and probably get ripped off because I don't care enough to learn how to do it myself; I don't even care enough to know if it's actually very easy.
Why should they care?

--
Dilbert RSS feed
Re:Um... by Tablizer · 2012-06-29 16:34 · Score: 1

It may be that if you did something one way for over a decade, you don't master doing it another way. In other words, your mind grows dependent on compile-time checking etc.
I'm not certain this is the case, just raising a question of possible bias.

--
Table-ized A.I.
Re:Um... by dzfoo · 2012-06-30 01:14 · Score: 1

You are right, I'm sorry. I meant "Dart": Google seems to be positioning to replace GWT with Dart.
This is only speculation, but there were a lot of sessions in the I/O conference dealing with migrating code from GWT to Dart, and, I think, only one GWT-specific session. This focus, to me, seems telling.
-dZ.

--
Carol vs. Ghost
...Can you save Christmas?
Re:Um... by mcgrew · 2012-07-02 01:29 · Score: 1

What, BTW, do you mean with "Bizarro World"
It was a recurring theme in Superman comics over half a century ago (I'm 60). Rather than being spherical like normal planets are, this one was a cube, with everything exactly like Earth only exactly the opposite.
I wouldn't doubt if there was an app for it... there seems to be one for everything.

--
Free Martian Whores!
Re:Um... by mcgrew · 2012-07-02 01:35 · Score: 1

If you use a service via a thick client, you still end up sending your data to the provider of that service.
That's exactly what I said. "If the data is coming from the internet, like a radio stream, you should need no app. When your data is produced locally, you should need no internet." No internet, no client.
BTW, I should have said "data are" rather than "data is".

--
Free Martian Whores!
Re:Um... by loneDreamer · 2012-07-10 02:43 · Score: 1

False, as a duck-taped object can either have or not have methods or variables according to run-time flow. When you write the code you have no guarantees and code-completion can only show things that can "maybe" be there. No guarantees, you still need to check everything with extra code on risk doing nothing since "this method should be there since I added it before" and solve issues while debugging.

Ok, debugging is time-consuming but doable. The main issue is that you run-time tests will never be complete enough, and you always risk obscure use patterns were your bugs come to life. The one to find them is almost always the final user.

Duck-typing of course allows more introspection. But introspection is an expensive feature in terms of performance, skipped or severely limited by design on some languages because of it, as most of what can be achieved by introspection can also be done faster with polymorphism.

As most things, the choice involves a trade-off. You eliminate type safety to make a language easier to learn and a little more flexible. In return you make programs slower and buggier (as you need to check manually for errors and any mistakes get moved to runtime). Programming time I have found is a little faster for small stuff, but severely slower for larger things, as you need to be thinking of many more border conditions. Script programs tend to also have high coupling and bad modularity.

All things considered, the whole thing seems to be targeting mass adoption with minimal understanding. IMHO, a big step backwards.

Mobile would go thin too... by GameboyRMH · 2012-06-28 07:17 · Score: 1

...if there were enough bandwidth to do everything server-side ("TEH CLOUD" as the marketroids call it these days) ChromeOS is on that track. Plus then the platform vendor could have even more control over what software you run and what content you put on your device, plus a convenient excuse for total data collection - it has to go through them, that's how it works!

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel

Re:Mobile would go thin too... by Sancho · 2012-06-28 07:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

ChromeOS is on that track.
Yeah, but ChromeOS is as dead as BSD. The PS3 browser is used more than the ChromeOS browser. http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/15/report-googles-chromebooks-account-for-less-than-02-of-all-desktop-traffic/

Yay. by axlr8or · 2012-06-28 07:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

Here I sit. On a computer with 3 versions of Java. And it is very, very confused. And, this is what I expect of Java. Weighty, slow. It's cross platform implementation is the only reason I like it. Other than that, its a resource consuming behemoth that just rings up as another diversion for how many years? As a user it's always been trouble with policy changes and updates. It's making my browser have fits. So, fat or thin, thick or emaciated I don't care much for Java. I know I don't know as much about it as you guys do.

Re:Yay. by GameboyRMH · 2012-06-28 07:20 · Score: 3, Informative

Assuming you're running Windows just remove the older versions, newer installers do it automatically but if you have some REALLY old versions on there you'll have to remove them yourself.
If you're running Linux, well it's your choice to run Sun Java, OpenJDK and...whatever other Java RE you've found, at the same time.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:Yay. by Dog-Cow · 2012-06-28 07:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

You are assuming that all his software is compatible with the latest version. That is often not the case. With Java.
Re:Yay. by bigstrat2003 · 2012-06-28 07:24 · Score: 2

That would be fine, except that newer versions of Java do not necessarily maintain compatibility with the old. I have seen newer Java versions break so many apps it's not even funny. Granted, they're probably poorly-written apps to depend on version so specifically. But it's still the responsibility of Sun (Oracle) to maintain backwards compatibility.

--
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Re:Yay. by h4rr4r · 2012-06-28 07:30 · Score: 2

On Linux it is not that simple. I have plenty of examples or Java apps that only work on one or the other jvm. On every OS lots of java apps only work with certain versions of java.
Expensive enterprise apps are the most likely to be jvm specific and you can forget about the vendor giving a damn.
Re:Yay. by Yetihehe · 2012-06-28 07:31 · Score: 1, Insightful

I haven't yet found a program which stopped working with newer java.

--
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Re:Yay. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 07:34 · Score: 1, Insightful

Are you fucking kidding? Java is the most backwards compatible framework. To a fault it is backwards compatible unless you are using some shitty third party libraries that expose non-public APIs?
Re:Yay. by benf_2004 · 2012-06-28 07:35 · Score: 4, Informative

I haven't yet found a program which stopped working with newer java.
Up until last month, we still had to install Java 1.5 on some users' computers because their jobs required them to use a web application that would not work on Java 1.6 or newer. We neither develop nor host the application, so all we could do was keep installing the horribly outdated version of Java and wait for the application to be upgraded to work with Java 1.6.
Re:Yay. by axlr8or · 2012-06-28 07:36 · Score: 1

Yes, as the two former posters replied. I operate Debian. Quite often I don't get compatibility. The first disappointment was actually the practicing policy of the Debian distribution. You want Sun? Fine, disable Open or gcj. And it didn't work. In all those iterations there was and is always trouble. I've recently come across a fellow that really knows quite a bit about all the troubles with Java, how Linux handles paths, etc. But when I used to run Windows it was trouble also. I even have a tick right now, that if I start any application that uses Java, a good portion of the time it will slow my standard inputs down. I can't even type on the keyboard. Yeah, not a big java fan.
Re:Yay. by Bigby · 2012-06-28 07:36 · Score: 1

What? I can still run 1.3 compile Java source on 1.7. The backward compatibility of Java is pretty darn good.
Re:Yay. by h4rr4r · 2012-06-28 07:38 · Score: 1

Believe it or not there are enterprise apps that check the version and flat out refuse to run if it is not what they expect.
Re:Yay. by Yetihehe · 2012-06-28 07:42 · Score: 1

Interesting. Have you seen many such apps? Could you tell me which app it was?

--
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Re:Yay. by Dewin · 2012-06-28 07:51 · Score: 1

I've read that Maptools (an open-source virtual tabletop for RPGs/etc.) currently is non-functional under Java 7, presumably due to an incompatible library.

--
Of course nobody reads the FAQ! If people read the FAQ, the Questions wouldn't be so Frequently Asked.
Re:Yay. by vux984 · 2012-06-28 08:04 · Score: 1

The RBC bank site recently required you to have a previous version installed. It was finally resolved a few months ago.
I also have a cisco router where its internal web admin stuff didn't work with a modern java.
Re:Yay. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 08:10 · Score: 4, Informative

Everything eclipse based got hit with that when Oracle rightly changed the vendor property of the Sun jvm to oracle, afaik checking that did not even make sense since both version and name of the jvm have their own properties . Sadly no programming language can protect you against stupid programmers, any attempt will be dwarfed by the world producing better idiots.
Re:Yay. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 08:22 · Score: 1

Interesting. Have you seen many such apps? Could you tell me which app it was?
Here's one real example for you: Entrust Truepass, which is an enterprise platform which allegedly makes internet transactions super secure. It's a POS. The user has to run java in their web browser for it to work.
When java 1.6u29 came out, all Entrust Truepass applications stopped dead. Unfortunately, Entrust Truepass has spread to many websites, including:
Government of Canada:
http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/gji-icm/01/20111020-eng.html
Lowes purchasing with vendors:
http://www.loweslink.com/pubdocuments/How_to_resolve_Java_6_update_29_issue.pdf
US Patent Office:
http://tacticalip.com/2011/11/11/the-patent-office-is-not-ready-for-the-java-update/
And many others, including some banks. The only solutions were:
- run an old version of java with well documented easy-to-exploit security holes while carrying out important transactions
- don't use Entrust Truepass
Given that Entrust Truepass is marketed to businesses interested in security, neither option is acceptable.
Eventually Entrust Truepass fixed their java crapplets, but you really should move to a normal web app that doesn't depend on java.
Re:Yay. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 08:23 · Score: 1

Our time management web app, inventory web app and a particular in-house web app each require a different version of Java to work fully. Now they will all 'work' with the newest version but with varying quirks that sometimes require going into the Java control panel and unchecking newer versions of Java.

Of course if Java closes some security hole with an update it's very likely that some poorly written Java app that depended on that hole will break. That's not necessarily Java's fault but people will blame Java.
Re:Yay. by Bigby · 2012-06-28 08:30 · Score: 2, Informative

This is probably because of a security flaw that u29 closed and Entrust Truepass utilized to function. That isn't the fault of the compile code, but the security manager. This can be resolved through a change in the java.policy file.
Sometimes the problem comes up because someone used a Sun/Oracle class or an IBM class instead of the standard API.
Re:Yay. by JonySuede · 2012-06-28 08:32 · Score: 2

How place yourself at the jvm level, how do you fix:
if(!"1.4.1".equals(System.getProperty("java.version")))
System.exit(-1);

--
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Re:Yay. by Bigby · 2012-06-28 08:33 · Score: 3, Insightful

You touched on the core issue. Many of these apps, especially banking apps, used security holes to accomplish certain things. So when Java fixes the security issue, the app stops functioning.
I have never seen an issue around an API change. Only security fixes.
Re:Yay. by icebraining · 2012-06-28 09:21 · Score: 1

Not anymore. OpenJDK is the official Reference Implementation now.

--
Dilbert RSS feed
Re:Yay. by BoberFett · 2012-06-28 09:29 · Score: 1

My company's web based payroll system interface is incompatible with newer versions of Java. We're a few minor versions of the payroll software behind because we haven't had the resources to properly test and roll out the patches, so we're stuck with old version of Java for now.
Re:Yay. by DeSigna · 2012-06-28 11:11 · Score: 1
Here's a couple:
- Seems like every intranet admin component I've come across won't work with 1.7 unless it was written a month ago
- Older IBM RSA cards and a few early revisions of IMM
- DS Manager was unstable on some early revisions of JRE7
- Minecraft was very unstable on 7, haven't tried recently.
- Aptana didn't like it much either
It's annoying, I'd prefer to have the latest everywhere, but I've had to rollback to 1.6.33 in a recent customer upgrade due to pieces of their intranet admin interface not liking it and their lack of a relationship with the original developers.
Re:Yay. by MobyDisk · 2012-06-28 11:19 · Score: 1

Lemme guess: Some corporate intranet app? And it only works on Windows and IE6 right?
I have seen apps compiled under Java 0.9 in 1995 run fine on current versions. But it seems like every corporate slideshow or training app fails miserably unless the configuration is *exactly* right. They go out of their way to make them incompatible or something. They rarely work in Firefox either, even though it uses the same Java runtime!
Re:Yay. by Sayjack · 2012-06-28 11:34 · Score: 1

Sounds like Oracle/SUN started making good on those endless @deprecated annotations :-)

--
-- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.
Re:Yay. by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 11:38 · Score: 1

How is that a problem of Java?
Re:Yay. by Sayjack · 2012-06-28 11:40 · Score: 1

I once designed a database which used small business acronyms to associate lines of business with their associated profiles. It grew to support 40 million or so customers give or take. Marketing, acquisitions, more marketing has renamed each entity an average of 5 times over the last 15 years. Being a young programmer at the time, I lacked the experience to foresee the amount of corporate churn. It's a mess :-) and we're all idiots and clever at some time or other.

--
-- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.
Re:Yay. by Sayjack · 2012-06-28 11:41 · Score: 1

AOP.

--
-- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.
Re:Yay. by Cryacin · 2012-06-28 11:43 · Score: 1

Flash is also, to be perfectly honest
For all of its shortcomings, Actionscript 3 really is a good language. I know, it's heresy to utter such things in slashdot, but we really will see less software, at a lower quality emerging from organisations with HTML5. Why? Because it costs more time and skill, and thus more money to develop the same stuff.

--
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Re:Yay. by Cryacin · 2012-06-28 11:44 · Score: 1

It involves a gun, and the developer's address.

--
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Re:Yay. by strikethree · 2012-06-28 12:07 · Score: 1

I haven't yet found a program which stopped working with newer java.
Then you have never dealt with the poorly (rigidly) written crap that is enterprise software. Try anything from Cisco if you would like an example.
It seems that this may be the case due to outsourcing. The software is written to spec and passes all the tests but it will break if _anything_ changes. Welcome to software written by the lowest bidder.

--
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Re:Yay. by Billly+Gates · 2012-06-28 12:08 · Score: 1

Well instead of an == statement to only work with one version of java you would use >= statement to replace it for future java versions. This is a mistake of gigantic proportions that children learn in basic. These logic errors should be present in production code

--
http://saveie6.com/
Re:Yay. by JonySuede · 2012-06-28 12:21 · Score: 1

wont AOP violate the kind licenses of required by commercials applications requiring that kind of hack in the first place ?

--
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
Re:Yay. by PeterWone · 2012-06-28 16:33 · Score: 1

The Cisco router management software on many of our routers requires a specific and quite ancient version of Java.
Re:Yay. by jrumney · 2012-06-28 17:45 · Score: 1

Believe it or not there are enterprise apps that check the version and flat out refuse to run if it is not what they expect.
I suspect this accounts for the majority of "Java backwards incompatibilities".
Re:Yay. by Mechanik · 2012-06-28 23:17 · Score: 3, Informative
Everything eclipse based got hit with that when Oracle rightly changed the vendor property of the Sun jvm to oracle, afaik checking that did not even make sense since both version and name of the jvm have their own properties . Sadly no programming language can protect you against stupid programmers, any attempt will be dwarfed by the world producing better idiots.
Speaking as someone who is an Eclipse committer, your representation of the situation is not accurate.

Sun's JVM has different proprietary options than other JVMs. It also has this notion of PermGen space that other VMs don't have, where various classloader stuff and other things can be stored. Run out of space there, and the JVM blows up.

When you have a Java application like Eclipse that is really big, it's not hard to run out of PermGen, especially because the default size is so paltry. So, the Eclipse launcher needs to be able to modify this size of the PermGen. However, the special command line option to do this is proprietary to the Sun JVM, and if you pass it to someone else's JVM it's common for that JVM to refuse to run because you gave it an option it didn't recognize.

So, Eclipse has to:
1. Check which JVM it is launching with.
2. Is it the Sun JVM?
3. If it is, pass PermGen options
How do you propose checking #2 without checking the vendor name of the JVM?

Maybe you should look into things more before you call a bunch of experienced, professional, open source programmers stupid idiots.
Re:Yay. by RogerWilco · 2012-06-29 00:49 · Score: 1

PrimaVera time/project management tools.
They even broke when I applied a security patch to java, let alone a real upgrade.
On Windows the program is allowing some variance in the java version, on Linux and OSX there is usually only one version that works. And with that I mean something like 1.5.1 r16 with 1.5.1 r17 breaking everything.

--
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Re:Yay. by Hognoxious · 2012-06-29 02:09 · Score: 1

SAP are particularly adept at producing stuff that's fussy about the version.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."

Yuck! by Dog-Cow · 2012-06-28 07:18 · Score: 4, Insightful

The summary makes it sound like fat clients are a bad thing. The web is not an application platform! HTML5 efforts to the contrary, it's just not designed for it. A well-written fat client will behave well even when the network is down or slow. Most web apps become useless, if not outright unusable.

Re:Yuck! by RatBastard · 2012-06-28 07:26 · Score: 1

Yep. we've moved some of our apps to web-based clients to save a few thousand dollars in development and we end up spending millions in network upgrades to support clients in rural areas.

--
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Re:Yuck! by h4rr4r · 2012-06-28 07:41 · Score: 1

A few thousand?
Any idea what it would cost to write your app for OSX, Windows, Linux, android, IOS and blackberry?
We have found the cost savings were very worth it, rural clients can use 3G connectivity.
Obviously this depends highly on what your business needs to do.
Re:Yuck! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 07:48 · Score: 1

Indeed. Browsers weren't designed to be application platforms, and web development is a tedious nightmare of inconsistent, ever-changing cobbled-together layers which only exist to cover up the awfulness of javascript, html and annoying browser idiosyncrasies. It takes far longer to develop a stable web application than it would to do it in say Java/Swing, and it's much harder to maintain or modify because there are so many framework libraries to deal with (which seem to be deprecated almost as soon as you've figured them out). Web development is really the worst way of creating software anyone's dreamed up so far.
Re:Yuck! by Yvanhoe · 2012-06-28 07:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

It is interesting that web development's big edge today is not in accessing remote content but in providing a compatibility layers on for platforms that do their best to avoid being compatible.

Once again, millions of man hours will be wasted solving a completely man-made problem...

--
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Re:Yuck! by 2starr · 2012-06-28 07:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

Yes, exactly. That article is just a load of utter BS. For "exhibit A" I give you an article from half an hour earlier. Think clients are extremely hot right now in mobile apps! Use the right tool for the job. Sometimes that's a thin client, sometimes it's thick. Stop trying to tell me that one or the other is dead. Neither will be anytime soon.

--
"Let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average." - A. W. Tozer
Re:Yuck! by h4rr4r · 2012-06-28 08:06 · Score: 1

Absolutely. The sad part is so far this is the best solution we have.
Re:Yuck! by Billly+Gates · 2012-06-28 08:17 · Score: 1

Then how do you get this fat client to install on 20,000 desktops and have it work on the graphics teams macs and the CEO's ipad and iPhone?
HTML 5 is just the graphics and presentation part, but webSQL is interesting to say the least. Java, or any other frameworks belong on the cloud or server and with HTML 5 you can output it to any client and not have to maintain it or debug it. Web apps do work if you look at salesforce.com and Google? Now if we can leave IE 8 and earlier behind we can all switch to AJAX, HTML 5, and CSS 3. That is going to be challenging with all the XP loyalists out there and IT departments scarred from IE compatibility with version 6 wanting to upgrade anytime soon.

--
http://saveie6.com/
Re:Yuck! by UncleRage · 2012-06-28 09:36 · Score: 1

There are management agents which can deploy software on macs. Generally, they cost a lot and suck.
Not really the case. InstaDMG, DeployStudio and Munki will get you quite far down the road without a dollar spent and not much by way of a headache.

--
#SickNotWeak
Re:Yuck! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 10:21 · Score: 1

Just because the popular java-based office suites are crap is not a vote of confidence in webapps. People would rather use Google Docs because it's "good enough" for their simplistic needs, not because they put real apps to shame. I don't know of a single webapp that does anything that a local client app couldn't do better by virtue of not having to deal with the browser as a 'host'.
Re:Yuck! by Billly+Gates · 2012-06-28 10:30 · Score: 1

So I can deploy those VB 5 apps with Macros for Microsoft Access on the IPAD? Sweet!

--
http://saveie6.com/
Re:Yuck! by foniksonik · 2012-06-28 10:53 · Score: 1

How much does all of that cost? A webserver is cheap.

--
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Re:Yuck! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 11:09 · Score: 1

The best solution (and we've always been able to do it) is better design. I'm completely confused with modern software development.
People currently say they develop enterprise web apps because they're cross platform. But those apps have requirements such as IE6 or another specific/newer browser configuration. IE is tied to Windows and thus not cross platform. You can build enterprise web apps, but the web isn't designed for it. You're fighting every step along the way to get your software working properly.
Desktop application are much more mature. They're easier to develop, can have better features, generally faster, and we already knew how to make and support them. It takes little effort to add networking support to a desktop application and the web apps have network handling code in them too (so nothing new required). What advantages do web apps give us? Easier deployment? No, you've got to deploy the browsers, their updates, and any required plug-ins. For the desktop application you have to deploy the application itself and can bundle in any required libraries/plug-ins. Even if you can't bundle them in, then you're still better off than the web app. As long as your networking API doesn't change, stubborn users can keep their outdated version with no development cost to you.
For cross platform desktop development, the code logic doesn't change. You provide interfaces to the user input, user output, and hardware access. Implementations to those interfaces may change for each platform, but surely that can be kept minimal. We're not talking about programs using the client's GPU to speed up computations, we're talking about things that can be developed on the web. For companies that want to keep the data all on their servers, the desktop application can still do that. There are WYSIWYG desktop development software and they work better than the WYSIWYG editors for web development. Claiming web UIs provide a better GUI is false.
There are 2 major operating systems (Windows and Macs. Linux/Unix isn't a big desktop OS in most companies), and 3 major web browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome). Both the OSes and browsers have multiple versions with different features sets/bugs. I really don't see a single advantage web apps have over desktop applications. Why do people develop enterprise web apps?
Re:Yuck! by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 11:51 · Score: 1

I find Google Apps don't work very well when I'm not connected to the internet.
Re:Yuck! by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 12:02 · Score: 1

Boot to Gecko is not a finished product, so you can't claim it is cross platform and runs on Linux, Windows and your phone. For a start, it is an operating system. For it to work on your phone you'll need a Boot to Gecko phone, or some app to emulate the run time environment.
Re:Yuck! by epyT-R · 2012-06-28 12:47 · Score: 1

then those people either don't use computers for important things in their lives, or they're ignorant of the underlying risks of dependence on remote services and just haven't been burned yet. I would never want my business dependent on 'web services' for middleware applications like office suites and other productivity programs because connectivity failure now means NO business gets done at all, instead of a minor inconvenience. overcentralization of dependencies will be this society's undoing I think..
Re:Yuck! by epyT-R · 2012-06-28 12:50 · Score: 1

downtime isn't.
Re:Yuck! by Yvanhoe · 2012-06-28 21:20 · Score: 1

There are 2 major operating systems (Windows and Macs. Linux/Unix isn't a big desktop OS in most companies), and 3 major web browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome). Both the OSes and browsers have multiple versions with different features sets/bugs. I really don't see a single advantage web apps have over desktop applications. Why do people develop enterprise web apps?
Actually, nowadays, you have 4 major operating systems : Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS. They are mainly incompatible between them for no good technical reason. This is all business. Technically it would be very easy for them to conform to some APIs, to publish specifications and make it easy to write cross-platform applications.

It is really depressing.

--
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Re:Yuck! by jsebrech · 2012-06-28 22:17 · Score: 1

HTML5 appcache. It's not well known, but you can build web apps that "install" their code locally and keep running when the network is down or slow. IE is the only browser that doesn't support it, but IE10 will rectify that.
I just built an offline mobile web app using appcache. Works just fine. I was even able to show a progress bar to the user while downloading application updates. It's just like the abilities you get from native apps, except that updates are installed automatically (without user intervention or action).
Re:Yuck! by chrb · 2012-06-28 23:05 · Score: 1

For a start, it is an operating system. For it to work on your phone you'll need a Boot to Gecko phone, or some app to emulate the run time environment.
Yes, but that runtime environment app already exists - it is Firefox Mobile. The B2G apps are just HTML5 and Javascript being run on Mozilla - they will run on an existing phone under Firefox Mobile as the operating environment. Firefox on the desktop runs exactly the same apps, unmodified. You can actually browse to the URL of the B2G web browser or dialler or app launcher on a desktop Firefox and it works fine (apart from the dialler not being able to actually make calls, that will happen once Firefox has a VOIP backend).
Re:Yuck! by defcon-11 · 2012-06-29 03:57 · Score: 1

Your rural customers had good enough network to use desktop programs but not browser based apps? It seems to me like a well designed browser app would transfer a similar amount of data, so I don't understand what the difference would be. Were you using old school server-side generated pages rather than a modern architecture of client-side javascript talking to an api endpoint?
Re:Yuck! by defcon-11 · 2012-06-29 04:11 · Score: 1

While it's possible, most desktop apps tend to have horribly unusable interfaces compared to their browser based counter parts. Some people attribute it to the IDE effect, where developers make apps with a similar UI to their IDE. I would say it has more to do with the inversion of the learning curve between the 2 paradigms. The HTML/css ecosystem is difficult to learn and simple layouts are more difficult than they should be, but once you know what you're doing intuitive and user friendly layouts are only a little extra work. Contrast the html/css learning curvewith typical desktop development frameworks like Swing, where simple layouts are trivial, but it's a lot of work if you want something more intuitive than a grid layout with menus. The new UI paradigms like modality and notifications emerging in the mobile space are superior to both browser and desktop, and are already having a huge influence.
Re:Yuck! by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:28 · Score: 1

GWT takes a lot of pain out of JS development and I trust the JS runtimes much more than these Malware APIs like Java Web Start and the JVM.
Re:Yuck! by viperidaenz · 2012-07-01 09:06 · Score: 1

Won't run on an iPhone, or Windows phone.... Its Mozilla trying to make their own proprietary runtime environment. If its anything like Firefox I won't be jumping on the bandwagon any time soon. I have a quad core 3.4ghz i7 at work with 4gb ram. I have two browser choices, IE8 or Firefox. IE8 is slightly slower but at least it can scroll pages smoothly. Firefox used to be good.

Mobile phones, not mobile in general by perpenso · 2012-06-28 07:19 · Score: 1

... if it weren't for mobile pushing us back to client-side development.

Mobile phones, not mobile in general. Regular web pages work pretty well on tablets and personally I often find myself preferring a site's web page to the site's mobile app when using a tablet.

Re:Mobile phones, not mobile in general by GameboyRMH · 2012-06-28 07:23 · Score: 1

You don't really buy those arguments about screen size do you? The push towards native apps has little to do with usability, web apps are easy to reformat for smaller screens...follow the money.

--
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:Mobile phones, not mobile in general by perpenso · 2012-06-28 16:38 · Score: 1

The user interface of mobile, whether specialized mobile pages or an app, tend to be inferior to the regular web page. The larger screens of tablets often do not help much with respect to mobile pages or apps, they are too often just scaled up versions of the phone oriented page/app. Screen size really does help in that it makes use of the regular web pages practical.

Yuck!! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 07:23 · Score: 3, Informative

Silverlight is dead like VB6 is dead...

The technology will live on for a long time - it is still the best option for developing RIA LOB applciations.

I'm a native guy - HTML/Javascript is just not a solid method for developing applications.

Re:Yuck!! by White+Flame · 2012-06-28 08:55 · Score: 2

I'm a codegen guy. HTML/Javascript is just another transparent code target as far as I'm concerned.
Re:Yuck!! by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:32 · Score: 1

I think you should look at Delphi or Lazarus.

Did anyone else misread the headline? by mark-t · 2012-06-28 07:23 · Score: 1, Funny

I had initially misread it as "The long death of fat cats".

My brain was all like, "What the hell?" Then when I opened the page to read comments I read the headline correctly.

Weird.

--
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'

Re:Did anyone else misread the headline? by phantomfive · 2012-06-28 11:38 · Score: 1

My brain was all like
With sentences like that coming voluntarily out of your fingers......
you have bigger problems, my friend.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

Nice Title by jareth780 · 2012-06-28 07:24 · Score: 2

"Or we would be, if it weren't for mobile pushing us back to client-side development.'"
Slashdot submission right before this one:
"Facebook iOS App Ditching HTML5 For ObjectiveC"

So it's neither long nor a death for fat clients after all?

Very good, Louis. Short, but pointless.

fragmentation by recharged95 · 2012-06-28 07:24 · Score: 4, Informative

Death of the fat-client makes sense for the multimedia, e-commerce world.

But for real-time, mission critical? I'll stick with fat-clients with a mobile component for now.

Oh god, here we go again with the thin clients by crazyjj · 2012-06-28 07:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

Thin client computing is like cold fusion. Every so often it's going to be the next big thing...then everyone forgets about it for a while....then it's going to be the next big thing....then everyone forgets about it for a while...rinse....wash...repeat.

--
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?

Re:Oh god, here we go again with the thin clients by dokebi · 2012-06-28 08:59 · Score: 1

Thin client computing is like cold fusion. Every so often it's going to be the next big thing...then everyone forgets about it for a while....then it's going to be the next big thing....then everyone forgets about it for a while...rinse....wash...repeat.
What's different about thin client computing this time around is that internet is ubiquitous and wireless. Gmail is 8 years old, and Google maps is 7 years old. Siri is a thin client.
Thin client computing is just computing now. The big switch already happened. It just takes 10 years for all the legacy apps to get replaced, like it took 10 years for DOS to be discontinued after Win 3.0 came out. We are basically half way through this process, which means about 1/5 to 1/3 of the apps have switched. The rest will inevitably follow.

--
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Re:Oh god, here we go again with the thin clients by mikeg22 · 2012-06-28 10:05 · Score: 1

We are halfway through the process? In the office where I sit, approximately 100% of the applications used by our staff are thick client. Nobody uses web apps because they are slow and have poor user experiences compared to thick client native apps.
Re:Oh god, here we go again with the thin clients by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 12:06 · Score: 1

Siri doesn't work when you're on the train on the way to work and go through a tunnel.
Re:Oh god, here we go again with the thin clients by jrumney · 2012-06-28 17:29 · Score: 1

You forgot to mention that each time the cycle goes around, last time's "thin clients" are now the "fat clients" that are getting replaced. The only thing changing here is the way terminology is being applied. 10 years ago, Flash based thin clients were coming to replace your native code fat clients, giving the benefit of zero-install without the clunkiness of HTML and Javascript. Now that HTML and Javascript are no longer clunky (partly because computers are now much faster, so you don't notice the clunkiness, and partly because HTML5 brings some useful features for web applications), pure web applications are having their day.
Re:Oh god, here we go again with the thin clients by jrumney · 2012-06-28 17:37 · Score: 2

What's different about thin client computing this time around is that internet is ubiquitous and wireless.
Which is going to lead to a lot of frustrating design decisions. 10 years ago, in the heyday of Flash based "thin clients", offline support was something that everyone considered important, because people travel with their laptops and need to get work done on the road. Now, with the internet considered ubiquitous, and frameworks that tried to deal with disconnected use-cases like Google Gears declared dead, people using web applications are going to experience catastrophic data loss when the train they're on goes into a tunnel as a sibling post pointed out, or even in urban canyons where cellular coverage can be a bit patchy due to direct signals being blocked and excessive multipath reflected off the surrounding buildings.

There will always be thin/thick clients by Bigby · 2012-06-28 07:26 · Score: 3, Insightful

...just like there will always be death and taxes.

In fact, both are subjective. You are only arguing about how thin or thick the client will be. It is not a black/white scale...it is grayscale.

It's too bad by BenSchuarmer · 2012-06-28 07:35 · Score: 1

that there isn't an app for that.

Talk about clueless. by VortexCortex · 2012-06-28 07:35 · Score: 2

The Java TCK ensures deprecated stuff sticks around, so you can run older stuff on newer Java Virtual Machines. One of the reasons Java is so bloated is because they want to ensure backwards compatibility...

Re:Talk about clueless. by RogerWilco · 2012-06-29 00:51 · Score: 1

I have experiences where big enterprise java program would only run on very specific java versions. e.g. 1.5.1 r16 would work, but 1.5.1 r17 would break things.
It is a major pain with everything trying to auto-update nowadays.

--
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor

what bullshit! by sribe · 2012-06-28 07:38 · Score: 1

The summary is basically trying to claim that only a handful of cross-platform toolkits count. In other words, according to the summary, applications written in .NET that access a database are not fat clients, nor are ones written in Cocoa, MFC, C++ Builder, Delphi, Qt, WxWindows, Zoolib, etc. And that is a complete load of crap.

Re:what bullshit! by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:37 · Score: 1

Don't forget Pascal-based IDEs. Yes, the number of serious IDE/language options has been growing almost exponentially during the last few years. Did I mention VisualWorks Smalltalk ? Expensive, but still an excellent option.
Re:what bullshit! by sribe · 2012-06-30 02:32 · Score: 1

Don't forget Pascal-based IDEs.
Delphi was on my list ;-)

Yes, the number of serious IDE/language options has been growing almost exponentially during the last few years. Did I mention VisualWorks Smalltalk ? Expensive, but still an excellent option.
Oh yeah, when I ripped out that list off the top of my head, I totally forgot the Smalltak family. Along with with Lisp, Eiffel, Modula, various pure functional ones...

I've been hearing this for years by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 07:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

People have been saying that fat clients are dying for years, however I'm still making a good living writing them. I was getting a little worried until Apple brought them back as a big way by re-branding them "mobile apps" and making them s3xy again. The OP says as much: "Or we would be, if it weren't for mobile pushing us back to client-side development."

Thin clients have their place, but there will always be fat clients, simply because they work better in more environments.

Re:Boo. by AxeMurder · 2012-06-28 07:42 · Score: 1

I had some software that wasn't compatible with the newest version of Java. So I kept running an older version until a couple of weeks ago my Diablo3 account got cleared out and an old yahoo account started spewing spam. After using a clean machine on a different network to change passwords etc, I tracked down the problem to an exploit in the old version of Java I was running. I have since fixed it, but the now the older program I was running that needed Java doesn't work. Also before the fix Firefox seemed to think I had about 7 different versions of Java installed that it could possibly use. (although 6 of them were set to disabled). Additionally Java has one of the more obnoxious auto-updaters for windows around, but that's a complaint for a different post.

Oh yeah? Then why multi-core smartphones? by Animats · 2012-06-28 07:45 · Score: 1

If fat clients are dead, why do smartphones need so much compute power? Smartphones now have 4 cores on the main CPU, a GPU, and several auxiliary microcontrollers.

Re:Oh yeah? Then why multi-core smartphones? by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 12:20 · Score: 1

Because Angry Birds doesn't run well without a GPU.

fat clients work well in some worlds by Teunis · 2012-06-28 07:48 · Score: 1

games: world of warcraft and all the myriad clients based on the Unity3D engine do count as "fat clients"

trick is : a fat client needs to provide something a thin client can't. On mobile this would mean handling disconnects and offline well (which thin clients aren't particularly good at) - or services not yet available (like fast 3D rendering).

Java is still somewhat competitive because it can deliver capabilities not present in thin.
Flash is not competitive anymore - it offers little not present in html5 and is closed from some markets.

This is one of those things that run in circles. One interesting historical example: X11 terminals being replaced with X11 desktops, and then the X11 desktops working thin clients once more.

Re:fat clients work well in some worlds by sjames · 2012-06-28 21:20 · Score: 1

This is one of those things that run in circles. One interesting historical example: X11 terminals being replaced with X11 desktops, and then the X11 desktops working thin clients once more.
The telling part was X11 terminals being replaced with x11 desktops at a fraction of the cost.

Fat/Fast by EvilElk · 2012-06-28 07:49 · Score: 2

This is so full of shit. If you want a rich/complex experience with fast response, fat client is always going to be the way to go (well, until bandwidth approaches infinity and central server hardware cost approaches zero).

Another great thing about the US by GodfatherofSoul · 2012-06-28 08:03 · Score: 3, Funny

We'll NEVER run out of fat clients

--
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!

Circles have no end... by AtlantaSteve · 2012-06-28 08:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

I've been in software development for about 20 years, and it occurs to me that I've seen the "fat-to-thin-to-fat" cycle of hype run its course at least twice now. Predicting "The End of Fat Clients" (or thin clients for that matter) is like looking at a clock, seeing that it reads 6:00, and then declaring the death of noon.

Re:Circles have no end... by Bucc5062 · 2012-06-28 09:20 · Score: 1

Been in it a little longer, have seen and said the same thing. The more things change the more they get rehashed into the same thing with better marketing.

--
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Re:Circles have no end... by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 12:24 · Score: 1

Uncompressed 1920x1080x30fps is more like 1.5Gbit, not 0.03Gbit
Re:Circles have no end... by shibashaba · 2012-06-28 12:40 · Score: 1

I'm pretty sure thin clients were the original idea, back when IBM saw a market for about 4 computers.
I do believe that the cloud and thin clients will become far bigger players, but I don't think it's going to shrink the fat client market too much. Bandwidth was just too expensive back in the day for it to be practical with graphical desktops, which is what everyone wanted as soon as they came out. But anyone who is more than just a casual user is gonna opt for a fat client.

--
---------- Open Source is capitalism applied to IP.
Re:Circles have no end... by gruntkowski · 2012-06-28 19:49 · Score: 1

My thought exactly. It seems that IT is prone to the same pendulum mechanism as art, history, fashion, music,...

Here we go again... by dkf · 2012-06-28 08:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

The wheel turns, but we stay in largely the same place. Sure, the Java fat client might be on the decline, but the Javascript fat client is bloating up rapidly. That'd be OK as it is far less fussy than Java and quite a lot higher level, but JS is a dratted awkward language to write well; it's got too many weird things in scoping that can trip you up horribly if you don't know the magic workaround idioms. (It's also coupled to the DOM and HTML in most peoples' minds, and that's certainly not nice.)

In any case, fat clients aren't going anywhere. They're just changing the details of their implementation. Similarly, cloud computing is very much the same as a much older concept, bureau computing, but cheaper and with faster networking so people don't notice as much. The IT industry has such a horribly short memory...

--
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"

Re:Here we go again... by girlintraining · 2012-06-28 09:13 · Score: 1

The IT industry has such a horribly short memory...
It's because there's still a 640k limit on the 15 hertz 'Human Brain' PC...

--
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie

Business Apps need a Fat Client; Go Silverlight! by danparker276 · 2012-06-28 08:09 · Score: 1

Silverlight is supported until 2021 or something, and at least I feel it's feature complete to do everything I want it to. Even if it goes away it's not that hard to port everything to WPF or Metro. Metro is a fail for business apps because it's a closed system and you have to submit apps to the marketplace. It really doesn't matter WPF or Silverlight to me, but Silverlight is easier to install and can be used on mac and windows. Yeah everyone can write a fun website, but it's business applications that pay the bills for most of us. HTML can't and never will be able to do things like print a document correctly.

Re:There are tons by Billly+Gates · 2012-06-28 08:11 · Score: 1

They are mostly enterprise web apps.

If you know anyone who works in finance all the big banks use Java that require particular versions to do corporate banking. This is not the same Bank of America we get to check out accountants but rather ones that deal with complex stuff like investments, lines of credit, investing etc. Almost everyone uses manpower or Kronos to clock hourly employees in and out and to process payroll for HR. These use Java heavily as well and do not run well with anything made in the last 5 years ... yes dead serious unless there are major upgrades I am not aware of.

My Android SDK wont work on Java 7 yet, and to add insult to injury these same PHBs who refuse to leave XP also have older corporate software like Kronos and Oracle that require IE 6 and java 1.4 from 2004 and refuse to upgrade. Ironically Java is preventing Windows 7 migration as well because old java is not Windows 7 compatible and their intranet apps that use Java are optimized for IE 6 & 7 so you are talking millions to upgrade.

Sap, Kronos, every financial institution, all use old java and wont upgrade until more corporate cusotmers upgrade and corporate customers wont upgrade until banks require it etc. It is a catch 22 and why slashdotters scratch their head. ... ok end rant.

As you can tell I do not like Java anymore as its costs are terrible.

--
http://saveie6.com/

a never ending story by AtomicAdam · 2012-06-28 08:13 · Score: 1

I humbly submit that this is a cycle that we will have to deal with for a long time.

Sorry but.. by JustNiz · 2012-06-28 08:15 · Score: 1

Sorry but bandwidth will never be a good substitute for local processing power. Thats all there is to it.

A totally uninformed post... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-28 08:18 · Score: 1

Microsoft is getting rid of Silverlight... and replacing it with 1. Metro 2. WinRT + XAML, which it is adding to WPF + XAML.
Apple was going to release the original iphone with no Native API, but HTML based apps. Today there are OSX apps, and two flavors of iOS apps.

Google did all web stuff, and now they do web stuff and native android apps.

See a pattern here? The idea that web script kiddies will inherit the earth when HTML5 is a starvation medium when compared with most rich client apps is ridiculous. The idea that we would squander computing power on some wasteful server side (aka, big iron) model even as ever more power gets shoved into the farthest and tiniest of devices imaginable would be a failure of engineering imagination of the first order. The only thing going extinct are web browser plugins: Flash and Silverlight, because HTML5 can take up the slack (almost). The rest of the world will go native because native is how you get the most out of tiny devices.

Web Delivery Dying, Fat clients healthy as ever! by evilviper · 2012-06-28 08:30 · Score: 4, Interesting

We are on the verge of a purely HTML/JavaScript client world.

No, no we aren't. We are on the verge of WEB SITES being restricted to using WEB TECHNOLOGIES.

It was an idiotic idea back in the '90s to believe that people WANTED to open a browser, and visit a web page, to launch their client-side apps. A local app on a fat client is still the be-all, end-all of computing.

People may tolerate web apps, but they usually don't WANT them... They're just given no other choice by the developer, usually for reasons of ad placement. Companies like Pandora have their web app, but then have a desktop Adobe AIR version of their web app, but ONLY for PAYING customers.

Hulu was smart enough to release Hulu Desktop to let people get away from their clumsy web interface, but they sure haven't advertised it's existence, and I'd have to call it "quite buggy" even being generous.

Fat clients remain dominant. Smartphones aren't anything special... They just happen to be a huge new money-making opportunity, so developers aren't going to cut-corners (depending on web apps) to capture that market.

--
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant

The myth of the thin client by Adrian+Lopez · 2012-06-28 08:31 · Score: 1

With ... Microsoft's move from Silverlight to Metro ... We are on the verge of a purely HTML/JavaScript client world.

Windows Metro is HTML5 based but depends on a bunch of Windows-specific code, so calling it pure HTML/JavaScript is quite misleading.

It's not really a thin client if most of the heavy processing takes place client-side. All it is is a different way of representing and delivering the same code.

--
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."

Re:The myth of the thin client by mikeg22 · 2012-06-28 10:01 · Score: 1

Windows Metro is not HTML5 based.

HTML+Javascript is one of the languages that can talk to the underlying OS. So can C++. So can C#, So can VB.NET.

Adobe by jbolden · 2012-06-28 08:34 · Score: 2

I find the whole summary rather interesting. It starts by mentioning Adobe's divestment of Flex, which really is a thin client architecture. You'll notice that Adobe's apps are still mostly fat client. You download and install CS6 the only "cloud" thing is you pay a monthly service fee rather than have to buy all at once. The article also fails to mention .Net and Objective-C/XCode.

In terms of desktop widget sets
Windows = .Net
Apple = Cocoa
Firefox... = XUL
Gnome.. = GTK+
KDE = QT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits

This cycle has been going on since the 1960s. In systems that are cost efficient special case stuff gets pushed out for speed. This leads to systems that are difficult to manage so stuff that was pushed out gets pushed back into general purpose for cost. We are in a world where mobile is pushing stuff out (i.e. platform specific) and desktop is pushing stuff in (web applications). But we are far from a world where either paradigm is uniform.

JavaFX + Scala or Groovy = UI development goodness by MCRocker · 2012-06-28 09:02 · Score: 2

I was a little disappointed that, for a topic that mentions JavaFX, there hasn't been any significant discussion about JavaFX at all so far.

I'm admittedly not a UI developer, but, I've been playing with ScalaFX and looking at GroovyFX and seeing a lot to like (See JavaFX 2.0 and Scala like Milk and Cookies). Combining this stuff with some of the ideas from Morphic and we could get some really compelling UI's that would be hard to do in a browser even with HTML5.

--
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)

Better medicine by chemicaldave · 2012-06-28 09:03 · Score: 1

With the advent of new medical technologies, our nation's obese are being kept alive longer than ever before!

Re:There are tons by CubicleZombie · 2012-06-28 09:13 · Score: 1

I run into that exact same problem with browsers ALL THE TIME. In fact, I have IE6 on my PC right now because the corporate intranet site doesn't work with anything newer. Now the customer wants the product tested on IE8, forcing me to upgrade, which is going to totally hose the JavaScript application I'm working on AND I probably won't even get paid anymore because I can't even fill in my timecard!

So some incompatibility with an old obscure Java 1.4 app is NOTHING compared to the debacle of web browsers and thin clients.

Even if it is a problem, it's trivial to deploy an older VM with your software and specify it explicitly because Java doesn't even need to be "installed" to function. Just dump it into your app's default directory and run it. Try that with IE or Firefox! Or even worse, .NET!

--
:wq

Mod parent up. It's worth the read by djl4570 · 2012-06-28 09:18 · Score: 2

Great analogy.

If I wanted Congress, Parliament, or the E.U. to regulate a wheel, it's unlikely I'd succeed. If I turned up, pointed out that bank robbers always make their escape on wheeled vehicles, and asked, “Can't we do something about this?", the answer would be “No".

Re:There are tons by BoberFett · 2012-06-28 09:31 · Score: 1

Heh, I posted about our payroll system above that requires older java. It's Kronos.

Or maybe not. by HisMother · 2012-06-28 09:46 · Score: 1

It's highly amusing that the story directly below this one on the front page at the moment is "Facebook iOS App Ditching HTML5 For ObjectiveC". Things are never as simple as the prognosticators would have you believe.

--
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.

Most of my fat clients... by Covalent · 2012-06-28 09:48 · Score: 1

...die rather suddenly. Usually heart attack. Strange.

--
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.

What? by mikeg22 · 2012-06-28 09:54 · Score: 1

The author apparently doesn't know that Metro *IS* a fat client.

and then there's this by slashmydots · 2012-06-28 09:56 · Score: 2

Let me break down my company's decision on this matter because I guess the author doesn't get it. $200+ ea for cheap thin clients. $400 ea for decent modern cheap PCs. Server to just store stuff and host quickbooks = $4000. Server(s) to run 50 thin clients = $20,000+ and a better network bandwidth capability so at least another $10,000. Hmmmmm. I guess it's thick clients.

If you're thinking "well that's kinda close"...oh yeah, that's right, we use photoshop, publisher, autocad, our 3D design software, our presentation laptops which stream realtime 60fps content, and we burn CDs and use flash drives. Not exactly a thin client candidate here and we're a pretty typical business. As far as I'm concerned, thin clients were old technology and they have almost no place in today's IT infrastructure given the cost of PCs.

Re:and then there's this by epyT-R · 2012-06-28 11:19 · Score: 1

don't you worry.. when thick clients aren't ubiquitous anymore, they'll rise back up to $5000 for the stripped down model..after all who needs them but 'professionals'? you're a consumer? pff suck it up and buy your iThingy that's all you need.. no learning programming for you unless you want to pay for that 'professional' access to proper hardware.
if this day comes, I will strip computing from my life.

I for one welcome our HTML/Javascript overlords by gestalt_n_pepper · 2012-06-28 10:00 · Score: 1

Yes, SaaS and web based apps have their place in life. So do local apps. Neither is going away, ever, despite what some breathless 20-something goofball chooses to post to Slashdot.

--
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.

Re:There are tons by Billly+Gates · 2012-06-28 10:21 · Score: 1

Modern work sites and newer intranet software run on any W3C complaint browser and platform. The probelm isn't all browsers, but java/IE 6.

I have a VM and it is time to use one and talk to your bosses about it? No developer can survive without one anymore because everyone runs different software as we are in a period of transition. You can't function because corporate America is in a phase of change due to XP cancelling support and are busy migrating to Windows 7. Even if your own beancounters say NO, you need to document this and have your boss write a recommendation and include the costs for VMWare or VirtualPC so they can counter the beancounters so they can eventually say YES. Otherwise they are under the impression you can write a javascript program and it will always work in all platforms forever. Why change?

It is obvious IE 6 is NOT fine. Neither is the older apps and support is ending anyway and it is time to get with the program.

The whole idea of a thin client is to avoid browser lockin. Fat clients use Java crap or some software activeX control that is depenent on another server program which was written for a browser because it is old. New thin clients using HTML 4/5 can work with IE 9, FF, Chrome, and all portable devices. Just a minor CSS for a particular browser or mobile device if any issues are found. NOTHING like the hell you are going through now.

Things like Java is what is keeping platforms that should have died 5 years still running. I agree and got modded down before that Java does not belong on the desktop anymore due to issues like you described. Technology changes and Java is one of those things that have kept IE 6 and XP still around when it should have died in 2009.

--
http://saveie6.com/

Re:There are tons by Billly+Gates · 2012-06-28 10:27 · Score: 1

Kronos should have an updated version that works with things not made 8 years ago! I guess they do not want to write 2 versions but something has to give and they should not charge corporate customers more money whichi s probably what they are doing because they are greedy and are aware of the situation.

Helpdesk calls for malware are a huge support costs and most IT departments do not have the time to make extensive whitelists of java enabled internet sites for certain workers so they have it enabled corporate wide and these same users get nailed with an ad.

--
http://saveie6.com/

Steely by blitzen · 2012-06-28 10:28 · Score: 1

Anyone else find it amusing that this is just above an article talking about Facebook ditching HTML5 to go to ObjectiveC instead?

Roundabout by hamsjael · 2012-06-28 10:33 · Score: 1

yeah.. programming for the FUCKING webbrowsers is just soo simple, consistent and enjoyable, i envy my developer colleagues every day (sysadmin, myself) MUARRRHARHARH

"thin clients.." my ass, who the hell is stupid enough to believe that it is possible to have the same functionality in the browsers as in a fat client without the same amount of complexity ??

Everybody it seems!

Thought this was going to be a health care story.. by mattack2 · 2012-06-28 10:48 · Score: 1

ba dum psh!

as a general rule by epyT-R · 2012-06-28 11:07 · Score: 1

I make it a rule to treat web sites (I refuse to call them 'apps') as last tier tools. I treat them as occasional conveniences and never part of mission critical work because it could disappear/become more expensive, or otherwise change tomorrow in ways that are detrimental to what I'm doing. tier 1 tools consist of locally stored and executed software that allows indefinite use.

Re:Ever heard of the app store? by epyT-R · 2012-06-28 11:12 · Score: 1

most of these 'apps' are really just customized shells for remote services.

Re:Fat clients were always bad. by epyT-R · 2012-06-28 11:15 · Score: 1

um errr.. thin clients are about lockin too.. the whole thing is dependent on ASPs and ISPs to function. if we switch entirely to thin clients, they'll have us over a barrel. users will be powerless to stonewall unwanted change/price hikes/unavailability of the applications they depend on. if that's where computing ends up, I will remove as much of it from my life as possible.

Re:There are tons by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 11:20 · Score: 1

New thin clients using HTML 4/5 can work with IE 9, FF, Chrome, and all portable devices

Wait till HTML6 comes out, or IE 11, or Chrome 32, or FF 708...

Lynx? by ebyrob · 2012-06-28 11:40 · Score: 1

Lynx anyone? Also, you don't have to leave the command line to use it.

Re:Lynx? by jones_supa · 2012-06-28 19:13 · Score: 1

These days the web is pretty much unusable with Lynx or Links. Only some very select sites can be viewed reasonably.
Re:Lynx? by water-and-sewer · 2012-06-29 00:28 · Score: 1

On the contrary, some sites are far MORE usable using Lynx. www.linuxtoday.com is so clogged with advertisements (all graphic or flash) it's hard to even find the articles, and the page takes an eternity to load as it chugs through all the scripts, stat-counters, and whatever else. I read that site exclusively in Lynx, which ignores all the crap and gets me straight to the articles.
The articles often suck too, though. No browser can help you with that.
The modern web is so focused on targetted ads and heavy graphics illustration that there's no room left for content, which hardly anyone produces anymore anyway in an era of mashups and retweets.
Visit a site in Lynx just for kicks and you'll have a better sense of how much content is really in that Crap-Sandwich.

--
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Re:Lynx? by robsku · 2012-06-29 15:13 · Score: 1

Lynx is an ugly choice for text console browser - eLinks is much better in rendering, customization, user interface, etc.

--
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.

Re:Fat clients were always bad. by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 12:08 · Score: 1

You're slightly retarded aren't you? There is one common part when you're comparing thick and thin clients. That's the server, which in both cases is your locked in vendor.

Re:There are tons by Billly+Gates · 2012-06-28 12:11 · Score: 1

Not a problem. Newer browsers read older w3c complaint code fine. IE 6 doesn't use older standards. It uses older standards in a very different way requiring a near rewrite. Java is just as bad as programmers try to use security holes to use COM objects. When the fixes come in they break the app.

Poorly written IE 6 and Java apps are not compliant with each, let alone standards. That is why businesses can't leave dying XP behind. Java needs to go as that and not proprietary web based code is the reason for incompaibility.

--
http://saveie6.com/

Re:There are tons by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 12:33 · Score: 1

New JVM's run older java compliant code fine as well. The problems come when people use non-public API or use it in a way that it is not intended.
I'll guarantee you that poorly written HTML5 code will not play well between different browsers and browser versions.

Re:There are tons by sjames · 2012-06-28 13:25 · Score: 1

That's OK, you can just install a custom VM for each web/Java app you need to work with. Aren't you glad to have the simplicity and convenience of run anywhere web apps? Huh? Time for my meds already?

Re:There are tons by ChunderDownunder · 2012-06-28 14:03 · Score: 1

Sometimes there are dependencies on old 3rd party libraries that have been superseded.

Other times, it's self inflicted. Custom Swing look and feels are a no-no - Java 6 changed a lot of stuff.

And you hear stories where enterprise servers run on Java 1.3 on a pre-historic version of Websphere because there's not the inclination to migrate old code nor upgrade licensing.

Re:There are tons by theArtificial · 2012-06-28 14:57 · Score: 1

Now the customer wants the product tested on IE8, forcing me to upgrade

Hello, this might save your ass like it saved mine. I'm not affiliated with them in any way. It allows you to run the rendering engines for multiple Internet Explorer browsers without having them installed. The stand alone IEs were a pain in the ass to get working on Windows 7 64bit, while the performance isn't great it sure beats having to load a Windows VM to test your site/application with.

--
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.

Re:JavaFX + Scala or Groovy = UI development goodn by hibiki_r · 2012-06-28 15:14 · Score: 1

As a UI developer, I find ScalaFX and GroovyFX to be infants, concerned too much about layout, and not about the things that really make UI development challenging. In my latest Scala and JavaFX toy project, I felt I was far better off using the Java interface and using Scala for the things it really does well.

Also, JavaFX is still in its infancy, so it's still a very hard sell for production applications. The architecture is very clear, but extremely verbose. The components that are there are beautiful, but severely lacking in features: Want any interaction whatsoever with the chart component, for instance? You have to build it all from scratch. The grid component has less features than even web grids. Investing in it now is like investing in Swing in the early years: You end up having to write all kinds of code for generic stuff you shouldn't, and then spend money removing your customizations if the standard components ever get better.

If Oracle actually cared about JavaFX, it has to mature far faster than it's doing now.

On the verge of a purely client world? by dgharmon · 2012-06-28 15:20 · Score: 1

"We are on the verge of a purely HTML/JavaScript client world. Or we would be, if it weren't for mobile pushing us back to client-side development"

We would be except Microsoft killed the NetPC and Microsoft doesn't have the same influence in the mobile space to do the same thing.

"On the NetPC - Pat thinks we are being slow to follow-up and get the spec's out, and he is telling his guys to go ahead and start drafting .. the NC attack plan .. We have been closely monitoring, attacking, and winning NC threatened accounts"

--
AccountKiller

Re:JavaFX + Scala or Groovy = UI development goodn by hibiki_r · 2012-06-28 15:20 · Score: 1

The webview component is, in the end, yet another target browser with its own set of inconsistencies and problems. The guy in the next office has been having all kinds of fun trying to use the webview component in a swing app, using an embedded javafx scene: Javascript components that work fine in, say, firefox, have rendering problems in the web view that make pages utterly unusable.

accompanying picture by andy_from_nc · 2012-06-28 15:26 · Score: 1

Here is the picture I posted with the article on my site: http://osintegrators.com/sites/default/files/Jqueryzilla2.png -- I think it adds something no?

Re:There are tons by viperidaenz · 2012-06-28 15:30 · Score: 1

Yet everything you've mentioned has nothing to do with Java except the custom look and feel, which I find hard to believe since it isn't mentioned in the Java 6 migration documentation.

Re:There are tons by ChunderDownunder · 2012-06-28 15:43 · Score: 1

Swing had subtle tweaks to things such as focus. Code that worked on a 1.4.2 and 1.5 VM did not on 1.6 - such as trapping mouse events.

This is probably an example of a 3rd party look and feel not doing the correct thing but frustrating nevertheless. I wish managers would just use the system look and feel instead of wanting a custom skin for their application.

Google Dart by xtrafe · 2012-06-28 16:28 · Score: 2

+1 For this & link included.

I was huddled under my desk in fear that I'd get rolled into a massive corporate JS goose chase, but then Dart gave me a ray of hope. I just tried it out for the first time yesterday and it held up to its promises: I was productive within 30 minutes of downloading the SDK, and it didn't relieve me of all my most powerful tools for fighting complexity (like proper OO, and by 'proper' I mean non-prototypical).

It's still pretty bleeding edge, and there's some ground left to be covered, such as reflection and JS library integration, but it's a damn sight better than the alternatives I've seen (Ember, Backbone, etc).

The new old thing by PeterWone · 2012-06-28 16:36 · Score: 1

Thin client? What, like a dumb terminal on a mainframe? And that's good, is it?

Re:The new old thing by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:59 · Score: 1

It worked extremely well for a long time. It still does work extremely well for many corporations in many use cases. Think IKEA. Dumb terminals are secure, they all have the same software config, the same basic state.
Re:The new old thing by PeterWone · 2012-07-01 15:26 · Score: 1

Oh, I agree. But my point was la plus ça change, la plus qu'a ç'est la même.

Those fat clients... by havana9 · 2012-06-28 19:23 · Score: 1

... should make a diet and make some exercise and become thin clients or at least only a bit overweight.

You are forgetting Eclipse RCP by Laz10 · 2012-06-28 20:32 · Score: 1

http://www.eclipse.org/eclipse4/

Eclipse is still a good option for at fat client.

Death of Fat client? by angel'o'sphere · 2012-06-28 21:57 · Score: 1

I write my fat clients in Java/Groovy and use Swing. I don't see what is wrong with that or that it will die soon. Others might prefer Qt and C++ though.

--
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.

"Thin" clients running on fat clients. by tenco · 2012-06-29 01:57 · Score: 1

Most webapps run like molasses on my Atom Netbook. How is that "thin"?

Every few years... by Cute+Fuzzy+Bunny · 2012-06-29 04:02 · Score: 1

...someone who wasn't around during the mainframe/minicomputer era who has a vested interest in shifting horsepower from the desktop to the server room comes along and makes me chuckle.

We got away from thin clients because 1) the performance is variable and lousy, 2) single point of failure in the network causing the device to become useless, 3) they dont save any money and in fact may be more expensive, 4) the user loses control of what they can and can't do, 5) the user has to wait on someone to develop the back end service before they can use it on their client.

So basically its a solution with a lot of problems in search of a valid application.

When It Matters by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 08:37 · Score: 2

..everybody uses statically typed languages. Aerospace, Medical instruments - code can kill people. That's why statically typed languages such as Ada are used.

Well... by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 08:41 · Score: 1

GWT is a quite solid environment and "feels" very much like common Java GUI development. But yeah, Java is quite strongly typed... Removing all the hassle of application deployment (== registry mess, DLL hell) is indeed a rational goal to go after.

GWT by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 08:42 · Score: 1

..allows for debugging via Eclipse.

Except by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:14 · Score: 1

..that nobody at Adobe Inc. seems to have a proper Computer Science Education. They are incapable of doing basic things like writing proper, strict parsers. They really think it is a good idea to try to fix "typing errors" with really brain-dead heuristics in things like the PDF or Flash parsers.
What is the result of all that incompetence ? Adobe products are the Premier Malware API. When I have my tinfoil hat donned, I always claim they are in the pay of Beijing.

Re:Boo. by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:16 · Score: 1

Get rid of Java ASAP. Next to Flash it is the most dangerous thing in the computer world.

What's Your Problem Man ? by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:20 · Score: 1

Microsoft copied Java to the point of having the same issues with runtime library versions as the Original, Java. It turns out that Java was not a real threat (you can't make compelling, high-performance, realtime games and applications with it), but Bill Gates made sure this threat was responded to.

GWT Will Handle It by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:25 · Score: 1

In my experience, GWT-based apps will run nicely on various different browsers and various different versions of each. Those geniuses at Google did some pretty hard work to make that happen. Because they need this kind of infrastructure to make Google Mail and Google Docs happen.
No, I don't work for Google, I think they are collecting like crazy and final no, GWT is not hardwired to the Googleplex; it is a very nice, reliable and well-made piece of open source.

More Flash Offerings by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:39 · Score: 1

A) Well-designed Chinese Spearphishes (ask Lockheed Martin and their F22 team)
B) Busty Russian Viruses

Google Sees a Market For 1 Computer by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:42 · Score: 1

The "Google Computer", of course. It will contain all your data, nicely indexed for those who pay for The Computer.

In The Unix World by frankgerlach11 · 2012-06-29 09:56 · Score: 1

.. we have LaTeX and OpenOffice. You can run those as libraries or efficient command-line tools on a server to generate a nice-looking PDF, which the user can then print. We can also render these documents into a bitmap to send it to a web app for display.
I know M$ hates everything which is a real alternative to their technologies, but maybe you want to get out of their claws and enlighten yourself to other options. Options which are not monolithic, but an orchestration of many free, reliable and compact tools. You could start with GWT, Perl, pdf2latex, Apache, Linux.

Slashdot Mirror

The Long Death of Fat Clients

222 of 277 comments (clear)