Is the Browser a Transitional Technology?

Is the Browser a
Transitional Technology?

Talk, by Allen Wirfs-Brock

Agile Portugal 2011, June 23, 2011

One dimension of software agility is the ability to adapt to changing development technologies and
infrastructure. Long-lived software systems may have to be adapted to several major technology
changes over the course of their active use. Today, many project are increasing focused on web based
applications that use web browsers as their primarily user interface. How durable is this application
style going to be? Is the browser likely to continue to expand its primacy? Can we expect the basic
structure of our web facing applications to remain fairly stable for the foreseeable future or do we
need to be preparing to make drastic changes? If the browser is a transitional technology, what will
replace it? In this talk I’ll explore these and related issues about what is likely to happen with web
develop technologies over the next few years.

Is the Browser a
Transitional Technology?

Allen Wirfs-Brock

A little background about me

•  Compilers, Smalltalk virtual machines, GCs, language design, development tools

•  Launched ﬁrst commercial Smalltalk: Tektronix 4404

•  Digitalk/Parcplace-Digitalk: Enterprise Scale Smalltalk

•  (Re-) Instantiations: JOVE Java optimizing compiler, Eclipse tools

•  Microsoft: JavaScript/ECMAScript 5

•  Mozilla: Future of JavaScript and the Web platform

Fundamental Change

•  We’re mostly used to incremental, evolutionary change

•  Fundamental change is rare and hard to recognize

•  Usually can’t prepare for major discontinuities and shouldn’t
worry about them…

•  … except if you are in the midst of such change

The Eras of Computing

Computers

empower/enhance

New

Societal Impact

Individuals’ tasks

Era

Computers

empower/enhance

enterprise activities

Personal Computing

Corporate Computing

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

The New Era of Computing

•  Devices not Computers

•  Ubiquitous access to information

•  Computer augmented life

I want my stuff (data and apps) right now, wherever I am, using
whatever device is available. I can’t live without it!

The Ambient Computing Era

What’s the Computing
Environment of your Application

•  Today?

Desktop PC?

•  Tomorrow?

Variety of mobile/ﬁxed devices?

Design for today, be prepared for tomorrow.

Transitional Technologies

•  Precursors of fundamental change

•  Exhibit some characteristics of what will come

•  Firmly root in the status quo

Precursors of PC Era

Societal Impact

Minicomputers

Timesharing

Personal Computing

Corporate Computing

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

Precursors of Ambient Computing Era

WWW/Browsers

Societal Impact

Ambient

Cell phones

Computing

Minicomputers

Timesharing

Personal Computing

Corporate Computing

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

The Cell Phone

•  Always with you

•  Always connected

•  But initially dedicated into a single use case

•  PC era business models

The WWW/Web Browser

•  First real ubiquitous web of
information

•  Universal client/server computation
model (HTTP/REST)

•  Universal presentation platform

•  Availability more important than
performance

•  A Web Browser is a classic PC
application

Why are these only transitional

•  Telephony is just an application

•  Wireless communications now common part of most devices

•  WWW data access is an essential part of most applications

•  Users don’t “go to a pc” to use the web any more

•  Growing focus on solutions (apps) not tools (the browser)

•  When something becomes ubiquitous, it disappears

What do you have when you strip away the PC
application part of a browser?

What do you have when you strip away the PC
application part of a browser?

Frameworks and Libraries

HTML

CSS

JavaScript

SVG

Language Runtime

Styling

Network

Local User
storage

Input

Layout

Rendering

Java promised “write once, run everywhere”,

the modern web application platform is delivering it.

Web Apps vs. “Apps”

•  HTML/CSS/JavaScript/WebApp APIs •  Proprietary Language+Framework (Java,

Objective-C, C#, etc.)

•  Server via: HTTP, JSON, XML, Sockets

•  Server via: HTTP, JSON, XML, Sockets

•  Works on any device

•  Works only within a device family

•  Task specific “Chromeless” UIs emerging

•  Task specific “Chromeless” UIs

•  “App Stores” about to emerge

•  Tied to a specific “App Store”

What operating system does
that device run?

Who cares….

Each Computing Era has had a
Canonical Programming Language

•  Corporate Computing Era – COBOL

•  Personal Computing Era – C

•  Ambient Computing Era – JavaScript ??

Why JavaScript?

•  It’s there – It’s working

•  It’s good enough

•  It’s getting better

•  What could replace it?

•  How could that happen?

http://odetocode.com/Blogs/scott/archive/2009/03/18/signs-that-your-javascript-skills-need-updating.aspx

JavaScript Performance Over Time

ActionScript (Flash) vs JavaScript

http://people.mozilla.com/~dmandelin/KnowYourEngines_Velocity2011.pdf

http://iq12.com/blog/as3-benchmark/

Evolving JavaScript

http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:proposals

PDF Renderer in JavaScript

http://andreasgal.com/2011/06/15/pdf-js/

http://people.mozilla.org/~gal/test.html

CPython Compiled to JavaScript

https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki

http://syntensity.com/static/python.html

What About “The Cloud”

The Cloud

We Really Aren’t Going Back to
Timesharing

Hacking after midnight must be a life choice, not a necessity!

What happening on the server?

•  The server-side of applications don’t have the the “single
platform” imperative of clients: Java, .Net, Python, Ruby

•  Growing interest in also using JavaScript for the server portion
of applications

Want to use same skills and technical resources as client

•  node.js ( http://nodejs.org/ ) is current attracting signiﬁcant
developer interest:

//hello world server

var http = require('http');

http.createServer(function (req, res) {

res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});

res.end('Hello Worldn');

}).listen(1337, 127.0.0.1);

console.log('Server running at http://127.0.0.1:1337/');

Concurrency/Using Multicores

•  The Browser App Platform uses a very simple no shared
state concurrency model.

§  Web Workers

§  Message passing and JSON data records

§  Event loops

§  Continuation passing style

•  Essentially the same model as browser çè webserver

Clouds All the Way Down?

Open

Brand X Cloud

Public Cloud

Home

•  Common programming
models

Cloud

•  Common APIs

•  Local/remote cloud
transparency

Device

Device

Device

Cloud

Cloud

Cloud

A Universal Standards-based
Open Platform?

•  A nearly universal software platform emerged to dominate
each previous computing era.

§  Corporate Era: IBM Mainframes

§  PC Era: Microsoft/Intel PC

•  Is it possible for a vender neutral standards-based platform to
achieve similar dominance?

Really? W3C, Ecma, WhatWG, IETF, Kronos, …

What to do today?

•  IT apps will lag

•  But enterprises must become part of the Ambient Computing
Environment.

•  User expectations driven by the ambient device experience

•  Ambient Computing technology and skills shifts will drive IT change

Building tomorrow’s legacy systems today.

This is the most exciting time
for the computing industry
since the 1980’s.

Enjoy it!

Follow up

http://www.wirfs-brock.com/allen/posts/category/post-pc-computing

Is the Browser a Transitional Technology?

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (18)

Similar to Is the Browser a Transitional Technology?

Similar to Is the Browser a Transitional Technology? (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Is the Browser a Transitional Technology?