Well, well...

[James Smith]

"Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
news:f8rt59$2jki$1 at digitalmars.com...
> I've always felt that the main thing holding the Internet back from being 
> an OS-commoditizing platform are all of the design and implementation 
> flaws in all the technologies the web is built on. HTML, JavaScript, ASP, 
> PHP, browsers, etc. I could go forever listing problems I have with them, 
> but I'll list just a few at random and leave it at that:

Sure, but this is just a growing pain. Personal computing has to evolve from 
each user on his own little island to being plugged into a grid. Naturally, 
forces like MSFT will discourage this as long as they can, then relent by 
degrees and figure out how to make money in the new environment. For all the 
quirks, the browser delivers an increasingly sophisticated OS agnostic user 
interface.

> But I do agree that we could use more developments in the area of 
> concurrency.

I think this is the next big frontier of computing. Combined with wireless 
technologies, it will ultimately result in our looking at computers in a 
completely different way. We'll relegate of the old way of interacting with 
"personal computers" to the same level of the old "sneakernet" back in dos 
days, when we would do some work, then run down the hall with a 5.25 floppy 
in our hands to share the work with someone else. I'm sure some smarties at 
IBM had this all figured out when they developed the "personal computer" and 
snickered at the new name, but history had to happen to get us to this 
point. Real concurrency  will mean just as much a seachange as the original 
introduction of the pc in the early '80s.

>And I *strongly* agree on placing a high focus on techniques to maximize 
>code reliability. That's something I've focused a lot on lately 
>(Reliability and productivity without sacrificing power is what drew me to 
>D in the first place).

Absolutely, real concurrency won't be achievable without coinciding focus on 
reliable computing, which is why I'm so enthused about how D development is 
going. Apparently, real effort is being put into these issues in this 
community. These issues appear to hold little value in Delphi and C# land.

James