emscripten

[Lars T. Kyllingstad]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 01:31:13 -0600, Andrew Wiley wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 3:16 PM, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:
> 
>> "Michael Stover" <michael.r.stover at gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:mailman.1041.1292446362.21107.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
>> > >With my own computer, there are things I can do to prevent that.
>> > >With
>> > webapps I'm 100% reliant on someone else: there isn't a damn thing I
>> > can do.
>> >
>> > But what about your group-think lemming mother?
>> >
>> >
>> Unfortunately, she leaves the security and accessibility of her data at
>> the mercy of MS's web monkeys. So tell me how exactly that's supposed
>> to be an improvement over just keeping it on her local system? Yes,
>> either way there are possible security risks. But there isn't a chance
>> in hell a webapp can actually be considered better in that regard.
>>
>>
>>
> This is what you're not seeing. Web applications have zero-install,
> zero-configuration, and while you've pointed out that people whine when
> they change, those same people are already using them and continue to
> use them anyway. Why? Ease of use.
> The sad truth is that most computer users know next to nothing about how
> their computer works, and when given the choice between a fully featured
> email client they have to set up properly and a ready-to-go webmail
> system like Gmail/Hotmail, the choice seems fairly obvious. The same
> average user would probably say their data is safer with Microsoft than
> on their computer, simply because Microsoft has experts working to
> maintain privacy and backup, while the user might not even understand
> how he/she would go about that sort of thing. Now, from the inside that
> we see as developers, the picture isn't as pretty, but still. Computers
> and software are designed and created by the elite for both the elite
> and the non-elite. When the non-elite have a choice between doing it
> themselves and trusting it to the elite, the rise of web applications
> shows that they will generally choose the elite.
> For power users, this choice just isn't the same.

This just means that the "elite" has failed in ensuring that the obvious 
choice is the right one.

As you say, the average user will chose whatever looks simpler or more 
convenient, regardless of whether it actually *is* the best choice, 
performance- or security-wise.  (Or even with regards to user-
friendliness, once the seemingly insurmountable hurdles of installation 
and configuration have been passed.)  But that doesn't mean that 
developers should take advantage of that to push crappy applications on 
people.

Instead, developers should work to make local applications as easy to use 
as web applications, or to find a better way of serving applications over 
the internet than running them in a glorified document viewer.

-Lars