D could catch this wave: web assembly

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 13:51:06 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 11:56:13 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Apparently most new apps nowadays are ignoring that legacy 
>> desktop market.
>
> You mean services?

I meant mobile apps, many of which are services, but even 
stand-alone apps with no network component.

>> As for cultural clusters, that's changing as they're now 
>> starting to bleed into each other: look at Office on 
>> Android/iOS and the multi-window stuff coming to mobile 
>> devices.
>
> Huh? Cultural clusters like nation, country clusters. If you 
> make US-oriented news service, you can't target even EU users 
> not speaking about China.

Sorry, I didn't read the conclusion of that link I gave you: I 
just linked it for the large graph showing and forecasting the 
number of global smartphone users.  I based my response just on 
your comment and thought you meant a culture for desktop apps vs. 
another for mobile apps.

If you're talking about geographical cultural clusters, I agree 
that services are getting more fragmented as the rest of the 
world comes online, and since those mobile devices and services 
are killing off the desktop, that global desktop app market is 
going away.

>> That's like saying current PCs are "mainframes for all 
>> practical purposes, just more constrained in resources," you 
>> honestly believe that too? ;)
>
> And how do they differ?

That doesn't answer my question. :) As for yours, well, for one, 
a program written for an AIX POWER mainframe isn't going to run 
unmodified on a PC.  It's not going to have a desktop UI either.  
They're considered completely different categories of computers, 
even though they're all computers.

>> The former dominant use case for computers, creating content 
>> or getting work done, are a small part of what computers are 
>> bought and used for nowadays.
>
> Yes, if smartphones do that, they will become desktop.

I see, so if I start transcribing a novel by voice to the 
on-board computer in my car on the way to work every day, it 
becomes a desktop, because I'd have previously written it up in 
desktop Word?  Just because a device takes on some functions that 
you previously did with a desktop doesn't make it a desktop.

>> So yes, the desktop UI is a niche, but a moderately large 
>> niche that is about to move to mobile devices also.
>
> Yes, but your claim is that desktop will die, not move.

I was very specific in my claims, at least to Nick above.  I said 
the desktop/laptop form factors and OSs will die out, but 
multi-window UIs similar to desktop UIs will live on.  That is 
_not_ the desktop moving on, only something like its UI.

>> devs are certainly not dealing with that complexity at all.
>
> Yes, that's the problem with web: devs can't get web right for 
> decades already, that's also one of the reasons for mobile apps 
> to exist.

I was talking about both web and native here.  High-DPI 
resolutions have caused me problems with native desktop and 
mobile apps also.  Windows seemed to come particularly late to 
handling those better.

As for the web, anytime you get outside trivial layouts, it gets 
fairly complex quickly, particularly for cross-browser 
compatibility.  The web stack of HTML/CSS/JS is just not 
well-suited for app UIs.