D could catch this wave: web assembly

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 06/22/2015 05:16 AM, Joakim wrote:
 > I really liked the new Fisher-Price style of desktop Windows 8,

Ugh, now *that* one I don't like. Simplicity is nice, but ugly is just 
ugly. It looks like a re-imagining of Win1 and Win2 drawn up by a 
hung-over unicorn ;)

 > along
 > with better visualizations like the graph when copying files.

That graph is nice. Unnecessary perhaps, but certainly nice.

I really like the new process manager, actually. I wish KDE's was more 
like that.


> On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 18:51:41 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> Not if you're just reinventing the form factor by propping up your
>> monitor^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htablet and pulling out a keyboard+mouse.
>>
>> It's just the particular lineage that (might) go away.
>
> Heh, you're really reaching now. :) Most people wouldn't call a
> smartphone or tablet in a dock "reinventing the [desktop] form factor."
>

Of course they won't *call* it that, because they're easily swayed by 
image and marketing. People refer to iPhone and such as "phones" even 
though they're obviously much more of a pocket computer (that happens to 
support cellular communications) than a telephone.


>> Well, somebody was saying that mobile processors have been getting
>> closer and closer in power to laptops. Which I have to strongly agree
>> with. Maybe that wasn't you though.
>
> By that rationale, since desktop chips nowadays are as powerful as
> mainframes from a decade ago, desktops are really just mainframes,
> right? ;) You and Kagamin are really reaching with these assertions.
>

You're twisting my words around here. My point right there was simply 
"the gap in mobile and PC's processing power is closing". You seem to be 
taking it as "Merely having the processing power of X is, by itself, 
enough to makes it actually BE X", which is obviously not my argument at 
all.


>>
>> Not "converged". "ConvergING" towards some point in between
>> traditional iPhone (and clones) and traditional laptop. And yes,
>> *partly* because connecting keyboard/mouse is not something people
>> have normally done with smartphones (at least not typically). And also
>> because the gap in processing power is shrinking. And because you can
>> now connect them to an external monitor. And because they're gaining
>> desktop UIs. Maybe some other things too I haven't thought of off the
>> top of my head.
>
> Except that looking at that smartphone that has all those features that
> will allow them to kill off the desktop, they'll look exactly the same
> as smartphones do now.  Really, the only difference will be the addition
> of the multi-window UI capability, nothing else will have "converged."
> I wouldn't call that convergence between iPhones and laptops, rather
> smartphones simply picking up yet one more feature that allows them to
> kill off the desktop/laptop PC.
>

Hmmm, you're still outright ignoring most of what I've said about that. 
I'll repeat myself only one more time:

"PARTLY because connecting keyboard/mouse is not something people have 
normally done with smartphones (at least not typically). And ALSO 
because the gap in processing power is shrinking. And ALSO because you 
can now connect them to an external monitor. And ALSO because they're 
gaining desktop UIs. And ALSO misc other stuff."

Stop picking ONE aspect of all that and pretending my argument revolves 
purely around that one aspect alone.


>> >  A car still moves on wheels yet nobody would say
>> > it "converged" with a horse and carriage.  One feature, the
>> wheels,
>> > carried over, but most of it is completely different.
>>
>> There's really no parallel between that and what I'm talking about.
>
> Oh, it's pretty much the same. :) Replace wheels with multi-window UIs
> and that is exactly the point you're making.
>

No, it isn't, but you seem to be misinterpreting nearly everything about 
my point anyway.


>> > I think that
>> > since the underlying device, a smartphone, is fairly
>> different from a
>> > mainframe or a PC,
>>
>> How so? *You're* the one saying (even more than I am anyway) that they
>> are (or will soon be) suitable  replacements for PCs. How do you
>> reconcile that with now suddenly saying they're different in a big
>> enough way to be meaningful?
>
> Because they're really only taking one feature from desktops/laptops,
> the multi-window UI, in order to replace them. Otherwise, they will be
> the same smartphones that they are now, which you don't call desktops.
>

*One* feature? No. At least one *MORE* feature.

That's on top of everything they've already borrowed. You're acting as 
if smartphones have ALWAYS had host-USB, HDMI-out, processors that 
approach PC-level power, storage that approaches low-end laptops, 
multi-processing, commonly getting used with an external keyboard/mouse, 
etc. A lot of the convergence has *already* been happening, and you 
never even noticed ;) In fact that's WHY people are starting to notice 
their potential for replacing traditional PCs.


>>
>> God I hope not. :) Touchscreen mini-chicklet keyboards (not to mention
>> auto-correction) are already clunky and unreliable enough.
>
> I can't wait.  I've gotten fairly fast on a keyboard over the years, but
> I can't wait to just use voice.
>

I've done so already. It's absolutely terrible. At best, it's an 
occasional replacement for those already-horrid 
mini-touchscreen-keyboards (which almost anything is better than).


> You keep asserting that there's some "middle-ground", when the truth is
> that mobile devices will just have to pick up one software feature to
> kill off the PC.  I don't think that's "in-between," as it will really
> be a traditional smartphone.
>
> You and Kagamin seem really bent out of shape by the desktop being
> junked, for some personal reasons of your own, so I'll leave that "Is a
> smartphone really a desktop once it adds a multi-window UI" argument
> here.  I've made my viewpoint clear.

No, we just don't like making points that only get conveniently ignored 
or twisted around.