The future of microsoft development

'Francois' on Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:54:58 GMT, sez:

the future of applications is delivery via the internet.

how small does an operating system need to be? what is an operating system really?

soon every computer will have operating systems that have a few things in common: ability to read and write common image types, document types, media (audio, videos) -- and then the applications will all be delivered (and cacheable) via the internet.

please read this entire thought before you decide i am saying something obvious:

eventually, all computer will run some kind of variant of linux. but by then operating systems won't matter. the apps will be delivered by internet -- no dvds required. how long till a 100 meg application is just pow! and it is on your computer. they will run natively.

silverlight is funny but look back at it in history -- everyone will take this idea so much further -- moonlight -- or more -- a ruby client in the browser -- what java wanted to be, but a different sandboxing model. virtualisation of applications, with multiple threading.

linux needs microsoft to steal ideas from. microsoft needs apple to invent new problems. then microsoft solves those problems, and linux steals them and they are in everyone's hands!

Ha ha! thank you Apple! thank you microsoft! thank you linux! the stupid triumvirate!

'Robert Scoble' on Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:13:24 GMT, sez:

It's all true. Everything you read on the Internet is true.

Or at least, it WILL be true someday! :-)

'John Walker' on Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:21:03 GMT, sez:

@Francois,

<rant>
Some of us out here are writing applications for corporations, government, etc. These are applications that cannot and most likely never will be delivered by the Internet. We (my company) write applications for the government sector. .Net apps. Imagine us trying to tell them the next version of their app will be grabbed from the Internet. Ain't gonna happen.

I'm immersed in my RSS feeds, including Scoble's and the rest, but I can't help but feel their content is based on a very small, closed Silicon Valley clique. Sure there's a big market out there for that stuff, but there's probably a much bigger market out there for developers and companies like mine.

Right now, we're facing a problem. We have a big VB6 app that needs to go to .NET. Do we do it in Winforms, WCF, ASP.NET or Silverlight. The tools and controls aren't there yet for WCF, the pain of web apps is too much, so we're going for Winforms. We cannot wait. I wish the Winforms stuff was better. I wish Microsoft really got that last 10% done for us.

</Rant>

'John Lopez' on Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:05:57 GMT, sez:

"magine us trying to tell them the next version of their app will be grabbed from the Internet. Ain't gonna happen."

Network delivery does not equal "from the Internet". It means that a server has content and it is sent to you on demand. In many cases, that content will be be secured. It may simply be secured by an account login and SSH, or it may be on a private Intranet.

I also think this "either/or" approach to software development (where the entire application must be delivered in one technology) is a poor one. I suspect that we will see more and more applications delivered via browsers, with traditional pages doing the bulk of the work but invoking augmenting components to offset the limitations. (And of course "traditional pages" will become more powerful over time, gaining abilities once reserved for add-ins).

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