On a side note. I have been starting to wonder if web development as we know it is about to die. Why have a website, when you could have an app? The web would transition back to its original usage, interlinking of data. Not what it is now, selling shit to people. Dammit, i better ramp up my spam and squeeze it before it dies... lol
Well yes and no. The project I'm working on is basically based on my thoughts how I see the future of the web so I have been thinking this stuff a lot for the past year.
Sproutcore and other "web frameworks" are trying hard to push this whole "forget website, make an app" ideology but it's not going to work like they want it to. The answer lies on basec human perception molded by physical world. If you want to transfer information about company, product or anything else to another person, you speak. Writing is just another way of speaking. So now if you build an app that conveys that information, you are basically fucking up the flow because you are building unnecessary barriers between the person and the info. Websites are hard-core boiled down way of conveying information and I believe it will take a lot for it to lose it's "the best" status. Conveying information is an art and I still haven't seen any website that masters it. The problem is that the people who know how to concise and transfer information don't have the means to do it. This just means that there isn't any tool available to create necessary functions needed. They exist but usually these people don't know about them and using them takes just too much effort. The biggest problem is still the rest of the people who know how to use those tools but have no idea whatsoever how to convey information in concise form.
Web is about to enter a whole new era. There will be a whole new type of fragmentation in user groups. You'll have your mobile users which can be break down in different groups as well based on what their mobile device supports, there will be desktop users with huge power at their disposal and there will be various ways to control (not just mouse and touch). Another thing is that if your information doesn't have standard API access, you are going to be fucked. We will finally move from innovation stage to production stage. We will keep innovating but most of the technology needed for the next step is already here, now it's a question of implementation. At this very moment there's no technological barrier between the vision and reality, only time that it takes to lay it down as code. I believe that in 5 years you'll look at this time and feel the same way about it than what young people feel now about the 70s. It feels so static, old and slow. Sadly fragmentation will also show here.. there will be the users of new web and the users of old web. Old web means basically how you are using the web right now and most people will be stuck there for a long time. But thank god future is backwards compatible so it doesn't matter really. People who embrace the new will be able to live less stressful life with faster pace. Everybody has the same amount of time per day but the ones who have parallel time at their disposable are the winners.
