“I think that right now we’re at a stage where the tools and accepted architectures do not fit the job that programmers have to do. We have three factors that are not going to change in the near future, and they all live on the client: HTML, the browser, and Javascript. Everything else is negotiable. It’s up to programmers to figure out how to deliver the best application they can using any back-end they want, as long as it works with those three front-end technologies. Programmers have done some really cool stuff on top of those three technologies, but things are still pretty awkward.”
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“The big problem, I think, is that the front-end is still very disconnected from the back-end. Because of SOA, people are still thinking very much in terms of sending and receiving messages rather than thinking about how to create a smooth and seamless application that exists both on the client and the server. I don’t know if it’s because of the fact that the Web was very disconnected in the early days, but most programmers still don’t think of the Web browser as a connected client.”
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“However, there is no longer any good reason to keep the client disconnected from the server in terms of software architecture. Broadband penetration is now 75% of active Internet users in the U.S., and much higher in countries that are not as backwards as we are. For some reason, programming techniques have not yet adapted to this fact. And what’s more, everyone is on their way to becoming an always-on node on the Internet network. One third of Blackberry owners are not using their phones for business. The iPhone from Apple (if it gets to keep its name) is a tiny OS X computer with Internet connectivity. In places where Wi-fi hotspots aren’t present, Wi-Max will be soon. In other words, we can no longer get around the fact that the client is once again part of the architecture equation, and our programming practices need to support that fact.”
– Jason Kolb (em “Network-Oriented Architecture“)