No More ASP.NET

When David Heinemeier Hansson created Ruby On Rails he didn’t know he was creating something bigger than a language platform. He didn’t know he was creating a movement, one that would help fill a gap in software dev that has been around since 2002. He had no idea that his simple straight-forward, and inflexible, way of creating software would challenge the largest software company in the world.

Hansson didn’t know he was creating a replacement for VB6.

It is counterintuitive to think that a UI-centric, inflexible, memory hogging, butt-simple dev platform could actually fill the gap for VB6, a um … UI-centric, inflexible, memory hogging, anybody-can-do-it, development platform. One would think that a VB6 replacement absolutely must run on Windows. But, when you really think about it, anything that would replace VB6 would have to have the following qualities:

• It must be easy to pick up and very forgiving
• It must have a large set of code snippets to pick from
• It must support real-world applications
• It must be web-based

Why must it be web-based? Well, because the Internet is the new Windows platform. Eventhough I like to poke fun at Internet Pontificators I am going to make a wild and outlandishly obvious prediction: within 100 years 80% of daily use software will be web-based. I didn’t mean web-enabled, but web-based. iTunes is web-enabled. One day it will be web-based. Technologies like Google Gears will make that possible. Once Gears-like functionality is the norm, there will be very little reason to distribute software that requires an install program to run.

Enter RoR.

The trend towards all-web-based-all-the-time (AWAT) was going to happen, but RoR is going to get us there much faster. By making web dev as easy as VB6 dev, RoR is giving all those old VB6 programmers who had to leave the development market a new lease on life, and accellerating the proliferation of the AWAT. Now you don’t have to learn all about OOP and MVC and other stuff like that. RoR takes care of all that stuff in the background; just like VB6 did.

Welcome back VB6 guys.

Making web apps is like programming a cross-platform application for several OS’s that are changing radically every month.

After initially installing Apple’s Safari web-browser I started making changes to the configuration. Here’s how it went — I am embellishing a bit to clarify my feelings during the exchange:

Safari: “Safari is not your default browser, would you like to correct this problem?”

Me: “No”

Safari: “Then I’ll just lock up your computer for awhile …”

… time passes, eventually I get control of my computer back.

Me: “Please change my default web browser back to IE.”

Safari: “Sure, but I’ll have to lock up your computer for awhile first…”

… time passes, eventually I get control of my computer back.

Me: “Please change my Home Page from Apple’s Celebrity Kissup Page to Google.”

Safari: “Are you sure you want to do this? There are different ways to search, you know.”

Me: “Yes”

Safari: “OK, but I’ll have to lock up your computer for awhile…”

… later, while writing this post…

Safari: “Excuse me, but you misspelled a word about 2 minutes ago. Here are some suggestions.”

Me: “Thank you, now leave me alone.”

Safari: “OK, but…”