Back in the day, no one could predict which web technology was going to win the web.
Would it be FutureWave/Macromedia/Adobe's Flash? First one to market that can establish a strong foothold has an excellent chance of dominating the market.
Would it be Sun/Oracle's Java-in-the-browser? With their "write once, debug everywhere" (cough) tech stack, and their deep pockets to push their solution to all the browers.
Would it be Microsoft's Silverlight? Late to the game, but never count Microsoft out — they have even deeper pockets, marketing chops, big brains, and the wherewithal to stay in the game to win big! (...or go home.)
We all know the answers. No. No. And... no.
None of the three big players won the internet. All of them had their fans, evangelists, and advocates. But no one — no one! — would have predicted that the internet's web applications would be won by the little engine that could: JavaScript.
JavaScript was developed under the codename Mocha, and briefly debuted under the name LiveScript before marketing rebranded it JavaScript. (After negotiating the name with Sun, to ride on Java's coattails. In hindsight, the irony.)
JavaScript was intended to be a programming language for non-programmers. In order to have small snippets of glue code embedded in the HTML to handle events, allowing for web pages to be more dynamic and interactive.
From that humble beginning, it eventually evolved into the language of the internet. The dark horse language that wasn't even competing with the big three Flash, Java, and Silverlight — yet still won the race. There are web apps that are 100+ KLOCs used by billions of people, every day. Incredible!
And I dare say, it's still just getting started, and we ain't seen nothin' yet!
Back in the day, no one could predict which web technology was going to win the web.
Would it be FutureWave/Macromedia/Adobe's Flash? First one to market that can establish a strong foothold has an excellent chance of dominating the market.
Would it be Sun/Oracle's Java-in-the-browser? With their "write once, debug everywhere" (cough) tech stack, and their deep pockets to push their solution to all the browers.
Would it be Microsoft's Silverlight? Late to the game, but never count Microsoft out — they have even deeper pockets, marketing chops, big brains, and the wherewithal to stay in the game to win big! (...or go home.)
We all know the answers. No. No. And... no.
None of the three big players won the internet. All of them had their fans, evangelists, and advocates. But no one — no one! — would have predicted that the internet's web applications would be won by the little engine that could: JavaScript.
JavaScript was developed under the codename Mocha, and briefly debuted under the name LiveScript before marketing rebranded it JavaScript. (After negotiating the name with Sun, to ride on Java's coattails. In hindsight, the irony.)
JavaScript was intended to be a programming language for non-programmers. In order to have small snippets of glue code embedded in the HTML to handle events, allowing for web pages to be more dynamic and interactive.
From that humble beginning, it eventually evolved into the language of the internet. The dark horse language that wasn't even competing with the big three Flash, Java, and Silverlight — yet still won the race. There are web apps that are 100+ KLOCs used by billions of people, every day. Incredible!
And I dare say, it's still just getting started, and we ain't seen nothin' yet!
IMO it is the [JS + CSS + HTML + WebKit] stack combined. JS alone has little value