People Don't Hate to Make Desktop Apps, Do They?

Annie Peterson writes "Paul Graham has been making the argument that desktop development is dead — That's his premise for declaring Microsoft dead as well, and he claims that no one out there likes to develop for the desktop anymore. But that's not true, or is it? Desktop development is easier, faster, more productive, and infinitely more enjoyable — right? The question is, since web apps were originally built on desktop applications themselves, have the tables flipped? Or is it just wishful thinking?"

I like developing for the desktop

Although I have done my share of PHP web apps, my favorite application would be writing in Python using Qt.

Re:The real growth is embedded/mobile

Ha ha... knew someone would mention that as soon as I heard mention of PS. I'm willing to bet that the online "Photoshop" will be extremely limited and wizard-based; at best it will use the core PS engine. I'm not saying it'll be bad, but it certainly won't compete with the full PS, nor even Elements; in fact, I doubt it'll even be as sophisticated as the now-defunct Photo Deluxe (a nice, but very limited PS-based product).

Passe...

Desktop programming is so nineties. I'm a laptop programmer!

Re:Passe...

Haven't upgraded to notebooks yet? Laptop programming is so 2001.

Re:Passe...

Haven't upgraded to notebooks yet?

I did in '03, but then I lost my pencil.

the problem with google apps

Web apps are fun and all... Until my comcast tech decides to flip my interweb switch to OFF for 5 hours.

Then i'm glad i don't rely on ajax apps or anything to get work done. While corporate customers enjoy a level of reliability that the average home user doesn't even dream of, being chained to the internet, yes, being chained to hotspots or cell towers for mobile internet is a drawback that the average user can't consider.

While php and perl are great, people like to think they're somewhat self reliant, and relying on outside sources is good every so often, you don't hire consultants to do payroll for you.

The web apps are like consultants, you bring them in for activities that is too expensive to implement and are only needed for on demand, but you don't have them do mundane activities that you could hire someone full time and not lose money on.

Firefox 3.0

Wait for Firefox 3.0 [readwriteweb.com]. Soon you'll be able to use your web apps, even if you're connected at 0 Mbps.

Re:Firefox 3.0

Wait for Firefox 3.0 [readwriteweb.com]. Soon you'll be able to use your web apps, even if you're connected at 0 Mbps.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Sorry, I just can't be optimistic about this. You shouldn't be, either.

Look - today's web browsers can't even really get offline web page caching right. We're about a decade into the WWW revolution, yet browsers still can't passively save all of our web accesses and show 'em to us again when we're offline. I'd love to have my browser cache all of Slashdot's articles, and BoingBoing's, and Fark's links, for later offline browsing... yet it can't do that. The best we can get is RSS, which, frankly, is crap... it's like Gopher in HTML.

If browsers can't tackle the very simple task of caching routine HTML for offline access... what gives you confidence that it will cache complex AJAX applets with even minimal usability?

- David Stein

Re:Firefox 3.0

I'll believe it when I see it.
Sorry, I just can't be optimistic about this. You shouldn't be, either.
Look - today's web browsers can't even really get offline web page caching right.

I'm not sure why I should adjust my expectations to technology according to your misuse of technology.

Todays browsers don't get offline caching of Slashdot right, because Slashdot is an online application, and says so:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:48:30 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) mod_perl/1.29
SLASH_LOG_DATA: 07/04/10/011220
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.005000152
X-Fry: I don't regret this, but I both rue and lament it.
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Vary: User-Agent,Accept-Encoding
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

In order to read Slashdot offline "right", you need to break HTTP. And we all know what happens to naughty boys who breaks standards. [greenspun.com]

Offline webapplications will work offline because they will be designed to work offline. They will get safe caching of resources and a stateful browser-DOM-object to save data to. It's not exactly rocketscience.

Re:Firefox 3.0

Man, I can't wait for someone to write an AJAX version of Photoshop that I can use offline. It could be just like the real thing but fifty times slower!

You make few assumptions which aren't always true

You assume that neither PHP nor Perl are being used to do desktop apps. Perl certainly is. Ruby, Java, Python, and several other languages are being used to do web development, too.

In particular, it seems a shame to pigeonhole Perl. Using Perl and readily available libraries, one can develop console programs, GUI programs, daemons, or web apps. With Tk, SDL, OpenGL, WxWidgets, curses, GTK, Win32::GUI, or Prima, few languages have as many options for interface libraries last I checked. Just because Perl is very useful for web development doesn't mean it's not useful in other areas.

In a fun twist, I had to develop an app that worked the same over the web or on a Windows desktop with no net connection and no installation. It's written in PHP and Perl with a little client-side JavaScript and runs an Apache+MySQL instance from CD. So it's a web app, but it doesn't require net access.

And BTW, ADP (American Data Processing) and similar companies makes a lot of money doing payroll for other companies.

Re:the problem with google apps

Then i'm glad i don't rely on ajax apps or anything to get work done. While corporate customers enjoy a level of reliability that the average home user doesn't even dream of...

True, having your apps - and data - locally stored is very helpful. I'm sensitive to that - every time MS Office insists on using "Office Online" for my help queries, I silently curse up a storm. It's a perfect example; this is a simple function that used to execute immediately.

But that's only one of a few really key advantages of desktop apps over web apps. I've spent a lot of time [djstein.com] designing a lot of apps (as a pro/am enthusiast), and here are just a few of the very many other reasons for preferring the desktop environment to the web environment:

• A robust, designer-friendly GUI control set, tightly coupled to a solid visual designer. For me as a developer, this is THE reason why desktop apps kick the digital asses of web apps. Panels, splitters, checkbox lists, picture boxes, tabbed page collections, menu bars, complex ListViews, editable grids, date selections, numeric up/downs, tree view controls, progress bars - all can be installed in a desktop-based form with a single visual-designer mouse click, while AJAX programmers are still struggling to get buttons working. Plus, the desktop versions are much more consistent - there are fewer visual-style-based visibility differences with desktop apps than browser-rendering issues with web apps. Plus they're higher-performing, and much more easily customized. The ease-of-design gap here is astounding.
• Comparatively few security issues. I am not claiming that desktop apps are more secure than web apps - not in the slightest. Rather, I mean that as a legitimate programmer, I encounter a whole lot more security obstacles in web programming than in desktop programming. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time debugging web-based security issues: code access security; application pools; file and folder permissions; authentication; impersonation; web-interface/database interface problems; web browser security settings; server- and client-based caching foibles; statefulness issues; cookie policies; code signing and security certification; firewalls; badly configured internet security apps like ZoneAlarm... I've tripped over all of 'em in web programming. It can drive you batshit crazy. Desktop programming has orders of magnitude fewer issues.
• A much wider array of readily accessible APIs and tools. In desktop programming, if I want a hashtable, or a font dialog, or a color picker, or a high-performance timer, or a Rijndael encryption algorithm, or an MD5 has, or a bitmap converter - they're all immediately available and easy to program. Web programming... good luck.
• Flow layout is stupid. No, seriously. What I mean is: flow layout is fine for reading - desktop publishing, embedded images, all that junk. But it's stupid for a window-based GUI. As a UI designer, I'll take the absolute positioning and "anchoring" models over browser-based flow layouts any day.
• Easy-as-pie installers. I can add a desktop installer package to a desktop app project with, like, six mouse clicks. The resulting package is fairly small, quite robust, and has few compatibility issues.
• Easy multithreading. Self-explanatory.
• Performance. I've coded in DirectX, and I've coded in Java. I'll take DirectX any day.

Again, those are just a few issues. I can come up with a whole lot more.

Face it, people. Web programming is absolutely the future... but at present, it's still a toddler. Web 2.0 is the equivalent of a two-year-old: fussy, colicky, prone to outbursts and temper tantrums. And it's still teething, so when it misbehaves, you end up with bite marks.

I think it'll take a solid six years or so before web programming is as easy as desktop programming. Until then, I'll ke

Re:the problem with google apps

Before I start nitpicking, I'm going to point out that I said "Why not just leave the web to things that require the Internet and keep applications on the PC?" in a previous comment [slashdot.org].

while AJAX programmers are still struggling to get buttons working

I sincerely hope you mean they're having trouble getting the code behind the button to work, because I'd be extremely worried about the state of web developers today if they can't write <input type="button" value="Text on the button face" onclick="functionCallHere()">
or a form consisting of only a submit button (if you're making it compatible with browsers that have no scripting or have scripting disabled).

Performance. I've coded in DirectX, and I've coded in Java. I'll take DirectX any day.

The term web application is not often applied to Java any more. The term "web app" these days often refers to AJAX (formerly known as DHTML) apps and, less often, Flash apps.

However, you're right, on the whole desktop apps have better performance than web apps.

Flow layout is stupid. No, seriously. What I mean is: flow layout is fine for reading - desktop publishing, embedded images, all that junk. But it's stupid for a window-based GUI. As a UI designer, I'll take the absolute positioning and "anchoring" models over browser-based flow layouts any day.

...so use absolute positioning [w3.org] instead. You act like it doesn't exist, which, given that you've been using the ASP.NET web designer, doesn't surprise me. While fixed position in CSS is known to not be supported by Internet Explorer 6 and older, absolute position is.

Which brings up another point not yet mentioned: The sad state of affairs with web application GUIs is almost entirely Microsoft's fault. IE6 and its rather poor support for CSS2 and DOM, which weren't addressed for 6 years, let alone fixed, coupled with its widespread use has made it the lowest common denominator.

sure

it's the age old situation. not one tool does every job best. there are still plenty of situations where desktop apps are appropriate. as nifty as web 2.0 apps are, they still aren't as good, in certain situations.
that there is a demand for disconnected apps is undeniable. all one has to do is look at the disparity between the number of households with computers and the number of households with dial-up or less.
me, i prefer desktop apps in a number of areas - personal finance, my office suite, games, my coding tools - and there are probably more.
 
at the same time, on those rare occasions i find myself sitting somewhere with my laptop but no internet access, i feel lost to some extent. i am very, very used to having both types of software at my disposal constantly.

From Apple Basic to Pascal to MASM...

Got completely out of computers when I hit college, and then jumped back into it as a web developer later. Now I'm toying with PHP-GTK(2) apps and it's been quite fun, even though it's got a ways to go. C++ etc. just doesn't interest me - a language I knew from web dev had to hook me back into the desktop.

Desktop app development

I prefer desktop development. Web development gets frustrating with its nooks and crannies of brokenness. If standardized Javascript and CSS were as ubiquitous as C/C++/[anything else desktop], that might someday change... but probably not.

Yes, some of us do hate desktop apps.

I am a numerical analyst. I hate making anything that the user needs to interact with. This being said, I hate writing desktop apps. Furthermore, I hate writing web apps too. I only care about algorithms and automation.

Might be in the minority here..

But for some reason I can't stand Web Development at all but *love* desktop applications. My coding of choice is C#.Net or Java and i've written numerous small but useful applications that are in use at my place of employment and a few former jobs. Most of these apps are networked and use client-server interactions, but only on the intranet, not out on the internet.

I am asked quite often though, "Well why don't we just stick this on a web page and then we can get it from everywhere!" and I usually demur some and note that we dont need it to when anyone on the intranet can get to it anyway and there is no reason for some of these apps (or data) to be accessible outside of the corporate intranet.

For some reason, I just don't like ASP.Net or PHP or JavaScript, i've written small interactive web things in them, but it takes me way longer to accomplish something useful on a website than it does doing a desktop application. I suppose this probably has to do entirely with familiarity, but I also hate how slow websites typically are when you do something overly graphical or complex, whereas it runs great on the desktop application locally.

Browser as bad user interface

This web app stuff is a fad (I hope). It was really popular in the late 1990s as well. Eventually the weight of developing in the unreliable and limiting multi-purpose browser gets to be too much, and desktop apps come back into vogue. Ajax makes things a lot nicer than ten years ago, but people expect more as well. Some things can be done really well using Ajax but it's not the solution for everything.

iTunes is a dedicated desktop app that uses internet data intelligently, but Apple made a good choice not depending on a browser. Compare Google Maps to Google Earth, which is more responsive and flexible? And then there's the comparison of something like QuickTime or Windows Media players and the pseudo video players written in Flash with bad control responsiveness and limited functionality.

Re:Might be in the minority here..

It's just a different paradigm and mindset. They both have their unique advantages and shortcomings. Get a good IDE, a good framework and some Dr. Pepper and you can probably pull it off once you "grok" the shifts.

Having said that, a web application will never have the level of control that a forms-based one has, no matter how fancy your JavaScript is. Truth is, the browser is a crappy platform no matter how you look at it. The web illuminati proclaimed the desktop dead ten years ago and now again on the tails of GMail and the half million good and bad "rich" applications developed apparently for the specific purpose of showcasing how utterly screwed up the browser as a platform is.

But if you work for a living you probably have to go with the flow, so "Ajax" it is until the next fad comes around. Personally I think Java/.NET/Mono and the like with a good forms front end and a really powerful matching backend infrastructure is going to be the next big thing along with XCOPY deployment and zero impact installs. CPUs and memory are catching up to managed frameworks and writing a web service (or a client) is laughably simple now (I remember hand-coding my WSDL and walking in the snow uphill both ways, etc).

In any case, the fun part is being int he middle of it all =)

I do both

and I love doing both, as long as I have decent tools to do either with.

For example, I have done desktop development for over 10 years, I am more experienced at it and easier to make a usable UI. Drawbacks: harder to build and test, but easier to step debug - unfortunately, my current employer has a MESS of a desktop app full of .NET front ends and legacy C++ backends in a mix of multiple versions of MFC and .NET - argh - which makes it unbearable at times, but only on the app I currently work on.

Web apps, I have only done for about 5-6 years tops, however the UI flexibility is less powerful, the "stateless" state of doing web programming is a bit more of a challenge. Easier to set up and get running fast, harder to step debug (unless you have just the right dev environment) and can be VERY hair raising. Oddly enough I am doing a contract job for a company right now, purely in ASP.NET 2.0 (C#) and I am having a blast. However, I AM fortunate to be able to build from the ground up so I know what everything is doing.

People hate developing applications

No, really, they do. They like solving problems. Having to implement the solution is the boring part, no matter how it's going to be done.

Re:People hate developing applications

It's not even developing apps anymore. It's assembling apps from bits of prefab code. The kicker is that only some of it is good quality and can be picked up and mastered quickly.

These days, coding is grabbing some barely begun project that does just enough that you feel it's better to add to it than start fresh, using code generators (SWIG, yacc/lexx or Antlr, and doesn't VB have some wretched auto generated window manipulation stuff? etc.) then spending time ferreting out and fixing subtly broken bits or wondering if you missed some little detail about how to properly use the tools. Then maybe get another piece or two by running some Fortran source code thru f2c, call functions from lots of different libraries, grab some modules off cpan, try to realize the advanatages of OOP by reusing other people's classes, search Sourceforge again for yet more pieces, glue the crap together with shell scripts, and try to avoid dallying in makefile hell by dallying instead in automatic makefile generation hell. Constantly search the Internet for this and that error message.

And that's just "development". Then there's all kinds of support stuff to figure out. Wrestle with your choice of source repository be that cvs, subversion, rcs, or whatever, figure out what to set to what in the environment on stuff like Java's CLASSPATH, muck about with this and that IDE and try to get the compiler and debugger to talk nicely to it or live with vi when you get tired of trying to figure out why you're not having any luck getting X to tunnel through ssh. Either way figure out how to twiddle the colors for the syntax highlighting or squint to make out those letters that were displayed in dark blue on a black background. Bone up on emacs to figure out how to get it to stop replacing backspace with ctrl-h, and binding ctrl-h to the help when being used remotely. Repeat "./configure;make;make install a library or 2, discover they depend on yet other libraries" until "all dependencies satisfied or you run up against some missing or broken piece and will have to search for alternatives." And still you're not done. How about Valgrind? Profiling? Maybe some kind of package to automate testing? Automated backups of the work? And you're never really done-- there are always upgrades, and there's always deciding when the tradeoff of having to redo your environment is worth the bug fixes, new features, and so on.

Life was so much simpler when they were teaching that bubble sort in the beginning C class, wasn't it?

I don't see desktop apps ever going away entirely.

You're never going to get the performance on the web (for most things) that you can running locally. Equally, while tools and frameworks for faking it have gotten a lot better, maintaining state is a pain in the ass on the web and generally is not on the desktop.

It's like when Java came out and some people said we'd never write C again. There are things Java is good for and has taken over, just as there are things web apps are good for and has taken over, but there is still a place for desktop apps just as there is still a place for C.

The kind of bold, sweeping statements made by this article aren't much more than flamebait in a pretty dress.

Give Me The Desktop

I develop two things for a living. I work on a server back-end, and on the web front-end. The back end is easy. It's all Java, it's fun to develop for (there is challenge in some things, for example).

Then there are tons of front-end things I do. I hate them. It's developing the same code OVER and OVER (since we basically make copies of some parts to be used numerous times) and the glue code always has to go in there and is a pain. Then there is the scripting. Besides making things display right (which is a pain across numerous browsers), there is the functionality. "We want a select all checkbox." "When you update this date, it should update that date, unless this date is before than date except when...". Javascript is HIDEOUS. Can we just replace it with Python or Java even PHP?

Our problems are all user based. The users want it to work like a desktop application, but want it to be web based. It should respond fast and do all this checking and such, but it can't be a real application. You should be able to move forward and backwards without things going weird (can be tough to do in the stateless-ness of the web) but it can't be a real application.

We want an application, but we want it to be web based. We want it fast, but it must be made in HTML and Javascript. Blah blah blah.

I would LOVE to do more desktop applications. I wish I could.

I wish users would get over this stupid "lets put everything on the web" stuff. There is a fair amount of what we do that I can see being web based (like most of the reporting type stuff external users use). But all the management stuff we use in house would be a much better fit to a real application than the web applications we are using now.

Please, PLEASE.... bring desktop applications into vogue. Java allows right-once-run-anywhere to just as high a degree as HTML/JavaScrpit, if not more. Takes less bandwidth. Can run much faster. Can do client side stuff easier.

Re:Give Me The Desktop

(since we basically make copies of some parts to be used numerous times)

You don't copy code: You generalize it into a function.

Re:Give Me The Desktop

I wish users would get over this stupid "lets put everything on the web" stuff. There is a fair amount of what we do that I can see being web based (like most of the reporting type stuff external users use). But all the management stuff we use in house would be a much better fit to a real application than the web applications we are using now.

Please, PLEASE.... bring desktop applications into vogue. Java allows right-once-run-anywhere to just as high a degree as HTML/JavaScrpit, if not more. Takes less bandwidth. Can run much faster. Can do client side stuff easier.

Trust me, just wait a little while, and desktop applications will be all the rage again. If you've been in the computer business long enough, you've seen the shift from "timeshare" server, to the desktop, back to server (thin client), back to desktop, back to server (Java), back to desktop, back to server (web applications / ajax, web 2.0). It's only a matter of time until the pendulum swings back to desktop.

Web apps are great, except...

Web apps are great, except...:

1. When the connection goes down, or even lags, it can have an impact on the speed you're working on.
2. Implementations for CSS vary wildly.
3. We aren't using dumb terminals. Web Apps, almost by definition, use an interpreted language embedded into the web browser. Compiled applications (or even ones that use bytecode) will perform faster than this and without the latency that the web introduces when you change pages.

Why not just leave the web to things that require the Internet and keep applications on the PC?

Re:Web apps are great, except...

Why not just leave the web to things that require the Internet and keep applications on the PC?

Because DOWNLOAD and INSTALL are two words that make too many users pass out upon hearing them uttered. If an IT Department is doing both of these tasks on their behalf, they too faint when they have 1,000+ users.

Do you have the right OS? Right version? The right drivers? Is your antivirus interfering? Is your Registry befuddled?

It's much easier to answer these questions once -- for the browser software -- and be done. Need to upgrade? NO PROBLEM! Upgrade on the servers only and we're off.

Now I'm sure EVERY ONE of my above arguments can be refuted, drowned with "gotchyas", banged with exceptions, and slammed with a "not exactly" or two. But I'm not the one that needs convincing. Convince management, cuz they are brainwashed that all my above points are Irrefutable Law of Common Wisdom. It's an uphill battle to show them otherwise. They are completely sold on the Browser as Platform concept. And that's where their pocketbooks go. So that's where commercial dev shops go.

I'm not saying webapps are without any merit, but, yes, people tend to go overboard and shove a square peg in a round hole.

No, at least NOT YET

The web has much to evolve before it can live up to all this hype. Yeah, this may sound weird coming from a web developer, but I'm a careful one.

As for desktop apps, they are, still, faster and more reliable than their web counterparts, not to mention that a whole cultural change must occur so web apps can really prevail.

I've done some desktop development - only to amuse myself, really (so I'm not the best man to write statements about it) but I'll take my chances: the amount of code needed to transform a shell app into a desktop one is huge, so I really don't see any advantages on it, being a geek.

OTOH, web app interface development seems to be a lot easier and shorter than QT, GTK, etc...

To web or not to web

The question is, since web apps were originally built on desktop applications themselves, have the tables flipped? Or is it just wishful thinking?

Perhaps a better question might be, why on earth would coders waste time reading Graham's meandering opinions when they could be developing for the [web|desktop] instead?

For that matter, why would they be on Slashdot?

Meta-Desktop Apps ?

Aren't Integrated Development Environments (such as Eclipse, NetBeans, and Visual Studio) used by developers to create apps -- both Web and Desktop style apps -- Aren't they themselves desktop apps ? Essentially IDEs are Meta-Apps, because they can be used to create new Applications. I think that these tools are still alive and kicking... So it would seem that until we (or rather the tool creators) manage to figure out how to do away with those fundamentally useful tools, we won't ever truly be rid of the Desktop metaphor. If you are a professional software developer: Can you really imagine trying to develop a new application for your employer, using tools that are running totally inside of a browser window, streaming one click at a time over AJAX ? I mean, there would probably be some gee-whiz coolness factor at first, but I think the novelty would quickly wear off once it dawns on you that you have ceded so much control over to the System Administrator. It's bad enough as it is with things like Database Admins controlling access to my data, and Security Admins controlling access to my email.... I can't bear to give away the last piece of territory that is truly totally within my domain - my precious IDE !!!

So as long as the IDE shall live, so shall the Desktop App!

All hail King WIMP !

Web? Desktop?

Real Men code GREEN SCREEN!

It runs faster! It is more secure!

huh?

The question is, since web apps were originally built on desktop applications themselves

Say what huh? That doesn't even make sense.

Yes, I HATE desktop development...

For two primary reasons: 1) Installers. Writing installers sucks. The MSI "standard" is a bloated piece of crap, Installshield and Wise are ridiculously hard to get along with, and NSIS is a little too primitive (although by far the best installer platform I've found). You have to test the installer on every platform, ending up with stupid little quirks on Vista and x64 platforms. It's a nightmare, and patching/updating is a whole different nightmare. In the real world, there's no such thing as simple XCOPY deployment. At least for shrinkwrapped apps. 2) COM Interop. The Win32 API and COM combined is the crappiest piece of crap that ever crapped. I have nightmares about being forced to use Interop because they left out some trivial and silly thing from a WinForms control. I am speaking quite literally in saying that I have had nightmares. Seriously. I know, I know, working in Linux probably makes both of these problems more tolerable, if not completely invisible. But some of us must work in Windows. C'est la vie. I would take ASP.NET, or PHP, or Ruby, or Python, or any of those over crappy desktop Windows programming any day of the week. I'll even accept multiple-obscure-browser testing over COM Interop and installers.

illogical

If desktop development is dead, then I must have used my mind to submit this post directly to the /. server. That's the only explanation I can come up with...

Browsers weren't designed to run apps

The browser and the HTML language were not designed to be an application interface; they were made to just display information. So writing apps in a browser will NEVER be as flexible or straightforward as standard GUI programming.

It's all about the ubiquity of the browser -- i.e. it's already installed, the whole easy adoption jazz -- so most new apps get written for it. But anyone who had to debug Javascript, or trick the user interface NOT to accept multiple button pushes, or fiddle with browser implementation quirks & incompatibilities etc. KNOWS that we are worse off with this than desktop apps.

IMHO, about the only thing that validates the use of web apps is the easy creation of UIs that mostly contain text and images. Once we get to controls and business logic, HTML and Javascript are a PITA. And still, most of us are stuck with them... :(

Shyeah right. Dream on.

I can think of at least 8 million people who might disagree with his assertion. World of Warcraft does not run in a web browser.

The article was about Microsoft being dead

Microsoft being dead is not equivalent to saying desktop apps are dead. Sure, Graham is making a case that Web 2.0 is great, but he's not saying that it is going to completely replace the desktop. What he is saying is that Microsoft is no longer the monopoly that instills fear in all other technology companies. This is true, and is a very different statement from "desktop development is dead".

But alas, I'm not new here. I expect this kind of misleading headline. Just thought I'd clarify for all those who have no intention to RTFA.

It's not hate, it's headaches.

If it's technically possible to choose either a web based app or a desktop app, I would pick the web every time.

Tech support sucks big time. It's far, far, far easier to maintain, upgrade, distribute a web application than it is to manage a desktop application. A couple major web browsers and a couple major plugins pretty much covers every testing and support situation that you will face -- especially for intranet type situations.

For desktop situations there are a million variables: installers, bugs, spyware, permissions, operating systems and versions of OSs, non-existent user backups, differing service pack and patch levels... the list goes on. Most of these really aren't your problem as a software developer or publisher, but in reality, they often become your problem. That's in addition to the nightmare of supporting different versions of your program.

If the web can be applied to a situation, there should be no surprise that people will develop for the web.

Lack of killer apps...

The truth is the desktop some real killer apps have to be released to want to give programmers inspiration IMHO. I'm sure there are many "killer apps" just waiting in the wings until computational power gets there. I have a shit tonne of ideas for great desktop programmes in my head that I've put part of the design to paper already but much of it has to wait because the time and expertise requires is a huge undertaking.

I also have a tonne of desktop software I would love to use if it was more advanced and the computational power was there. I love Dragon's naturally speaking and not having to type since I'm a natural orator in my mind and the words just can't come out fast enough when I get going. Not only that but not having to type keeps me focused on what I'm saying.

Lots of desktop applications will have to wait further advancements in science and art of information interpretation, that is converting human data and crunching it as easy as we do.

I strongly prefer web apps

I _greatly_ prefer doing web apps. Great things about web apps:

• No mucking around with ugly GUI code
  
• Easy to use: the interface limitations can be a good thing sometimes
  
• Easy to deploy
  
• Cross platform support, if you are careful, comes for free
  
• Security: less data stored on often compromised desktop systems
  

Perhaps it has to do with familiarity, but from my perspective, doing desktop applications (especially by the time you deal with all the extra support & deployment issues) is a real pain.

However, I will say that many people I work with do not share my enthusiasm for web apps. There is a huge technology stack to learn when you need to deal with the chain of technologies involved from the server to the desktop. All the quirks of different browsers take some getting used to, and it requires a different mindset. It also requires you hold the belief that a website can be an application, which, amazingly, many still do not have.

With all that said, there are still some things which are more suitably done as desktop applications. I think as things advance that list gets shorter and shorter.

Web-Apps? No thanks.

Nobody wants to use web-apps. There is only one reason why this abomination is artificially hyped again and again: Open Source.

No, really, you cannot sell standard software very good anymore. It gets more and more ridiculous to spend hundreds of bucks on something like Word, Excel, or even Photoshop if you can get similar programs for free. Even if you say that those replacements are not as good as the original, which I doubt, they are getting better and better. So what do you do if you are a mega-corp, which made most of its money from standard software?

You are starting your marketing machinery to tell the people that they need something you can provide, your open source competition cannot. Web based apps sound fine, for the provider. They need a big and expensive infrastructure of servers, which hardly can be provided even by large open source projects. They are the wet dream of every marketing person, being able to charge per use. Being able to get detailed using statistics and spamming you with ads. For the more criminal (more usual?) ones, I would take it as given, that they snoop through your content if this is technically feasible. Web based apps are technically inferior? Nothing a good marketing can fix....or perhaps it cannot. People are stupid, but it seems that they are not that stupid.

So, tell me one, just one advantage of web based apps, for the average user. Desktops apps are out? Yeah, right, and nobody needs more than 640K ever.

Desktop apps will never die.

There are far too many people concerned with privacy, reliability, and security for web apps to be the end all replacement that everyone on the "Web 2.0" bandwagon wants. AJAX isn't very secure, I've yet to see an implementation of it that doesn't suck at least a little, not to mention it is much slower than static pages, and breaks conventional browsers most of the time.

Privacy: If you're working on a creative project, do you really want it held at the mercy of some other companie