Read this and replace "web" with "desktop" and large parts are still spot on, wrt virus scanners and the likes. We work on a product of which the installation is a bit complicated because it needs to install a bunch of other things. 95% of the time that fails the reason is some overly active security tool which messes up (the other 5% mainly machines which haven't been updated for years) To the point that we've started wondering if we wouldn't just start requiring dedicated machines or at least without any of that software, or even just ship PCs with the application pre-installed as it would likely turn out cheaper. Unfortunately that is not really an option as a web dev, so that situation is even worse..
I develop desktop apps that are run exclusively virtualized, and don't really have to deal with either set of problems. From a developer perspective I'd say it's a pretty sweet spot, as you get the best of both worlds to some extent.
Granted, communicating with any type of hardware on the users machine is a major challenge. We've had to spend significant effort just troubleshooting printer issues. If you need low latency, virtualization is likely a non-starter.
The upshot is that the latency between our apps and the application server/database (hosted in the same domain) is much lower than for a conventional web app.
Comments
Read this and replace "web" with "desktop" and large parts are still spot on, wrt virus scanners and the likes. We work on a product of which the installation is a bit complicated because it needs to install a bunch of other things. 95% of the time that fails the reason is some overly active security tool which messes up (the other 5% mainly machines which haven't been updated for years) To the point that we've started wondering if we wouldn't just start requiring dedicated machines or at least without any of that software, or even just ship PCs with the application pre-installed as it would likely turn out cheaper. Unfortunately that is not really an option as a web dev, so that situation is even worse..
I develop desktop apps that are run exclusively virtualized, and don't really have to deal with either set of problems. From a developer perspective I'd say it's a pretty sweet spot, as you get the best of both worlds to some extent.
That's an interesting point, but I'm not sure how well this works for e.g. communication with low latency harware?
Granted, communicating with any type of hardware on the users machine is a major challenge. We've had to spend significant effort just troubleshooting printer issues. If you need low latency, virtualization is likely a non-starter.
The upshot is that the latency between our apps and the application server/database (hosted in the same domain) is much lower than for a conventional web app.