About 20 years ago a small startup called Netscape and a large company called Sun were supposed to have solved the software problem. Everybody was predicting the demise of Microsoft. It was thought that with the internet, we would soon be delivering software over the web instantaneously. "A software paradise is just a few years away!" we all thought.
Fast forward to today. Netscape is dead, and Javascript is good for posting photos online and watching videos. And coordinating projects. And this. And that. But not the basic tasks of what became known as the standard productivity suite: Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Outlook. These four basic operations of a computer are still very important. So important that Apple feels the need to provide its own clones. The relationship between Microsoft productivity apps and Macintosh computers is rocky to say the least.
Java was supposed to make all of this obsolete, but the promises of Java security failed to pan out.
The fact remains that a truly plug-in-oriented productivity suite has never been tried before. If there were any justice in the world, then knock-off social media apps wouldn't be a hot industry at all; actually useful marginal functionality for the applications people depend on every day to get work done would get a huge amount of attention and substantial mind-share in the developer community.
We don't need to play with the economic model. The exchange of money for software is fundamentally sounds, as sound as the basic market principles Adam Smith detailed hundreds of years ago. We don't need new organizational models. The basic principles of capitalism that formed over the last 200 years are sound and up to the task.
What we need is infrastructure. New technology. We need a way to deliver software that is substantially more flexible and adaptable to the user's needs while ensuring that malicious programs are either impossible to write or unable to wreak substantial havoc. The process model of today's major operating systems simply isn't up to the task. What we need are new operating system and new programming languages.
Sadly, this is very much the case of "we'll know it when we see it". The C/Unix architecture that dominates today became a success almost in spite of its creators. What is needed is a new approach, a willingness to consider new solutions to old problems.
Anyway, if I can play with computer programs the same way I play with legos, then I'll be happy. And because playing with legos is so simple, this will lead to a situation where the distinction between programmers and non-programmers will blur and eventually disappear. But that's a long way off.
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About 20 years ago a small startup called Netscape and a large company called Sun were supposed to have solved the software problem. Everybody was predicting the demise of Microsoft. It was thought that with the internet, we would soon be delivering software over the web instantaneously. "A software paradise is just a few years away!" we all thought.
Fast forward to today. Netscape is dead, and Javascript is good for posting photos online and watching videos. And coordinating projects. And this. And that. But not the basic tasks of what became known as the standard productivity suite: Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Outlook. These four basic operations of a computer are still very important. So important that Apple feels the need to provide its own clones. The relationship between Microsoft productivity apps and Macintosh computers is rocky to say the least.
Java was supposed to make all of this obsolete, but the promises of Java security failed to pan out.
The fact remains that a truly plug-in-oriented productivity suite has never been tried before. If there were any justice in the world, then knock-off social media apps wouldn't be a hot industry at all; actually useful marginal functionality for the applications people depend on every day to get work done would get a huge amount of attention and substantial mind-share in the developer community.
We don't need to play with the economic model. The exchange of money for software is fundamentally sounds, as sound as the basic market principles Adam Smith detailed hundreds of years ago. We don't need new organizational models. The basic principles of capitalism that formed over the last 200 years are sound and up to the task.
What we need is infrastructure. New technology. We need a way to deliver software that is substantially more flexible and adaptable to the user's needs while ensuring that malicious programs are either impossible to write or unable to wreak substantial havoc. The process model of today's major operating systems simply isn't up to the task. What we need are new operating system and new programming languages.
Sadly, this is very much the case of "we'll know it when we see it". The C/Unix architecture that dominates today became a success almost in spite of its creators. What is needed is a new approach, a willingness to consider new solutions to old problems.
Anyway, if I can play with computer programs the same way I play with legos, then I'll be happy. And because playing with legos is so simple, this will lead to a situation where the distinction between programmers and non-programmers will blur and eventually disappear. But that's a long way off.