Web apps

Having entered the job market again, web programming is a big thing right now. And I'll be honest, I love online banking. So why do I feel reluctance at embracing web applications?

Remote applications offer many advantages...

• Easy distribution
• Data security
• Data backup
• Easy updates
• Consistent interface

Mission critical data requires administration. It needs backups in case of emergency. It needs security against theft. And every piece of software receives tweaks. Putting the data and application on your server lets you provide the administrative services to smaller customers. Web applications all share these strengths.

Then is the web the right platform for remote access? AJAX relies on hooks in the browser. We keep adding features to text parsers. We have dozens of frameworks built around synchronizing an asynchronous protocol. Why?

X Windows provides remote graphical applications. And these applications behave like all of your other applications. Why aren't we making it more efficient? Why aren't all these advances occurring in a full fledged platform?

Because all of the computers running Microsoft Windows can't support those applications. We have all of these ad hoc answers hacking around Windows' short comings. Because it is not in Microsoft's best interests to play along. This is not innovation.

It is, however, where we are. So I will continue learning more web technologies and writing web applications. I just needed to understand the reason behind it all.