> However, web applications today are so much more than their desktop equivalents from the 80s and 90s both in terms of what's possible with them and as to how accessible they are to developers.
Could you elaborate on that?
From the point of view of the user, an app from the 90s works much faster than Google Docs. From developer's point of view, using a visual widget in an app was as simple as dropping it on a form, and then setting some properties if needed, either visually or via code. Nowadays you can do it with Lazarus and it will generate code for different platforms.
Look at this from another angle: The fact that the most powerful web company today with some of the most brilliant minds can't create spreadsheet software that would work equally fast as its desktop counterpart already says a lot about the tools we're using. Some people can't acknowledge it and miss the point completely and say "browsers are slow", trying all possible optimizations - but these are all hacks, not solutions to the underlying problem.
Yes, the 90s app is faster but can it consume and provide data over a network? Does it afford collaborative editing? Sharing data with others?
You can now even use Google Sheets for creating web applications much like Excel has been used for creating desktop applications.
Lazarus and Delphi in general certainly are great tools but they're also limited in terms of what types of user interfaces you can create with them. There probably aren't many faster ways of creating single-user CRUD applications but once you have to roll out an application to multiple users who are supposed to use the application over a network and in a collaborative fashion things start to look different.
As for the other angle I consider Excel (and the concept of spreadsheet software in general) one of the single most remarkable pieces of software created so far. Creating a fully-fledged spreadsheet application is no small feat. Then, let's not forget, Google Sheets is free whereas Microsoft makes significant revenue with their Office products, which would explain their motivation to create the best and fastest version of their product they possibly can while Google seems to be trailing behind.
> Yes, the 90s app is faster but can it consume and provide data over a network?
Yes, AFAIK, though I haven't used the features much.
> Does it afford collaborative editing?
That's a new one, but probably less difficult to bolt on top of a desktop app than to make a desktop app in a browser.
> Sharing data with others?
Yes! Current model is actually a huge regression here. On the desktop, you have a file system. You can share files. In the cloud, each application defines its own half-assed abstraction over data storage, and you're limited to what the service allows you and/or the company was bothered to implement.
The problem with the web application is, unfortunately, a mix of multiple big issues. Browser becoming a worse-is-better incrementally evolved runtime for applications. A shitty technology (JS) used as the main language of said runtime. User-hostile business practices that became easy - and thus popular - to implement on the web. And the very popularity itself, which sucks out oxygen from more sane areas of computing and tries to port bad engineering everywhere.
> You can share files. In the cloud, each application defines its own half-assed abstraction over data storage, and you're limited to what the service allows you and/or the company was bothered to implement.
proposal-2-final-new-FINAL-draft-02-2018.docx isn't exactly sane data-sharing. With desktop environments you could use a version control system for that but that hardly ever happens in a consistent manner.
You can create walled gardens both on the desktop and the web. That's a question of ethics not technology.
It is, when you can freely move it onto a USB drive, or attach to an e-mail, an IM message, or transmit over countless other systems that have no relation with Microsoft Office.
> You can create walled gardens both on the desktop and the web. That's a question of ethics not technology.
Yes, but that's pretty much a tautology. Technology is all about making stuff easier, and web is pretty enabling when it comes to walled gardens and other unethical conduct.
Ultimately, the web is what killed end-user open source. A web application is an ultimate anathema to both open source and free software - you don't get to run the program as you like, you can't inspect it in any way (even if it's "open sourced", you can't verify if this is what really runs on third-party server), you can't distribute it, you can't modify it, and to top it off, you no longer own the data you work on with said software.
> Ultimately, the web is what killed end-user open source. A web application is an ultimate anathema to both open source and free software - you don't get to run the program as you like, you can't inspect it in any way (even if it's "open sourced", you can't verify if this is what really runs on third-party server), you can't distribute it, you can't modify it, and to top it off, you no longer own the data you work on with said software.
On the other hand, there are many people who are aware of that and are actively using, developing and promoting the so-called "self-hosted" solutions - that is, completely free and open software that is in direct competition with closed web apps.
Have a problem with a commercial, closed solution? Look here:
https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted
Still haven't found what you need? You're always free to create one on your own. So you can't really argue that it is the web that "killed" end-user open source as it's very much alive, from VLC to WordPress.
> Technology is all about making stuff easier, and web is pretty enabling when it comes to walled gardens and other unethical conduct.
The web enabled us to reason about walled gardens in the first place. Before the advent of the web there was no talk about walled gardens simply because everything was a walled garden.
> Ultimately, the web is what killed end-user open source
That implies that end user open source had really lived before. For end users open source while not exactly irrelevant never has played a huge role. One reason for that perhaps is that there doesn't seem to be a long-term viable business model for open source desktop applications.
> A web application is an ultimate anathema to both open source and free software - you don't get to run the program as you like, you can't inspect it in any way
That's the case for pretty much any client-server application. The Affero GPL for example tries to remedy this but again that's more a question of business model rather than technology.
I don't understand why you're downvoted, your concerns are valid. I don't see any problemw with sharing data over the network, but I don't thin collaborative editing of a standard table widget via network is possible in the current version of either Delphi or Lazarus. However, in the case of Google Sheets, the biggest advantage is not the ability to edit the sheet by many people at the same time (which causes new problems for anyone who tried), but the ability to share it with others once so that everybody has access to the most recent version, forever. This is definitely possible to implement in a RAD from the 90s.
> an app from the 90s works much faster than Google Docs
This is not really a technology limitation as much as it is a product and economic limitation.
Google docs works like it does because it is "good enough" from an economic perspective. Improving the performance would not increase profit so it is not done.
Much of what people complain about with web software being crap is the same issue. Crap is more profitable so that is what companies make.
Could you elaborate on that? From the point of view of the user, an app from the 90s works much faster than Google Docs. From developer's point of view, using a visual widget in an app was as simple as dropping it on a form, and then setting some properties if needed, either visually or via code. Nowadays you can do it with Lazarus and it will generate code for different platforms.
Look at this from another angle: The fact that the most powerful web company today with some of the most brilliant minds can't create spreadsheet software that would work equally fast as its desktop counterpart already says a lot about the tools we're using. Some people can't acknowledge it and miss the point completely and say "browsers are slow", trying all possible optimizations - but these are all hacks, not solutions to the underlying problem.