> With JS, we have a problem that (mainstream) software hadn't faced before, which is client server architecture, that the client might be a cruddy cheap phone somewhere and/or on a dodgy link.
2000 was the peak of the dot-com boom. In the US, half of Silicon Valley was developing for client-server and nearly every person with a computer was using client-server applications.
To give a clearer example, Napster, where I worked, had 60 million users, mostly in the US and we were far from the largest.
The cruddy cheap phones one might complain today is several times more powerful than the servers we used then and the dodgy connection today are downright sublime compared to the dial-up modems over noisy phone lines.
The internet was beyond a frontier was clearly happening. But it's insane to me to pretend that most software was internet software.
Yes that was the excitement the enticing future & an amazing wave breaking upon us. Many were tuned in. But Napster is far more exception that proves the rule. Very very very consumers had any experience with networked software with client server, and I think you d have to be an absolute fucking moron to pretend that most of the world when we were thinking of computers them were thinking of networked client server systems. Get fuckign real. I appreciate that we the alpha geeks saw what was happening. But that doesn't embody what was actually happening, doesn't capture what people saw or felt.
Napster was the fucking envy. It pioneered something else. I admit it was mainstream, but as an exception that proved the rule, as something totally totally different that we all loved.
You can't possibly be serious.