Building brick buildings with steel and other misuses of Ajax

When builders first started using steel, they built brick buildings that had steel supports. While this incremental approach made sense for existing builders, it came nowhere near utilizing steel to its fullest potential.

In a similar way, all the folks from the fat-client world (Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe AIR, Eclipse RAP) are trying to make a rich web interface look just like a PC client interface. Ajaxian had a good analysis of the recent Eclipse Rich Application Programming announcement here.

RAP, from Innoopract, allows developerswho are used to writing fat client Java applications using SWT now build web applications. These applications look just like fat client apps, and offer no support for basic web development standards like css.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it is basically a way to make the future of web development look just like the past of client/server. I gave my thoughts on where we at ActiveGrid see things going with my post, Ajax needs Eclipse Like a Hole in the Head. One thing we know for sure about the future is that it rarely looks like the past….