Web Applications are Overrated

For years we've been told that web apps are the way of the future. But are they really? The answer is "probably not". Think about where web applications are going. You don't know where they're going? We'll let's think about where they've been.

The Stateless Abyss
For almost 20 years now, web applications have lived in the stateless depths of the World Wide Web, thanks to that wonderful little protocol, HTTP. HTTP's request/response nature allowed for simple and straight-forward communication back in the day, when all we really wanted was to ask another machine on the web for a resource.

The Dynamic Shift
As the Web grew in popularity, we started placing more and more demands on the resources for which we asked. We started making the dog do tricks. We wanted more "interactivity"; static text and images were no longer enough; we now needed the ability to customize the resource and create "dynamic content" with each request. We wanted to conduct business and stream media all over a stateless channel, where each transaction had no knowledge of previous ones.

The Stateful Revolution
Soon, having the dog roll over or shake hands was not enough as well. The time came for stateful transactions. We now want to keep track of whom is logged in, what he/she has done and where he/she has been. We want state. Only now, we're making the dog walk a tight-rope and juggle chainsaws. We've begun to do things like stuff variable values in responses and re-collect them on the next request or write database records to keep track of transaction state on the web server; all to mimic stateful transactions. Dozens of web frameworks have surfaced, many having a mechanism built-in to get around the stateless nature of HTTP. We now have technologies that effectively mix web and desktop technologies, something I like to call "webtop clients", manifest in Adobe Flash Player, Java Applets, and Microsoft Silverlight.

The Pattern
Do you see the pattern? Since the inception of the Web, web applications have evolved significantly; from static content to dynamic content, from statelessness to statefulness, from browser-only technology to browser-desktop mixture technologies. However, their evolution is not toward something new and unseen, but to something all too familiar, the thick client.

With today's frameworks for desktop application development and deployment, the justification for many of today's web applications, especially web apps internal to a company, are no longer legit. Take a look at Apple's iTunes; everything Apple flows through that application. As for deployment, Microsoft's ClickOnce for .NET Windows applications and Sparkle for Cocoa applications make deployment and updates so easy, it's ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, web applications do have their place, but the number of scenarios for which they are the optimal choice is dwindling; sure they can be used for nearly everything, but what's the point? It all comes down to the following question: in a particular situation, what problem does a web application solve that a desktop application does not? When you realize how many times you can't find any, you'll realize that web applications are overrated.