How long do you think the WWW software will be in use?

[Derleth]

@protoboard

Do you think people will still be using Tim Berners Lee’s code even 100 years from now?

People aren’t using TimBL’s code now. Neither the server nor the browser he wrote are still in widespread use. The standards are central, the code is disposable: That’s why the Internet is strong.

[protoboard]

@Derleth

The Web will be in use into the foreseeable future. It has a huge installed base (pre-existing users of the software and documents created for the software), which isn’t something the Web had to overcome to become dominant.

The Web wasn’t the first hypertext system, depending on how you define the term. It wasn’t even the first hypertext system on the Internet. Gopher has a better claim to that: Gopher was invented by people at the University of Minnesota, and was designed to be menu-based and text-file-centric, although of course Gopher can (and does) serve HTML just fine. The problem with Gopher was that the University of Minnesota threatened to charge people for the privilege of implementing Gopher servers, which slowed its growth right as the first Web software coming out of CERN was beginning to hit the big time. And, since the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) didn’t have any intention of charging people to make Web servers, the Web had a huge advantage at the critical period when people out of the usual large corporation/large university/large government sphere were beginning to come online.

My point is, the Web expanded into virgin territory, and anything coming up now will have to compete in a world where everyone knows what the Web is.

Were there any pre-Gopher hypertext protocols that simply never saw much use aside from by the individual who made them, or do you think Gopher and the WWW was literally the first time anyone ever even thought of the idea of combining the Net and hypertext together?

I could see someone in the early 80s some geek or scientist trying to mix the two for shits and giggles or whatnot and nobody ever seeing the utility behind it until after the Berlin Wall fell and “globalization” became more of a buzzword. Not sure it ever actually happened, but it was definitely doable then.

[Reply]

@protoboard

Were there any pre-Gopher hypertext protocols that simply never saw much use aside from by the individual who made them, or do you think Gopher and the WWW was literally the first time anyone ever even thought of the idea of combining the Net and hypertext together?

I could see someone in the early 80s some geek or scientist trying to mix the two for shits and giggles or whatnot and nobody ever seeing the utility behind it until after the Berlin Wall fell and “globalization” became more of a buzzword. Not sure it ever actually happened, but it was definitely doable then.

Wikipedia has a section on this:

Hypertext

[amanset]

@Greg_Charles

Wait … and I can hear the whooshing sound already … but, what?

Amusingly, considering the username, but I think we had an example of the classic Java/Javascript confusion error. Chrome is retiring the way certain plugins used, one of which was the Java plugin for applets. Another, newer one, that has the same issue is the Unity Player, which is probably why they are trying to hurry out a HTML5 solution.

[engineer_comp_geek]

@Greg_Charles

Wait … and I can hear the whooshing sound already … but, what?

Chrome version 42 will pour your Java coffee down the drain: Plugin blocked by default

Chrome version 42 will pour your Java coffee down the drain: Plugin blocked...

[scabpicker]

@Fuzzy_Dunlop

Do you mean it was effectively replaced with ssh? In that case I suppose it’s technically pretty accurate. I’d certainly be dubious if I had to telnet into a computer instead of ssh. But I ssh daily. On work days anyway. So far from dead.

Yeah, I view ssh and telnet as different beasts (if I don’t ssh, I don’t work). So that’s a case of it being replaced.

As far as my spreading rumors of telnet’s death: I do suppose that it’s premature. But it was coughing up blood this morning, I swear. New devices don’t usually come with telnet enabled, and the companies who are still shipping machines configured that way are rightfully ridiculed.

And FTP doesn’t have to die, it has encrypted options available within the the protocol. Everything becoming encrypted makes troubleshooting problems more complex than “telnet <host> <port>” and start talking the daemon’s language, but it finally does away with password sniffing. I hail our new encrypted overlords.

@protoboard

Do you think people will still be using Tim Berners Lee’s code even 100 years from now?

It was already explained that we don’t use his code. However, even if we did use his code 100 years from now: why would it be a problem? If the code can handle the job, use it.

Which made me wonder about the oldest piece of code still in use. These Slashdot comments seem to think it’s probably some of Voyager’s code, which apparently re-used code from the Viking orbiter (40 years old), or the code used to run older nuclear power plants originally built in the '60s. So, in extreme cases, we already have examples of code that is nearing half that life span.