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I don't know if this is really a fair comparison. You can do simple forms in plain HTML if you want to, after all. No CSS required, no Ruby or PHP, no scripting, no nothing.

If you want to persist the form submissions you need to have some logic (which brings in a programming language) and a database (which brings in SQL, or maybe structured text files), but that's just as true in a single-user or client-server application as it is in a Web application. The only differences are that the fifteen-years-ago application probably used a language like Visual Basic rather than PHP or Ruby, and a simple embedded database engine like Jet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Jet_Database_Engine) rather than a standalone database server. But the basic concept of a form-based application hasn't changed much, and the scope of knowledge you need to build one hasn't changed much either.

I've noticed several sites recently that are including more than one version of JQuery (and a copy of Prototype) on the same page - which is a symptom of this to me.

This is more of a symptom of idiots having access to programming tools. Idiots haven't changed much in the last fifteen years either. There were plenty of line-of-business apps written in (say) VB whose code would make you scream "Burn it! Burn it with fire!"

offtopic, but because I disagree with the HN policy of not informing people when they've been banned I'm posting this.

iRobot, your account has been banned for over 100 days. Unless someone turns on the "show dead" switch in their profile, they can't see what you post.

> I mentioned that if 15 years ago you had suggested that in 2012 you would need HTML, CSS (and probably LESS), JS (and probably JQuery + CoffeeScript + Backbone), SQL or Mongo and Ruby or PHP or similar just to do a simple form application - we would have laughed.

You can still laugh today, either at the large amount of complexity people invoke for simple tasks or at the notion that the minimal set of these to accomplish the task ("form application") is really complex or hard. 8 years ago you'd use, say, HTML with PHP run from Apache (and Apache is largely out of your mind if you're using shared hosting..), and either text files or a simple SQL table to persist data. (Or depending on the form, just email the data.) You can still be this minimal (or even more minimal--e.g. Flask which comes with its own "Apache", even if you shouldn't use it in production) today. And the basic CSS and JS needed to make the app "pleasant" aren't difficult at all to learn and with only a bit of discipline it's not that hard to keep them from making your page into a complex hairy ball code-wise.

8 years ago was also when AJAX hype was at its greatest. Now it's more about "framework hype"; I keep this in mind: http://marc.info/?l=php-general&m=112198633625636&w=... "Before you blindly install large "AJAX" libraries, have a go at rolling your own functionality so you know exactly how it works and you only make it as complicated as you need."

The web is pushing programming in a good direction, but it puts more pressure on the programmer. A good webapp not only functions well and looks good, but it's composed of components (the DOM) which are malleable and understandable by other programs. The important program is the Googlebot, but there are countless other, lesser programs (such as a bevy of bookmarklets, and even programs like Evernote) which benefit from having our applications be parsable.

The biggest thing holding back web programming is not JavaScript, but CSS. Making stuff look good is way too hard. I know a lot of programming languages, but CSS is by far the hardest language I've ever had to learn - the interpreter is a black box, properties are strangely coupled, and there is no error reporting or insight into the layout engine. Not to mention that it is difficult if not impossible to accurately know which selectors apply to an element short of actually running the page and checking in a tool! But I digress.

The fact is that we're paying the price now, but I think it's worth it.

I mentioned that if 15 years ago you had suggested that in 2012 you would need HTML, CSS (and probably LESS), JS (and probably JQuery + CoffeeScript + Backbone), SQL or Mongo and Ruby or PHP or similar just to do a simple form application - we would have laughed.

This is a major reason I don't do any web programming. I don't exactly know where to start any more, and every few months when I think about throwing something together, there's been some change in what's fashionable - whatever was hot at the beginning of the year is now 'considered harmful' and so on.

I'm actually a bit encouraged by adobe Edge because I like their tools and Flash had a decent run, so I may get back into it. But I am so not into technology for its own sake.

The problem is 15 years ago had you suggested that most apps will run server-side, with an interface exposed in a browser, people would have laughed at you regardless.

People don't really remember that 15 years ago it was a monumental feat to build something usable, without having the resources of Microsoft.

I'm not so sure. 15 years ago there was a lot of hype going around about the Java, the "Network Computer" and such initiatives. Sure they didn't work out, but a lot of people and companies believed in them, so it didn't seem so far-fetched.

15 years ago if you'd told me that the best way to run a program remotely was to interact with it through web pages I'd've laughed. Today I just cry.

15 years ago I was already building (intranet) web apps using FrontPage 97. The zero deployment advantage was quickly recognized.

> The number of technologies you need to know reasonably well to do a basic business function online is nuts.

While this is true on the high end there is also a massive amount of help/tutorials/documentation available today which circumvents this issue for most applications. In many situations all someone really needs is basic understanding and the ability to google effectively to find the proper snippets of code to copy/paste. Few applications get to the point in either scalability or complexity where deep knowledge of the involved technologies is required.

you would need HTML, CSS (and probably LESS), JS (and probably JQuery + CoffeeScript + Backbone), SQL or Mongo and Ruby or PHP or similar just to do a simple form application

People are working on that. For example I've started to learn clojure and recently wrote a very simple web app using Clojurescript, Noir, Korma and a couple of helper libraries like fetch and crate. Using that stack I managed to write an entire web app without ever leaving Clojure. Everything felt like clojure and the borders between client-server-database was rather fuzzy.

While I'm sure using clojure for the entire stack simplifies things for pros like you. It is not an adequate replacement for newbies. You still need to know: Clojure (and the lisp way of things), Java, Javascript, HTML, CSS, and SQL to understand the system. Leaky abstractions indeed.

I'd be very interested in a writeup or a link to your repository

Honestly, everything I know I copied badly from http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/02/20/overtone-and-clojure... so you're probably better off going straight to the source as it where.

Thanks, exactly what I was looking for

HTML, CSS, and SQL are all fantastic domain-specific languages. It's the split between frontend languages like JS and backend languages like Ruby that's the real problem.

CSS is a waste of space and JS is rather unfortunate (though modern web frameworks are pretty good at abstracting it), but 15 years ago you'd still have wanted a declarative form language (though whether you could spare the resources for it is another question), a separate datastore, and a language for actual programming logic.

Alt-F9 to Compile and F9 to Make, old timer. At least in TP5.5.

http://i.imgur.com/XCwTa.png

;-)