I have always liked the web as a platform because I can build something once and have it work across many operating systems/browsers/etc... and because the web is built on open standards.

One criticism people have of this approach to application development is that web apps aren't as efficient as native apps.

This pro/con discussion of web vs native apps reminds me of the C programming language, why it was created and what for.

The C Programming language was designed to be a portable language, meaning that it can be compiled on virtually any platform, any operating system. Yet C was also designed to constitute the minimum abstraction away from a given platforms native assembly language.

Thus a program written in C can be compiled on almost any machine, and run as efficiently or nearly as efficiently on that machine as a program written in that machine's native assembly language.

So perhaps we could use something like the C programming language for the web. A technology which allows us as developers to write our applications once in a portable open format, without needing to sacrifice in terms of performance.

Any thoughts?