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Comment by jeffspost | Hacker News Reader

Interesting. The one missing piece--a RAD development environment that's as efficient as Visual Studio is at producing fat clients. The business world will only embrace the webcentric model when it becomes as efficient to code in as .net click-once fat clients. The idea of simple, cheap, rugged hardware is very appealing. But programmer time is the #1 cost--businesses go for easy drag/drop fat client apps. Software written for 5 users has to be thrown together pretty fast or it never pays back...

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Can you clarify your statements a bit more?

I don't think that Google Chrome OS would be suitable for most corporate shops that are generally Microsoft centric (and have been for quite some time). I think this free OS will be geared towards light users that primarily use their computer for surfing the web and checking their email.

RAD = rapid application development, the business term for "drag-n-drop GUI builders" that we all know and hate. Not having one for the Web is a valid criticism, but if GWT can handle Swing API input then we DO have one.

I'm familiar with RAD, although at least for my employer it's more than just drag-and-drop GUI builders.

It sounds to me like jeffspost is over generalizing and suggesting that Google Chrome OS will only succeed if it's embraced by large corporations. The software hasn't even launched and jeffspost has already figured out it's "one missing piece".

And generalising that it will need to replace Windows.

They are launching it as a netbook OS for a reason. Netbooks is a loose term. I'm not exactly sure what the line is, but one definition might be a small laptop that doesn't replace your main computer.

I daresay that whoever buys this will either have another computer or have no need for corporate apps.

That sounds cool, but I don't know exactly what you mean... I think you might mean that you could create a Java applet front-end (using "Swing API"), and drive something in GWT with that, if "GWT can handle Swing API input". But how would you create the Swing front-end? What would driving GWT do you? Please join the dots - doing this often reveals gaps that weren't clear before, so it's a good exercise.

Taking another view: any Java app can be an applet (if you take care of things like access to the file system). Therefore, we already have then, since Eclipse and Netbeans can be an applet, and thus a web app. Theoretically, anyway. :-)

GWT compiles Java to JavaScript, right? So compile the Swing calls into calls to equivalent JavaScript UI library calls. Barf if they try to do stuff you can't do in JavaScript (filesystem), as GWT surely has to do already. (disclaimer: never coded GWT in my life)

thanks!

Being Microsoft-centric, in itself, is inertia - it can change if there is a sufficiently superior alternative in terms of businesses' actual needs. Google OS can start off in low-end markets (like Toyota did...), and then move up.

jeffspost notes a startup opportunity: webapps for creating webapps (actually webapp clients, but that's less memorable)

The answer to your problem: 280atlas.com – if they ever release it.

Huh?

They don't need application vendors to target Chrome OS in order for this to be a success - the whole point is that it just runs web apps, period.

Its targeted at consumers and netbooks, not those that want to run heavy duty, CPU-intensive applications. The whole idea of a netbook is to be small, light, quick, and primary a web browsing device.

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