Modern web browsers are the emacs of this decade

Leaving aside very wrong impression of what Emacs is or how it works, this comment assumes that the model being adopted by the browsers now is somehow wrong. It isn't. It was implemented in the past with great results: Smalltalk, Self, Common Lisp environments did deliver on their promises of increased productivity. They all died because of things like $1000+ price for a single license or things like that, not because of their technical (lack of) merit.

The truth is: having to deal with all the idiosyncrasies of various OSes and subsystems of those OSes is a huge pain. Some parts of OS are being written just now, while others are 30 years old - how can any sane person expect those to seamlessly work together on a first try?

The browsers, just like the environments before them, free programmers from having to deal with all that. Which is in itself a nice thing, but then - just like the similar environments in the past - the browser go on to make programming into what it should be: an interactive, dynamic process with a very tight feedback loop, with interactive debuggers, profilers and other tools. It's not on a level of a Smalltalk system (but see Amber Smalltalk) just yet, but it looks like there is a chance of programming finally breaking free from a 30 years of dark ages and actually progress a bit.

Of course, there are people who are opposed to change, they always are. We'd be still flipping switches on a front-panels of our machines had we listened to them.

I agree.

Nice browser: http://www.uzbl.org/

;-)