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by AnimalMuppet 1827 days ago
Maybe yes, but really no.

Yes, your washer now has a web app to control it. But the embedded system that actually controls your washer is not a web app - not even close. Ditto with the computers in your car, or the BIOS in your computer.

1 comments

Well, web apps routinely interface with lower level systems like databases, and file systems. I don’t see why interacting with an embedded system is any different.
OK, but what Oracle does in writing their database is not "web programming", by any reasonable definition. I don't care how many web programs use it as a lower level. Ditto Windows creating a file system. That's not web programming in the same way that it wasn't GUI programming 15 years ago.

And that's even if you have a web interface. There's plenty of embedded systems where you don't.

Here's an embedded system that run on a spin of an 8051 with some extra on-chip peripherals. (Why? Because lower hardware cost.) It's never going to support a web interface.

Over there, there's an embedded system that controls the wing surfaces on a jet fighter. It has to adjust the wing surfaces every 1/40 of a second. A web interface will never be allowed anywhere near that.

And so on.