| There was a push in that direction in the 1980s and 1990s in the form of Smalltalk, JITed super-portable and somewhat Smalltalk-inspired languages like Java and C#, WYSIWYG GUI design tools like old school Visual Basic (terrible language, but UI the designer is still unequaled), highly productive low-code systems like Hypercard, and so on. Then we threw all that in the trash and went back to bespoke architectures, brittle un-portable OS-specific (and even OS-version-specific) compiled binaries, and of course the gigantic pyramid of hacks that is the web. It's a classic case of "worse is better." My own view on "worse is better" is that it's a result of the same phenomenon I'm alluding to in my parent posts: people want free-as-in-beer stuff. When people invest tons of time and deep thought into a platform they generally want (or need) to get compensated for that. The vast majority of the stuff I listed above was commercial or closely linked to commercial efforts and had commercial, "source available," or at least less liberal sorts of open source licenses. Meanwhile the pile of crap was free, unencumbered, and could thus be copied and cloned at will. It's not just cost either. It's also friction. Having to pay for things and juggle licensing is a pain in the rear. You don't have to think about free. You just get it and run it. Low friction results in faster viral spread and speed wins. You get what you incentivize, and you don't get what you don't incentivize. We do not incentivize quality. Edit: The same phenomenon is now taking hold in the news media. Quality news and fact-checked information is starting to cost money. Bullshit and propaganda is and will always remain free. |
It was equalled and surpassed only a few years later, by Borland Delphi.