[dragonwriter]

> But the web is hard to write and hard to extend/maintain.

The web is distributed and distributed is hard. The problem is that it is also what people want. We haven't regressed from VB6 -- we've advanced, but the demands of the market may have gotten more complicated faster than the popular tools have advanced in their ability to simplify them.

[spion]

But the web isn't hard because its distributed. Its mostly because HTML and CSS were not designed for making applications.

[gaius]

Exactly. If Microsoft had written Outlook in VBA as a plugin for Word, they'd have been laughed out of the room. But that's exactly what Google did with Gmail...