Re: Comments on the website from people on twitter...

[Dr Slivnik Tomaž MA (Cantab) MMath (Cantab) PhD (Cantab) FTICA]

On 9 Aug 2013, at 09:56, Pirmin Braun wrote:

maybe the world has changed in favour for Web UI instead of Desktop UI?

I think the world has moved on from Web UI to mobile and wearable device apps. Controlled by keyboards consisting of a few large buttons, voice, or one's emotions and eye movements.

None of which is of much interest to the technical user doing real work (as opposed to listening to music, reading e-mails or executing nops while browsing Facebook or Wikipedia).

For newcomers spending educational time on building Web Apps makes more sense than digging into NSView.

Or machine learning and big data algorithms, for mobile and wearable-enabled mass-market social media apps.

It may be that GnuStep has a better chance of succeeding in these various spaces than on the desktop. I would be surprised to hear that, but I don't claim that it's not potentially useful in those spaces too.

My own interest in GnuStep is on the desktop (&laptop), as a (not yet currently, but maybe one day) possible modern post-NeXTstep/Mac OS X migration path.

Those who really want to build Desktop Applications will head for Mac OS X as the real thing anyway.

By the same token anyone wanting to build mobile applications will head for the iOS, which seems to me to have a much greater lead on GnuStep than Mac OS X does.

Maybe there is mileage in making GnuWebObjects++ for web app development, I really don't know, but personally it is not my area of interest.

From what I saw at FOSDEM, everybody has got a Mac Book.

On which ironically GnuStep is nearly impossible to install (other than a VM). So much for eating your own dog food.

I'm not sure about "everybody", but I only use a MacBook because it is the least worst of a lot of many bad options. I have not updated mine for 6 years (I've bought many desktop computers in this timeframe, none from Apple), because I refuse to retrogress any further and/or buy the desktop/laptop rubbish Apple keeps churning out.

If there was a proper modern version of NeXTstep [and I don't consider Mac OS X to fit this particular bill, even though I appreciate some will disagree with me] available, I would much prefer to use it.