Is client side Custom Application development dead?
I recently had this email exchange with my friend Geoff. I don't need to add any further commentary, but I've personally bet the farm on custom application development. Hmm.. He's what we said anyway:
Hows things? I'm in Luxembourg with Finn doing banking b****x for big bucks. Bit dull here.
I replied:
I went to the KDE developers conference in Ludwigsburg the other week and that was really good - I wouldn't mind working in Germany. But it seems that KDE custom development is always about 6 months away from taking off, I didn't sense there's much in the way of contract work yet.
At least you're earning big bucks - I'm totally broke. But I'm finishing off the ruby project, and it's certainly the most awsome RAD environment that's ever existed. Not that anyone much knows about it..
Geoff: It seems to me that, in professional money making development, that the client OS is increasingly irrelevant. All work I do is now web based, not that I know **anything** about Java/HTML. All Oracle and Busines Objects front ends are now web based. The thin client that was going to be the big thing a few years ago is coming true. Businesses like the idea of no PC (whatever OS you run on it) S/W to maintain, manage, change versions etc. and like the central control. I do not see there ever being that much KDE developemnt work for building custom applications for individual firms. Maybe, like you got the Objective C work, there will be some visionaries at big banks who really need the speed for dealing and would choose front end Linux/KDE. Obviously there are some people writing all this for fun who are in positions of power. Linux at the server end is booming though.
You probably disagree with this analysis but this is what I see on Jobserve and where I go to work.
I hope I'm at least a bit wrong for your sake.
Richard:
No, I don't disagree. Any desktop app must be network aware, and any client apis that assume a standalone PC are dead. That includes Microsoft's win32 apis, they are irrelevant - MS never understood the internet. Also, they don't understand the difference between a systems programming language 'C#' and a RAD language like ruby. The KDE desktop is very network aware; you can customise the KDE::HTMLPart very easily - see the ruby tutorial in the link I sent.
But I still feel unemployable for the reasons you give, which is pissing me off. All I need is one bank who isn't brain dead and wants to employ clever people, as opposed to code monkeys, and I'm in business again..