Oracle: HTML 5 and JavaScript Will Dominate App Development
Cameron Purdy, Oracle’s vice president of development, made some strong predictions for the future of application development this week, reports Joab Jackson of IDG News, saying that HTML5 and JavaScript (along with other new development technologies) will dominate the world of programming.
From IDG News, via PCWorld:
"The reason for the shift is that new Web development technologies better fit today's mobile platforms," said Cameron Purdy, vice president of development for Oracle, at the QCon software conference in New York Tuesday.
"HTML5 and JavaScript together are becoming a programming platform unto themselves," Purdy said. "We haven't seen this magnitude of change in 15 years, since the Web came into public existence," Purdy said. Their growing popularity may be "quite analogous to what we saw with Java in 1996."
Jackson nicely sums up how Java rose to prominence during the beginnings of the DotCom era due to the ability of programmers to manipulate Java to fit the needs of the era. From IDG News, via PCWorld:
The programming needs today promise a similar disruption as when Java supplanted C++, Purdy said. We are moving from a server-side architecture to what Purdy called a "thin server architecture," he said. He attributes this shift to a combination of cloud computing, HTML5, and mobile devices.
"These three things will conspire to be a perfect storm in our industry," Purdy said.
And it looks like Purdy’s predictions are already somewhat coming true as Jessica Twentyman of The Financial Times reports on the increasing use of HTML5 for developers who create mobile business-intelligence apps. From The Financial Times:
As HTML5 matures, it will be used by developers to create mobile BI apps that run on any browser but also support gestures, location awareness, and other mobile device capabilities.
One vendor, QlikTech, moved in this direction in 2011, when it turned its back on its previous native app strategy, in favor of one based on HTML5.
While QlikTech’s mobile BI app is predominantly used by customers on iPad and iPhone, it is deployed by some on Android devices and even BlackBerry Playbook tablets, says Donald Farmer, product advocate at QlikTech.
“Our move to HTML5 means that companies aren’t reliant on individual users downloading apps and subsequent updates, including critical fixes, from app stores,” he says. “Instead, the app is under the IT team’s control and users get the benefit of a continually updated environment.”
