WebFund 2015W Lecture 24

Audio

The audio from the lecture given on Monday, April 6, 2015 is now available.

Notes

Administrative

• Optional review session in SC 103 (Steacie Bldg), Friday, April 10, 2-3:30 PM
• Assignment 10 solutions will be discussed in the review session (and posted then)
• Assignment 8 and 9 solutions are posted
• Final exam is on Tuesday, April 14th in Alumni Hall, rows 1-13

The Future

Before the web

• The Internet started late 1960s-early 1970s
• Web is 1993
• LAN protocols: file sharing (NFS), directory services (yp), remote login (rsh), remote "desktop" (X windows)
• WAN protocols: file transfer (ftp), email (smtp), remote login (telnet), net news (UUCP)

Why the web?

• hypertext - linked information
• many older systems: MEMEX?, Xanadu, gopher, WAIS
• what was different about the web?
  • presentation-oriented markup ("pretty" documents) - HTML
  • IMAGES
  • simple to implement renderer (browser) and network protocol (HTTP)
  • stateless: scalable servers
  • URLs

What's changed since the beginning of the web?

• CSS: prettier pages
• JavaScript: dynamic pages
• plugins came and went: Java, Flash, Silverlight...
• kitchen sink, aka HTML5 - video, video chat, sockets, location, touch, WebGL
  • richer input and output
  • in the framework of HTML, CSS, JavaScript

Why not just build separately?

• universal platforms tend to suck the oxygen out of the room

Web is the future

But won't anything else take over?

• evolution works, not revolution
• Java applets
• Flash
• Dart (now just compiled to JavaScript)

What about other technologies?

• run on the server
• translate for the browser

Other classes

• COMP 3000 (operating systems): what runs a browser or a web server
• COMP 3007 (programming paradigms): functional programming, which you kind of do in JavaScript
• COMP 3005 (databases): learn about SQL, data modelling
• COMP 3004: bigger programs, read code
• COMP 3804: see patterns underlying code