Technology Thoughts

It may sound old-fashioned and laughable these days when techniques like UML are so unsexy, but I can still remember the days back at IBM T.J. Watson in the early 2000's when we were working on a prototype of a new VoiceXML browser to inform IBM's standardization efforts in the space. (The language was supposed to be VoiceXML 3.0, and we abbreviated the research project to "V-3" - pronounced "fau drai" in reference to the German V-2 rocket .) We took VoiceXML 2.0 as a foundation but added full DOM and DOM Events support together with XForms as the data model representation. It was shortly after IBM's acquisition of Rational Software , so we took advantage of that deal and got our hands dirty with  Rational Rose . While one of our colleagues kept pushing us to start coding and iterate towards the result in the agile fashion, given the incomplete specs and many open questions stemming from the combination of so many complex technologies in one piece...

It has long been a subject of an argument, essentially since the advent of the mobile web itself more than ten years ago: the anticipation of mobile web taking over the native mobile apps - repeating the success of desktop web on mobile devices - has been just that - the anticipation. The beauty of "write once, run everywhere" was once again challenged by the realities of computing power and user experience compromises, as it was back in 90s when Java was created with the same promise only to fail delivering on it. No matter which year is printed on the calendar, the verdict has always been the same: "mobile web apps are promising, but not quite there yet, but wait, they are just around the corner". At the same time, the times of one-man-show stunts making big $$ by developing mobile apps are over. The industry has increasingly professionalized and the need to support three major mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows) is heavily taxing native app deve...