And in terms of scaling Ruby is likely to be the cause of your problems rather than the solution...

"method_missing" - do you know about '__getattr__' for Python? (can be a one liner if you want...)

"oh-so-thread-safe-code for an interpreter that serializes around a global interpreter lock" - so Ruby's threading is better??

As an open-source developer (with Python) who uses Windows, Microsoft and their actions hardly ever seemed to feature in the things I was interested in or that were important to me.

That actually changed when I got a job developing an application with IronPython (an open-source implementation of Python for .NET - funded by Microsoft).

Now I actually use .NET, and I have to admit that it isn't bad. Generally a sane API, and C# is nicer than Java.

Still, when I develop my own projects I use cPython, and Microsoft is now 'slightly; relevant whereas for the last few years they have seemed completely irrelevant.

I think the death of the desktop is much exaggerated.

AJAX is better than the last generation of web-apps, but the browser still basically sucks as a platform. Latency is a bitch. :-)

Latency is fine, I think, and gets better all the time.

The browser is a fantastic platform. You never have to install web apps. You never have to patch web apps. And you are automatically connected through the client-server paragidm that proved to be so wonderful before desktops ever came about.

Remember, dumb terminals were around long before PCs.

"The browser is a fantastic platform. You never have to install web apps. You never have to patch web apps."

Fantastic for the developer maybe - not so for the user.

"Remember, dumb terminals were around long before PCs."

Right. How was that for the user ?

But is it unsucky enough in a "worse is better" sort of way?

There are, for me, quite a few reasons it's unsucky enough in a 'better is better' sort of way these days. I use Foxmarks to synchronize my bookmarks, and I keep a detailed bookmarks toolbar folder categorized into tons of nested folders. Thousands of bookmarks by now I'm sure. I also use deskbar so I can just start typing the title of one of my bookmarks to launch it. This is far more intuitive for me than any previous way of running web applications, and the level of organization and interoperability I've achieved between all the apps I use (most of which have some form of live collaboration built in these days) makes any computer I'm ever at just feel right.

I feel there's money (or fame, failing that) to be made in a competitor to or addition to foxmarks that allows feeds of bookmarks to be easily subscribed to, so I could distribute a bunch of links in structured format to a development team, say, right in their web browser, that they could all collaborate on. Would take very little effort, and at least I myself could see immediate benefit.

How many developers of startups do you know who actually use a browser based IDE ?

There are a couple and they only suck a bit, but they don't compare to the desktop ones.

I don't use a browser based text editor when I want to make a quick note. Actually a couple of my friends do with google docs - but not too many.

For the apps I use everyday, the browser sucks. It's not just latency, although this is a big contributor to why web apps feel sucky and clunky, but the browser just isn't a very good platform for rich applciations.

The google integration between their applications is very good, and getting better, but it isn't enough to make me forget that the interface sucks...