Programming is still awkward: common solutions are frequently dogma 1 and most of our attention is spent solving problems unrelated to product. In fact, so much of our attention is spent on what shouldn’t matter, it begs the question: just what kind of productivity will we unleash in the future?
One way to find out, is to attune ourselves to what shouldn’t matter today. Let’s start with web applications. Come with me on a journey of building one, and let’s catalog the pains along the way.
At the end:
These ideas are not new. My friends Sean Grove and Daniel Woelfel’s built Dato, a framework that integrated a bunch of these ideas. Nikita Tonsky wrote Web After Tomorrow an essay with a very similar spirit. Perhaps most exciting, I discovered http://homebase.io: their ideas look very compelling, and are looking for the solution in a similar way.
It may require some iteration to figure out the interface, but the there’s an interesting road ahead.
’m toying with some ideas in this direction. The big problem to solve here, is how important this is for people, and whether a good abstraction can work. To solve the first, I wrote this essay. Is this a hair-on-fire problem that you’re facing? If it is, to the point that you’re actively looking for solutions, please reach out to me on Twitter! I’d love to learn your use case
. As I create applications, I’ll certainly keep this back of mind — who knows, maybe a good abstraction can be pulled out.