Server-Based Software (by Paul Graham)

It seems that over the last 3-4 years, more and more software is web-based instead of desktop based. We now have Quickbooks Online, Photoshop Express, Zoho, and the whole suite of Google apps (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Calendar, etc). You don't have to download much software anymore if you don't want to.

Although this phenomena seems to me like a fairly recent development, Paul Graham has seen it coming for some time. He wrote an article in September of 2001 titled "The Other Road Ahead":

(This article explains why much of the next generation of software may be server-based, what that will mean for programmers, and why this new kind of software is a great opportunity for startups. It's derived from a talk at BBN Labs.)

Paul was a founder of the first web-based application, Viaweb. Viaweb was started in 1995 and was purchased in 1998 by Yahoo to become Yahoo Store. It is still used today.

In his essay "The Other Road Ahead", Paul speaks of the advantages of using and developing server-based or web-based applications. Now, a lot of what he says is now common knowledge and common practice, but remember, he wrote this essay in 2001, well before these ideals had been adopted.

Here are some quotes (individual excerpts):

When we started Viaweb, hardly anyone understood what we meant when we said that the software ran on the server. It was not until Hotmail was launched a year later that people started to get it.

When we look back on the desktop software era, I think we'll marvel at the inconveniences people put up with, just as we marvel now at what early car owners put up with. For the first twenty or thirty years, you had to be a car expert to own a car. But cars were such a big win that lots of people who weren't car experts wanted to have them as well.

There's something wrong when a sixty-five year old woman who wants to use a computer for email and accounts has to think about installing new operating sytems. Ordinary users shouldn't even know the words "operating system," much less "device driver" or "patch."

And so you won't ordinarily need a computer, per se, to use software. All you'll need will be something with a keyboard, a screen, and a Web browser. Maybe it will have wireless Internet access. Maybe it will also be your cell phone. Whatever it is, it will be consumer electronics: something that costs about $200, and that people choose mostly based on how the case looks. You'll pay more for Internet services than you do for the hardware, just as you do now with telephones.

The whole idea of "your computer" is going away, and being replaced with "your data." You should be able to get at your data from any computer. Or rather, any client, and a client doesn't have to be a computer.

When you use a Web-based application, your data will be safer. Disk crashes won't be a thing of the past, but users won't hear about them anymore. They'll happen within server farms. And companies offering Web-based applications will actually do backups-- not only because they'll have real system administrators worrying about such things, but because an ASP that does lose people's data will be in big, big trouble.

If this sort of thing interests you, I encourage you to read the whole article (pretty long, but really good).

"The Other Road Ahead" - Paul Graham

Now you know,
Garrett Woodroof