RE: Food for thought (resurfacing)

> We're not to a fully auto-updating world yet, but are closer than ever before and the trend lines are good.

I think the issue (about dynamically loading engines) isn't the number of players (one, three, or fifty) but the variety.

Reality check please:
Is that actually the real world, are the trend lines really that way? Or is it only if you are only looking at the auto-updating subset?
And if it's true the whole world is really trending toward auto-update everything, is it unreservedly "good"?

Software updates tend to target (and is tested against) recent hardware and platforms. 
Software updates are disruptive. Updates fix old bugs but can introduce new ones. 
Software updates can be impractical in small-memory embedded systems or those with special configurations and requirements.

A fully auto-updating world, or one in which engines are dynamically loaded, is good for fully auto-updating / dynamically loading browser vendors (whether one or many), but not so good for end users of other applications.

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net

Received on Tuesday, 29 July 2014 00:21:40 UTC