Skip to main content

POST Desktop Era — Are we there?

Back in 90s when I worked at IBM, I used to use dumb terminals connected to Unix servers that had some amazing specifications. Then we went into the direction of having powerful desktop computers and powerful laptops.
With the introduction of Chromebooks (with ChromeOS), we are back to those dumb terminal days but still at the infancy phase. With Chromebooks, you can be almost 100% productive if you are not in IT industry, but when it comes to IT professionals, we are slowly getting there.
More and more tools are becoming available online through web browsers. One of those tools is Cloud 9 IDE that I have used for software development. I can do Linux commands/scripts, Node.js, Javascript, HTML5, and Python programming all through my browser on my Chromebook. Yes, I have my IDEs for my Windows and Macbook machines, but there is something fun about developing in a cloud IDE. Maybe it is just the nerd side of me.
The message in the above image is what I saw one day when my Cloud 9 IDE was loading; it’s awesome.
You can even set up an Amazon WorkSpaces service in AWS and install the Chromebook client app for Amazon WorkSpaces and your Chromebook turns into a proxy for a Windows 10 machine in the cloud. With the elegance of the client app, it makes you believe that your Chromebook is a Windows 10 machine.
So are we there yet? If you are an early adapter, then we are there. I think we are still a few years away from web browser tools being as good as desktop tools, but some VDI solutions are already a great substitute for your full OS laptops. There are exciting times ahead of us.
Thank you for reading this article and Happy Cloud Computing :)
Almir Mustafic
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brand New programming language and one solution OR …

Brand New programming language and one solution OR Two existing programming languages, one solution for EACH? I understand that there is no right or wrong. It all depends on your software architecture, team structure, team skills and other factors, but I still want to explain the scenario as it may look familiar to some. Let me explain. Let’s assume that you have microservices and common libraries in two major programming languages. You have some teams who are experts in one and some teams experts in the other programming language. Now you need to come up with a solution for a scenario that all teams will need to leverage. Let’s assume that your cloud platform has an off-the-shelf approach for this but it is supported by a 3rd programming language that your teams do not have much experience in. What is the right thing for your organization and not just from the technical point of view? A) Do you embrace what your cloud platform gives you off the shelf and implement thi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Programming languages to teach students in high-school and university

Python-like or C-like as the language to introduce programming to students in high school and university? The question is: Do you introduce programming concepts to high-school/university students using languages that handle memory and other things for you or do you start introducing all of these concepts in languages like C that require you to understand all aspects. I will tell you what worked for me. I was introduced to programming in grade 10 using Basic programming language. There was a version called Better Basic and also Quick Basic. Then in grade 11 we learned procedural programming in a programming language called Turing (not Turing machine but a Pascal-like language developed by University of Toronto for teaching purposes). Then a year later, I started getting interested in C and C++. As you can see, I eased into the languages that introduced me to NULL exceptions and memory leaks :) With this approach I was not overwhelmed and this set up the foundation for a fun journey ...
Post a Comment
Read more

With the trend of Javascript Frameworks comes more responsibility

With the trend of front-end Javascript frameworks, there is more and more logic pushed to the client side in the Javascript code. With all this comes more responsibility when we talk about security. It requires a lot of discipline. Front-end and back-end (API) developers need to work very closely together so that secure information is not revealed in the Javascript code. Almir Mustafic
Post a Comment
Read more