I'd be more interested to hear about a language that we're currently missing: a strong alternative to JavaScript.

With more and more of the work we do being web-based, JS is currently the only real option we have to do our client-side code in.

Digression:
I know you'll mention java applets and ActionScript, but they're both plug-in based and not everybody is happy about using them.
- I'm happy with Java (being an SCJP), but not everybody is happy about the "plug-in" thing and it hasn't really caught on client-side.
- I tried to dig into AS3 but my instinct tells me it won't catch on. My hunch tells me HTML5 will phase Flash/AS out in the end. Then again, the damn thing compiles into SWF, so dead-end here.

Back in (my) topic: I mean real client-side code, that will run on a browser without any plug-ins. A language with better OO than JS and one that would allow more skilled coders to do stuff. With JS I feel it's more art than science... I feel the language can only reach *this* far and we need something stronger / more expresssive...

I dunno if anybody else shares my concerns, but if anybody is listening, I feel that this is a good time to start rolling something out...

and that's exactly the problem. The bitch won't die!

In my current job I was tasked to update programs written in Cobol *back then*... What a bloody nightmare! So we've decided to write them from scratch (in php, if you were wondering, we're moving them to a web-based front-end plus embedding a thousand or so functionality updates, which make the hassle worthwhile)

I guess many people would vote "go back a few years and pick another wife"

Personally I'd want to go back and meet some philosopher / myst ...

...the possibility that aliens are not really non-native to this planet?

That maybe some species used to live here beforehand and they sort of fly back to see how are the current inhabitants doing? Some particular theories go as far as saying we're the 24th species to walk this planet (or maybe the 24th iteration of some species ;) .
Another plausible view is that they've sort-of been around all along, but either they were out of sight well enough (Martians :P) or they can assume a human physique as desired?

I've been through all the alien-thing scenarios and all the above seem plausible, if you think outside the human box...

Then there's of course the UFO conspiracy theorists/evangelists (for lack of a better term) like Alex Jones, that actually have been warning the people for the last couple of years that this is actually about to happen and that the baddies will be the first to show up and try to pass as our saviours (hinting that the good guys might show up second...)

Anyways... there's a lot of good and bad info out there on these topics and gladly I spent the last year wading through them. For me the bottom line is to keep yourself educated and keep an observant mind about what's happening, both in terms of our "earthly" overlords and their "offworld" apprentices.

I'd be more interested to hear that in some magical way all the remaining IE6 users have been forced to upgrade to IE7 at least...

argh, when can that browser whither out of existence? For good!!! On our site (it's a corporate one) we still get a healthy 42% IE users, 40% of which are still IE6!!!! (which means... you guessed it... we still have to support it as web developers)

errrrm, rough around the EDges... (typing faster than I think)... :P

Maybe Ubuntu does look the part to compete with Win7 and it may have all the necessary apps to support it... yet I can't help but notice that I have yet to make ONE successful installation of this distro yet (ok, Kubuntu to be precise), even the latest 10.4 version I downloaded a couple of weeks back. Let alone have it work with graphics cards (I mean proper support, not compatibility mode) and audio cards out of the box.

And not that I'm a newcomer to Linux/Unix... Since '97 I've installed all major distros from Slackware to RH and SuSE and I've administered Solaris, Irix and AIX systems.

The bottom line... linux still needs a ways to go before it achieves the user friendliness of Win7. AFAIK some/many distros STILL don't include the necessary MP3 playback libraries on the dvd and you need to browse around the web for support. You still need to have kernel sources installed to *compile* a graphics driver. Hmmm, sorry folks. Things have improved a lot since the "configure/make/make install for anything" era, but there are still quite a few spots where Linux is rough around the ages. Until these spots are all evened out, I wouldn't talk about real comparison to Win7.

ah, finally, there's hope for them too :)

(and on a more serious note: and for many many more people, I would suspect)

ROFL
aaah, where are my mod points when I need them most???

assuming you got a pretty wife ;)

Did they discover this just now???

Gee...

• Yes, JS is very limiting when you have to develop any large libraries. The people who wrote/maintain jQuery will disagree, but they also know what I mean.
• Building any relatively complex UI is a complete nightmare. Let alone a fully-fledged UI like you would like to have. If you want your web app to look and behave like a real app... you're in for some frustration, unless you use some 3rd-party libraries... and I've seen none I'm entirely happy with. Either they're free and buggy or you have to pay tons of money to use them. This thing is more art (and prayer) than science.

Prediction: Unless HTML5 includes support for LAYOUTS and WIDGETS, it's not gonna do much.

Over the last 3 years I've developed some rather large data-centric web applications over HTML+jQuery. In the process I had to develop my own MVC framework just to survive (JS frontend libraries based on jQuery and PHP backend equivalents). I'm now happy (and lucky) enough to claim that they work on Firefox, Chrome (layout so-so) and Safari (you can forget IE).

Now I'm at the task of combining these to a much larger application. I want it to load on a single page, having multiple "views" (think viewstack), each having a rather complex interface in them (splitpanes, tabbed panels, lists etc.).

Do the UI in HTML / <your favourite framework>... forget it. In Flex... a few hours. Some colleagues used extJS extensively for another project which again had a complex UI. End result: they got it to work like they want, but only on FF2!

I'm now at the process of learning Flex. There's a learning curve to it but at least it's a lot more promising (and CONSISTENT) than HTML will ever be, in my opinion.

My cynical side is very tempted to agree...

Our government works a lot like that, but more like in shady deals with the ultra rich (much like Cheney et al do over there, might I remind you -- at least we're not invading other countries as part of those deals).

This, however, is one of the rare cases where the govt system worked like it was supposed to (ok, maybe a bit overzealous, but what the hell)