Now I am much clear.
Thanks to all fellow members.
Oh, you can fix them the same way.
It’s going to be a little harder to bury the tractor afterwards though.
Noone has mentioned compatibility.
Along with the benefits of accessibility from around the world on a bunch of different systems, you get teh side effects of developing for a hoard of different platforms at once (think browser incompatibilities)…SURE, there are bugs in programming languages (looking at you: java deep copying) and there are issues if you are developing a program for multiple platforms (WIN/OSX/Linux/etc) but nowhere near the number of significant/painful differences in implementations of the same features as there are in the web world.
Sure liabries change between different versions of OSes, and I’m not saying a program is always going to work on every version of the same OS, but it’s more likely and those differences are often very well documented.
<cry>Looking at my site render 3 different ways from the same source code makes me want to move back into application programming where you don’t have to be thinking about whether the cow of a thing will work for every single line of code you write. It really is just disgusting and a pretty sorry state of affairs.</cry>
I guess if you stick to server side coding you avoid a lot of those problems, but then you miss out on all the potential sexiness that you tried to make but ended up having to redo 3 times over to get it working in IE…
So if you want to be to blame for the fact your program doesn’t work, choose application programming (C++, Java, Python, Smalltalk, etc) if you want to blame someone else for the fact that someone is blaming you for your program not working…choose web programming. Someone still blames you but at least in your heart you know it conformed to standards and wasn’t really your fault.
Id like to make the point that web development (if done well) is the HARDEST type of programming out there. I do both applications and web development as a bioengineering.
The web environment is a constantly changing world. Email protocols, DNS protocols, HTTP… and then the design factors are also constantly changing form CSS1, CSS2, CSS3?, flash, DHTML, Javascript, Browser compatibility, etc.
However, web development is also the EASIEST to learn. If you want to make a web page knowing nothing of the web you can make something pretty good looking in a matter of hours. Desktop applications have a higher learning curve, yet the standards do not change that much. Example: Java SWING has not changed much and its always backwards compatible.
Also, web development is also more prone to attack which requires a higher level of security. With a desktop application there is VERY slight changes that a user will go into the memory and change memory values on the fly. However, with web applications there is a very high change users will play with url parameters, cookies, forms, and everything they got.
Now, whether or not you are asking because you’d like to learn either web development or application development, id STRONGLY suggest you to learn Object Oriented Programming (OOP) first – preferably in Java, and then start using PHP OOP for web development.
If you are purely refering to the perimiter of a web system (presentation layers/web-servers) I think I will disagree with you on this.
If you are talking about an entire system from perimiter through all the layers, tiers and complexities of running a large web farm, then I would agree with you.
Scale… it’s all about scale.
Forgive me, but I usually consider this part of the whole. It’s not something I would usually isolate because compatability is always something you should consider no matter the final environmental destination of your solution.
In the line of work I operate in, browser compatibility considerations usually constitute about 2% of the overall programming and development requirement and is usually the province of the designers and content specialists.
On the larger systems the web ui is a thin layer over a much larger and infinitely more complicated whole.
If you want compatability issues, try interfacing modern real time systems with legacy batch stove piped systems.
Browser compatability issues…? pah! childs play!
I have some information about software to you.
http://www.getwisely.com/Difference_between_Web_&_Software_Development-main.html
umm that must be a MFA site. hah.
I think you nailed it pretty well. Web deveopment can be learned in pieces. The total package is a complex tapistry of integrated standards and languages. Not an easy thing to grasp in total. But even a total novice could be made useful in some aspects rather quickly on a development team.
That’s just not true in software development, well at least on Windows. I only do web development as a hobby and have learned it bit by bit (as needed to) over many years (I’m no expert on any of it), but developing in say: .NET or JAVA you need lots of training and experience to be of any value to a team.
That’s just not true in software development, well at least on Windows. I only do web development as a hobby and have learned it bit by bit (as needed to) over many years (I’m no expert on any of it), but developing in say: .NET or JAVA you need lots of training and experience to be of any value to a team.
This doesn’t make sense. You can do web development using .NET languages and Java or you can do Windows development with the same languages. This is why I say there is no difference except the interfaces.
Makes sence to me! 
It is just my opinion, from a pureist perspective you are correct, and I may just be over thinking the question.
One thing I like about web development is that it evolved in such a way as to seperate your data from your business logic from content from presentation seams natural. Where as in developing for desktop you can cheat, you shouldn’t but you can and the tempation is often mighty as deadlines loom.
You can do web development with .NET and Java true. But you dont have to, often don’t need to, and perhaps don’t even want to. Where as with a desktop app you really need to know a robust language to do much and none of those are particlarly quick or easy to learn.
yes sir if you want to be unique you have to be professional on that filed
i mean a pro web developer should be different from software developer
What if there is windows application which modifies web site pages directly ? Is it software development or web development ?
[FONT=Trebuchet MS][SIZE=2]I was a software developer before I started developing tools for the Internet. Internet tools are more inclined to use script, CSS and HTML. This is typically defined as Web Development.
Software development normally means implementing programs which are binary executables. I also do a lot of Java Internet development. I do not consider JavaScript and Java development to be the same thing.
Q…[/SIZE][/FONT]
Windows Based Application = Software Development
Web Based Application = Web Development
I think that regardless of the target for deployment, you have the same set of concerns: security, reliability, usability, performance, etc…
How, and when, you go about resolving those concerns is vastly different depending on the target.
To the outside, they are identical. It’s much like how to an outside (me) driving NASCAR is the same as driving F1. To a racing enthusiast, however, the differences are vast.
It’s all about perspective.
Thanks to all who participate in this thread…it is very helpful for newbie like me
The two grow together more closely all the time. 10 years or so ago when client server ruled the corporate world and the internet was on the rise, the two were quite separate with some shared developing technologies (Java for example). Now things are alot closer with intranet / browser based deployment in the corporate world utilising much of what was once internet technology and core corporate technologies evolving to embrace the 'net.
the majority of the differences i have noticed are more related to 1) the tools (i certainly wouldn’t use DW to develop a windows application) and 2) the administration of the software, rather than it’s development (ever use IIS with a desktop application?) …
With server-side development being a part of almost every web site these days, I think the web is just another platform you develop for so web development is just another form of software development.
If you are writing Windows, Linux(whether it be GTK, Qt, etc) or OS/X applications you have to go about it differently (unless you use Java that is) and developing for the web is the same, but you have a different ‘desktop’ and API to work with.
You can still apply the same principles though… OOP, testing, debugging, profiling.