Visual Basic and Delphi were tools with beginner friendly programming language. We had FrontPage and Dreamweaver to design earlier HTML4 frame & table based layouts. But there are no RAD tools to create modern CSS based web page designs.
* Client only vs. client-server:
Client-server web applications are a lot harder (software architecture), than Win32 client-only.
* Consistent API:
The WinAPI that was exposed through COM was easy to understand and more consistent than the HTML, JS, CSS that has grown over the years thanks to various vendor extensions/additions (Netscape, Microsoft, etc).
* Documentation, books, articles in magazines (copy&paste examples):
We used to have good API documentation and MSDN used to have a good relevant search (no C# API result if one search for C/C++ or VB API) and an index. Various magazines had really good articles with short example source code that one could type or copy&paste (web). Books shipped with a CD-Rom with a CHM file (earlier ebook format, Windows Help) that was similar to epub/mobi but the Windows Help viewer was far superior.
* Common controls:
Windows shell offers various common controls that are available in some form in VB, Delphi. The HTML standard still offers only very limited form controls. Were is the file list control, the menu bar control, etc?? Instead every website has come up with its own menu bar - thanks to DHTML movement.
* APIs vs. Frameworks:
In the Win32 world one used libraries (in form of DLLs) and its public API. In the web world one can do the same old fashion way by using C++ like languages like PHP with its hundreds libraries (exposes C API directly and optional object oriented boilerplate API) or the framework style (Ruby on Rails, etc., house of cards). If you know what you (and your team) is doing, you know what to choose in the long term anyway.
--
Nevertheless, I kind of prefer the HTML5 web app world over the vendor-lockin yet again that is Android vs. iOS apps. And real Win32 development is uncommon lately. But I would like a innovative RAD tool, a next-gen FrontPage/Dreamweaver - something that made Visual Basic so easy to use.
Visual Basic and Delphi were tools with beginner friendly programming language. We had FrontPage and Dreamweaver to design earlier HTML4 frame & table based layouts. But there are no RAD tools to create modern CSS based web page designs.
* Client only vs. client-server:
Client-server web applications are a lot harder (software architecture), than Win32 client-only.
* Consistent API:
The WinAPI that was exposed through COM was easy to understand and more consistent than the HTML, JS, CSS that has grown over the years thanks to various vendor extensions/additions (Netscape, Microsoft, etc).
* Documentation, books, articles in magazines (copy&paste examples):
We used to have good API documentation and MSDN used to have a good relevant search (no C# API result if one search for C/C++ or VB API) and an index. Various magazines had really good articles with short example source code that one could type or copy&paste (web). Books shipped with a CD-Rom with a CHM file (earlier ebook format, Windows Help) that was similar to epub/mobi but the Windows Help viewer was far superior.
* Common controls:
Windows shell offers various common controls that are available in some form in VB, Delphi. The HTML standard still offers only very limited form controls. Were is the file list control, the menu bar control, etc?? Instead every website has come up with its own menu bar - thanks to DHTML movement.
* APIs vs. Frameworks:
In the Win32 world one used libraries (in form of DLLs) and its public API. In the web world one can do the same old fashion way by using C++ like languages like PHP with its hundreds libraries (exposes C API directly and optional object oriented boilerplate API) or the framework style (Ruby on Rails, etc., house of cards). If you know what you (and your team) is doing, you know what to choose in the long term anyway.
--
Nevertheless, I kind of prefer the HTML5 web app world over the vendor-lockin yet again that is Android vs. iOS apps. And real Win32 development is uncommon lately. But I would like a innovative RAD tool, a next-gen FrontPage/Dreamweaver - something that made Visual Basic so easy to use.