When it comes to mobile computing these days, the conventional wisdom is that IT organizations are going to have to support the native capabilities of various mobile computing platforms alongside HTML5, which will be used to develop applications on the Web.
The reasoning behind that logic is that platforms such as the Apple iPhone or iPad will always have some feature that end users will not be able to do without and, as a development platform, HTML5 remains relatively immature.
However, Alpha Software Co-Chairman Richard Rabins says the conventional wisdom is just plain wrong. HTML5, says Rabins, is rapidly evolving into a platform for not only building Web applications for mobile devices, but also a robust environment for creating any type of consumer or enterprise application.
That’s significant, says Rabins, because sooner than most developers realize, the industry may soon coalesce around one major development environment, which should reduce training costs because the need to master various application development languages will be sharply reduced.
If proven correct, Rabins is basically outlining a future where Javascript, cascading style sheets, SQL and HTML5 are the core building blocks that developers need to master. If that’s the case, then the pool of developers should not only increase, but the cost of creating new applications should drop sharply, which means that one day soon in our lifetime the notion of application development backlog just might be a thing of the past.
