I would request you to visit Cylive (http://www.cylive.com). It combines the functionality of several Web 2.0 sites providing one roof for all your digital treasures – photos, videos, music, bookmarks etc.

Cylive also lets you personalize the content you share & publish in unique ways – for instance, you can include an audio review of a website you bookmark.

Further, Cylive lets you collaborate with friends and family to co-produce digital stuff.

I am in complete agreement with you on the web as a platform thing. Interesting though, your comment about dropping C++ or Fortran for running on the web. That’s actually kind of a neat idea. There is already a psuedo ruby environment on the web, of course it is a tutorial program, and most likely doesn’t really let you “run” ruby in the browser, but you saying it just might make someone go do it. I would try to make it work if I had the time.

As to the drawing and gaming, I really think it is just a matter of the browser software doing better at handling more graphically random or complex things.

I made the decision to go into Business Computer systems instead of CS when I started college, and I have to say that it has really paid off for me. I would agree that web applications these days are as much design as programming however, I think that “designers” could stand to learn as much about interface design as some highly skilled programmers.

The reality is, that the farther the computer world progresses, the more discipline crossover happens. It’s no longer strictly programming or business, or art or science. It seems like you have to know a bit of everything to be successful.

Thanks
Rami