Once upon a time, there was a golden age for devex, when “the platform”, i.e. Windows, was on-prem and Microsoft wanted everyone to be able to develop software for it and have it easy to set up and run. Thus, we got very nice toys like .NET and SQL Server, which is still the easiest, most batteries-included and hands-off database to this day. As much hate as Microsoft deservedly got and still gets, it’s hard to overstate what a miracle this alignment was. A corporation’s real, intrinsic, not just stated in marketing, but legitimate goals were to actually empower customers. When does that ever happen?

Of course, this had its own misaligned incentives: Microsoft didn’t own the web, so they were only interested in improving it strictly on Windows, so they put proprietary shit in their browser. Everybody saw that this was bad and a big long struggle ensued and finally Firefox came out on top.

But with the balance shifting in favor of the web, new incentive perversions arose. To sell cloud bullshit and lock people into their platforms, web companies obviously don’t want you to have a good time developing or hosting competing products, even just for yourself, so complexity exploded and any focus on developer and operations experience went out the window. They also don’t want anyone to be able to turn of Javascript or otherwise have much control via their “user agent”, so not only do they not care about advancing “progressive enhancement”, they’d probably prefer to get rid of it.

As quickly as Firefox saved the day, one of these companies came out with their own browser, and everybody saw that this was going to be a bad idea, but they ran TV ads, so everybody switched regardless.

Actually, developers were the first ones to switch, because they were promised cool new toys, lmao.

We should have rejected clouds and we should have rejected Chrome and with some luck we could this day be living in a paradise of on-prem toys and be the princes of our orgs. Well, probably not, but still.