The Web as enabling technology for software development and distribution

When confronted with a new technology, we instinctively consider it within the context of existing work and practices. Such is the case with the World Wide Web. But the Web is more than a new technology for leveraging existing work. It is, in fact, an enabling technology with the potential to change software development as dramatically as the transistor and microprocessor changed computer architecture. An enabling technology changes the fundamental assumptions ingrained in a discipline. The microprocessor, for example, changed the reliability, cost, circuit density, and performance assumptions underlying hardware design. As a result, new applications and design approaches for hardware systems became feasible. Just as the microprocessor changed the fundamental assumptions of hardware design, the Web changes some of the assumptions underlying software development. Thus it has the potential to change our notion of the software artifact and the collaborative processes used to construct it.