Intro What does it look like to develop a modern desktop application ? Traditionnaly, people think there are only 2 ways to do it : using proven technologies like Java or C#, you build a native application which integrates greatly with your operating system (like Word or Excel) using web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you create a web application that runs inside a web browser (like Gmail or Facebook) Well, there is actually a third approach : building native application using web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Part of our job as a developer is to learn new programming languages. But why ? Can’t we just stick with a small number of languages and use our precious time to do something else ? It turns out that learning new languages means learning new paradigms, new ways of doing things, and is in fact quite fun. Once you know the basic concepts, it’s fairly easy to learn a new one.

There we are, my blog is finally up and running and it’s time to write the first article! I’ve long wanted to start a blog but declined to do so until now: lack of time. Before diving in, I would like to explain how I came here. The lack of time was not the only reason not to start blogging. I wanted to host the blog on a machine I could play with: install, configure, test, break, … Enter Amazon EC2: a cheap solution to have a box in the cloud.