Dan Ingalls on web development:

"Lord knows you can get the Google Web Toolkit and start cranking out Java code for doing these things [browser-based applications], then translate it to JavaScript and make a Web page, but typically those Web pages are not then alive. You can't go in a grab hold of part of it and pull it out or change it the way you can in our system," Ingalls says.

"Now at times you don't want that. You don't want people accidentally pulling the scroll bar off their mail system. But my philosophy has always been: Make it first dynamic and malleable and then you can always turn off those capabilities. But you're in much less of a position to go forward in the world if you start out with stuff that can't be changed."

If you start off with handcuffs, it's hard to get much flexibility, ever. If you start off with flexibility though, you can always add in hard edges later.

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