Which doesn't mean that user interface technology will be unimportant, as was claimed.
And no, there will be a trend to offload server functionality back to the client. Part of that will be "performance" (clients don't want to wait for server roundtrips for everything, they're tired of it already), part security (yes I know, the current "wisdom" is to do nothing on the client but the reasoning will be to have the client do validation and stuff so no corrupt data even reaches the server), part of it reduction in server load (why have the server do all those non-critical tasks, taking up most of its CPU load when server hardware is harder to upgrade than desktop hardware).
There are more reasons, and indeed we've heard them all before (as well as their exact opposites to favour pure server based systems).
It may be counter to your way of thinking, but it will all happen.
I've been myself involved in operations that decentralised mainframe systems to smaller branch servers.
I've also (at roughly the same time) been involved in operations that centralised branch servers to mainframes.
Both type of projects used the same style of reasoning, with exact opposites of the actual arguments, and both were right.
It's the same with server and desktop systems. There's no right or wrong, only shades of grey and personal opinions.
I think you're wrong on the performance issue. Technologies like ASP.NET that enable sophisticated server based data validation without reloading the entire browser page combined with advances in hardware performance that have sped up both client, server and everything in between (broadband data transmission) continue to improve performance year after year.
I take issue with your statement that that server hardware is harder to upgrade than desktop hardware. I don't have statististics to prove it, but my instinct tells me that the cost to upgrade a server is far less that the cost to upgrade all of the clients it serves.
I will admit that it makes sense to have some basic data validation on the client side, and this is the norm for most internet apps. I also admit that it makes sense to have functionality on the client side. But if the logic to achieve that functionalify (Javascripts and what not) comes from and is maintained on the server, then the provider of the software does not have to have multiple teams of programmers and customer support staff to maintain multiple versions of the product as is the case with shrink-wrapped desktop apps. Furthermore, there is no packaging cost and no distribution cost as there is with desktop apps.
Actually, I think that we agree more than we disagree. From the standpoint of what functionality is best executed on the server and what functionality is best executed on the client side, I don't think that it can be solved with a blanket generalization. I think that it is a judgement that depends on the nature of the particular application.
That having been said, the original issue was, if I can even remember back that far, if Java was going to go away. My answer is no, but I think that it belongs on the server. I think that it is a clean, powerful language the frees the programmer, to a large extent, from the burden of memory management and resource management and after a while (maybe in 10 years time) you will not find a JRE on very many desktop computers.
