Comment by wrs
4 years ago
Not so. IBM mainframe systems (3270 terminal based) that ran most of commerce for a long time are basically the same paradigm as a web browser. Send a form to the smart terminal (GET), wait for the response with the field values (POST), send another form.
In fact there are adapters that literally turn these applications into websites by translating the forms into HTML. Commonly seen when you need to do something like change the beneficiaries on your health insurance.
“Client-server” paradigm came out in the 90s when PCs became powerful enough to run a “thick client” application, and was considered revolutionary.
In other words, the eternal cycle continues… :)
GUI application patterns predate the 90s (Mac, X11, Apollo Domain, Xerox Star, etc)
Of course yes, GUIs go all the way back to Sketchpad in 1963. The PARC work was more about putting files on a server than putting the application logic on a server. X11 put all of the application on a server (or as X11 calls it, a client…). Based on my bookshelf, the “client-server” paradigm of putting the UI part and a substantial portion of the related logic on the client, but with most of the business logic on the server, reached mainstream adoption in the 90s.