The app I’ve written is a thin layer of glue between two components: Canvas and Hypothes.is. LTI defines how they interact, and I’d be lying if I said it was easy to figure out to get our app to launch inside Canvas and respond back to it. But I didn’t need to be an HTTP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or Python wizard to get the job done. And that’s fortunate because I’m not one. I just know enough about these technologies to be able to build basic web apps, much like ones I was able to build 20 years ago when the web first became a software platform. The magic for me was always about what simple web apps can do when connected to the networked flow of information among people and computers. My Canvas experience reminded me that we can still tap into that magic.

A powerful capability for ad hoc distributed computing arises naturally from the architecture of the Web.

This simple discipline, which is standard across all domains served by VBX controls, enables average programmers (like me) to build custom applications in hours or days.