Ask HN: what still sucks about web development? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#11

Post by bigwally » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 1:13 AM UTC

I feel like a rant.

Editors: The best editor/editing environment of the bunch is the Microsoft offering of visual studio. The biggest problem is that it is only well suited for Microsoft products. There are a few others and there is eclipse that some people seem to worship but is clunky hog of a thing that is nowhere as smooth as Visual Studio. A lot of people still use fairly basic text editors.

Standards: At first there was Netscape it was good. Then IE came along and it was good and Netscape was a garbage. Then Firefox came along and it didn't crash as much as IE. Then Chrome came along and IE was crap. While I like the way Chrome has done so much, I really hope Google doesn't do too much to dominate the browser market. Competition is needed. Competition was needed when Microsoft was winning the browser wars. The actions that Google has taken of late seem to not much different from the bullying Microsoft employed all those many moons ago.

Javascript: The things you can do with Javascript are fantastic. The language of javascript is a dogs breakfast. Instead of pushing the language forward and making it more integrated with the browser, add-ons such as jquery have been created. Having one dominant language (that was set by Netscape) makes programming for the web a sometimes painful experience. Using Javascript and trying to make it work with every browser can get ugly. There is room for new language or two in the browser.

I am very happy to be moving on from the dominance of IE6 but I am cautious of what the future holds.

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#12

Post by HowardRoark » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 2:10 AM UTC

HTML, CSS, Javascript, browsers, database, IDE, at least one server side language, and hosting for a simple web app. Web development sucks. We are just used to it.

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#13

Post by dstein » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:01 AM UTC

The biggest problem is the technology stack is too tall. With Ruby on Rails adding Jquery, Coffeescript, SASS, and SCSS it's exposing some obvious shortcomings in today's web frameworks.

The high level problem is that web developers are trying to do things (state) in web browsers over a protocol (HTTP) that was not designed for it. Every server-side web framework is always going to be Frankenstein-ish like RoR has become.

Meta-frameworks may start to become necessary. There's a few out there like Haxe, and GWT is sorta one. Websockets may also start to become a more widely used alternative to Ajax. HTML and JS are going to be a problem for a while, but can maybe be abstracted almost completely.

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#14

Post by kingofspain » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:09 AM UTC

Perhaps because I deal with it much less than the other stuff, but SSL. Getting it set up, being tied to one IP (until all older browsers have died) and to a lesser extent the fact that "trustworthy" certs still cost so much and the racket with greening.

Other than that overflow on iframes in Chrome (big hassle today!), SOAP(!!) and the general lack of a decent editor/IDE that doesn't have at least one infuriating feature.

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#15

Post by DTE » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:48 AM UTC

chubbard wrote: post #4

Layout. The legacy layout model and the cryptic CSS work arounds we employ to get it to work are terrible.

Absolutely. And are there any significant efforts or new ideas for dealing with this problem?

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#16

Post by captainbeef » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:53 AM UTC

ISeemToBeAVerb wrote: post #9

I'm pretty sure your question is squarely aimed at experienced developers, but I would like to offer a perspective from someone coming into web development from a completely different industry (film editing). I decided to abandon my career as a film editor because I found my interests and ambitions leaning more toward interactive media and web development. Having left editing at a time when video standards were all o…

Choosing something and digging in I think applies at all experience levels. The processing of choosing changes with experience.

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#17

Post by sunchild » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 4:27 AM UTC

dstein wrote: post #13

The biggest problem is the technology stack is too tall. With Ruby on Rails adding Jquery, Coffeescript, SASS, and SCSS it's exposing some obvious shortcomings in today's web frameworks. The high level problem is that web developers are trying to do things (state) in web browsers over a protocol (HTTP) that was not designed for it. Every server-side web framework is always going to be Frankenstein-ish like RoR has be…

"Ruby on Rails adding Jquery, Coffeescript, SASS, and SCSS"

Eh? None of those things that you listed is for emulating state over HTTP. In any case, Rails is supposed to be a "tall" stack – it's supposed to be a highly opinionated framework.

If you want to attack stateful apps in browsers, aren't Sproutcore/Cappuccino better targets?

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#18

Post by sunchild » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 4:34 AM UTC

ddemchuk wrote: post #7

Even after learning how to properly deploy rails apps in production, it still sucks. I want to be able to install the heroku deployment process on my own servers.

Close enough? https://github.com/mislav/git-deploy

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#19

Post by sunchild » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 4:37 AM UTC

bigwally wrote: post #11

I feel like a rant. Editors: The best editor/editing environment of the bunch is the Microsoft offering of visual studio. The biggest problem is that it is only well suited for Microsoft products. There are a few others and there is eclipse that some people seem to worship but is clunky hog of a thing that is nowhere as smooth as Visual Studio. A lot of people still use fairly basic text editors. Standards: At first…

You couldn't pay me to use an IDE. I always end up liking a simple shell and text editor better.

Re: Ask HN: what still sucks about web development?

#20

Post by dstein » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 5:04 AM UTC

sunchild wrote: post #17

dstein wrote: post #13

The biggest problem is the technology stack is too tall. With Ruby on Rails adding Jquery, Coffeescript, SASS, and SCSS it's exposing some obvious shortcomings in today's web frameworks. The high level problem is that web developers are trying to do things (state) in web browsers over a protocol (HTTP) that was not designed for it. Every server-side web framework is always going to be Frankenstein-ish like RoR has be…

"Ruby on Rails adding Jquery, Coffeescript, SASS, and SCSS" Eh? None of those things that you listed is for emulating state over HTTP. In any case, Rails is supposed to be a "tall" stack – it's supposed to be a highly opinionated framework. If you want to attack stateful apps in browsers, aren't Sproutcore/Cappuccino better targets?

Using Jquery to do ajax requests and updating part of a web page is emulatimg state over http.

Coffeescript, SASS/SCSS are just examples of making the Rails stack even taller.

I don't have any experience with Sproutcore or Cappuccino but both look like clientside-only frameworks and would only extend the state & stack problems that I already dislike.