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Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

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Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#101

Post by mastazi »

jaredklewis wrote: post #77

I think it's worth noting that back-end web development is an usually pleasant place. In most other types of programming, many technical decisions are made by the platform and working with tons of legacy cruft is the norm, not the exception. For example, where else can you so freely choose the programming language? Linux Driver? Use C. Mobile App? Java or Swift/Objective-C for Android or iPhone, respectively. GUI App…

> Making a neural net?

That's not as constrained as you might think[1] but yes, I get your main point and, as a back-end web developer, I agree.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_deep_learning_so...

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#102

Post by copperx »

intrasight wrote: post #33

Sometimes I ask myself the question by doing this thought experiment. If we encountered a more advanced sentient species that writes code, would they say "Yeah, we went through that html/css/js phase of development, and in fact all sentient species do so. We got some good mileage out of it, and it was a total hack for a generation (we refer to that time as the lost generation), but it evolved into our current 'System…

That's too easy. We all know that in the ideal world, platform-independent code would travel through the pipes instead of HTML/JS. That code "plug" into an existing architecture in the client side to provide some service or functionality transparently to the user.

Why don't we have that? mostly because of security concerns. That's why we can't have nice things.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#103

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

pixie_ wrote: post #58
captainbenises wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post makes me sad. Javascript, CSS and HTML can all be used powerfully, performantly and in a managed way where anyone can come on board and contribute. Facebook, Google and Microsoft all use the web stack to run huge companies. To broadly paint this web stack that so many people poured countless hours into making, as 'impossible' to use is doing it a great disservice. But hey man, that's just like your opinion.

What's sad is the zillions of hours wasted by engineers on an inherently flawed stack. What's sad is how ridiculously complicated it is to create and manage relatively simple UIs. What's sad is an entire generations of programmers growing up and thinking this is normal. Programming is supposed to be about creating platforms for each other so we can continue solving higher (and higher) level problems. This web crap ha…

Yes. Exactly what you said. It bothers me when people think solving broken Javascript problems is a valuable way to spend our civilizations scarce skilled manpower.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#104

Post by xenophonf »

MrJagil wrote: post #85
narrator wrote: post #61

>Can you recommend any good resources to help me orient my mind to this new way of thinking? The thing about web frontend development is that it suffered from the browser wars and having to appeal to amateur developers. Amateur developers love "Worse is Better"[1]. Basically sacrifice all consistency in favor of simplicity and getting started quickly. "Worse is Better" makes things simple to the point of making ugly…

Ok, this is really weird, why did your link forward me to this NSFW page until i copied the URL manually into the address bar (Again, NOT safe for work): http://imgur.com/32R3qLv Hovering showed the correct jwz url as well. Is that your or JWZ's doing? JWZ's page has even retained the imgur favicon (chrome, mac).

You can use something like RefControl to remove the HTTP Referer header that JWZ uses to implement the redirect.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#105

Post by glenda »

Fannon wrote: post #70

Yes, the web is a very messy place. Maybe a kind of wild west of programming practices? But it's also a place where you can do a lot of things that no one has thought before. There are not many rules and a wide diversity of approaches. The web platform never had many of those approaches (e.g. complex web applications) in mind when it was created. It works somehow, anyhow. It's chaotic, yes, but also flexible and full…

I totally agree you except I do think that the web can mess up the server-side stuff as well.

At the core things can be really simple, but then you need to set up SSL, some kind of database and potentially integrate a bunch of different services for things like sending emails, analytics, etc... At that point it is pretty easy to and up with a giant mess. These types of dependencies are not totally necessary but they are definitely part of the culture of web-development.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#106

Post by 35bge57dtjku »

> Is web programming really that bad? Is it really just that I need a new mental paradigm?

In the sense that there's 1000 web frameworks that all put their own shitty spin on everything, yes definitely. OTOH it shouldn't be hard for you to improve on those things and release web framework #1001.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#107

Post by Scarbutt »

jaredklewis wrote: post #77

I think it's worth noting that back-end web development is an usually pleasant place. In most other types of programming, many technical decisions are made by the platform and working with tons of legacy cruft is the norm, not the exception. For example, where else can you so freely choose the programming language? Linux Driver? Use C. Mobile App? Java or Swift/Objective-C for Android or iPhone, respectively. GUI App…

IMO the browser's strength is really 'zero-install distribution of applications', I don't think HTML/CSS/JS have anything to do with it.

Having said that, I think your argument its a straw-man, back-end web development is just a part (sometimes even unnecessary) of browser programming.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#109

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

It's inconsistent, but it's getting better. The tooling has been drastically improving over the last few years.

There's no "one true way" of doing stuff and the barrier to entry is low, which causes lots of different ecosystems to evolve. The browser vendors are trying to focus more on lower-level features, which the community is expected to use in order to build better abstractions.

I don't think it's worse than other platforms.

It really depends on what you're building. If you're making something that's largely document-focused, it's extremely easy. But as you start building more sophisticated applications, the complexity increases.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#110

Post by segmondy »

Nah, you are not missing anything. You are not alone, but you are also resisting change because you are not use to this fast pace of change. The reality is that you need really great memory and ability to organize and discover information fast to make sense of todays applications. It's layers upon layers of abstraction. It's terrible in a way when you have to work with others you have to deal with it. When you work by yourself, just keep it simple, choose a few well proven and solid stacks and just stick with them.
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