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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?

#311

Post by chx »

erlich wrote: post #306
meredydd wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, this understates the problem. A modal web application today takes an absolute minimum of five programming languages and three frameworks: * HTML * CSS * JS * A server-side language (eg Python) * SQL And then come the (leaky) abstractions on top of them: * A framework to make JS bearable (eg Angular) * A framework to make server-side bearable (eg Django) * A framework to make CSS bearable (eg Bootstrap) .…

You can literally use Javascript for all of this.

That leads to the MEAN stack (Mongo, Express, Angular, Node) and I am not so sure whether that's where the rosy future is.

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

#312

Post by 9point6 »

meredydd wrote: post #301
pixie_ wrote: post #24

Yes. I feel like we're in the dark ages right now. JavaScript - Dynamically typed, does not scale what so ever. Code written in it becomes 'read only' very quickly. Impossible to refactor. CSS - Also becomes impossible to manage. Who knows if the class you wrote is or isn't being used in HTML or JavaScript somewhere. Same problem, read-only, it only gets bigger and more unmanageable. HTML - At the heart of it, the fo…

If anything, this understates the problem. A modal web application today takes an absolute minimum of five programming languages and three frameworks: * HTML * CSS * JS * A server-side language (eg Python) * SQL And then come the (leaky) abstractions on top of them: * A framework to make JS bearable (eg Angular) * A framework to make server-side bearable (eg Django) * A framework to make CSS bearable (eg Bootstrap) .…

I think your use of "minimum" is wrong here. If you're using React running on Node and Webpack as your task-runner you just need Javascript and that's it.

Node allows you to run isomorphic JavaScript that runs on both your server side and client side (to ensure you don't end up with the Angular-style skeleton pages coming from the server), You can pick a nice ORM (like sequelize) to abstract away SQL, and Webpack allows modules to specify their styles in JavaScript to allow compossible CSS for each given page.

Yes this is still using a couple of frameworks, but I personally prefer the approach of a lightweight standard library to the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach that other languages have.

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

#313

Post by the-agreeer »

AgentME wrote: post #154
the-agreeer wrote: post #19

All these dozens of disparate ad-hoc web technologies and defacto standards are built like a tower of babel on quicksand. No one truly understands all of it. Without View Source and a healthy dose of copying/stealing no one could get any of it to function. Yet in spite of all of this - this web thing somehow works. The only takeaway is to not bother trying to grok all of it. It would only lead to madness and missed d…

I think you're extremely overselling the complexity of things. Sure, there's a lot of layers and parts involved in making web pages work and in the popular web development ecosystem in general, but they were usually created to solve specific problems, and knowing of them can help you recognize how problems you may run into may be solved. None of them work by magic or are beyond comprehension. The browser speaks the H…

Thanks for a lesson on how the web works, but I'm already quite familiar with it. Your long answer proves my point about its needless complexity and layer upon layer of historical cruft. Can the complexity be buried under various frameworks and toolkits? Sure, to some extent. But not entirely. Browser inconsistencies always manage to sneak through forcing the developer to learn the entire stack.

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

#314

Post by JohnStrange »

ivanhoe wrote: post #170
pixie_ wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting, what native UI system is in your opinion easier to work with than web? Why then so many devs choose to use WebBrowser wrappers to render their desktop/mobile UIs because it's way faster and easier to develop with?

Answer to first question: Every single one.

The answer to your second question is manyfold. First, it makes a false presupposition, web development is not faster and easier. Second, most devs probably chose the browser as a platform because Apple was so tremendously successful at creating artificial "application barriers" -- making it uneconomical, problematic or even impossible to create well-behaving cross-platform applications. Building application barriers used to be Microsoft's primary concern (they invented the term for internal correspondence), they fought hard against Sun's original vision of Java, but has become Apple's main trump card for while, after Apple decided to give up making great and innovative hardware. Third, mobile apps became sexy but the fragmentation is too high (even just Android is way too fragmented).

So many devs and companies bite the bullet and decided to make a web page for desktop and mobile phones/tablets as a least common denominator.

If you disagree, show me one non-trivial web application with the performance and a user interface that matches or outscores a corresponding native application, and we can discuss why it's better than the rest and an exception. So far, I haven't seen a single example but there should be one or two.

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

#315

Post by meredydd »

9point6 wrote: post #312
meredydd wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, this understates the problem. A modal web application today takes an absolute minimum of five programming languages and three frameworks: * HTML * CSS * JS * A server-side language (eg Python) * SQL And then come the (leaky) abstractions on top of them: * A framework to make JS bearable (eg Angular) * A framework to make server-side bearable (eg Django) * A framework to make CSS bearable (eg Bootstrap) .…

I think your use of "minimum" is wrong here. If you're using React running on Node and Webpack as your task-runner you just need Javascript and that's it. Node allows you to run isomorphic JavaScript that runs on both your server side and client side (to ensure you don't end up with the Angular-style skeleton pages coming from the server), You can pick a nice ORM (like sequelize) to abstract away SQL, and Webpack all…

I still count three frameworks :)

(React, Node, sequelize, I'm not counting webpack but I probably would if it's anything like as much of a pain as Grunt or Gulp or... And as you say, this is the lightweight version.)

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

#316

Post by Retric »

afarrell wrote: post #266
calgoo wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the correct term is complex. Abstractions make things more complex, as there are more moving parts. This normally leads to complications when trying to debug some obscure error that you will get when the project gets bigger. At that point you feel for calling on some ancient deity to spite the developer who decided to use this framework 6 months, until you remember that you proposed it as replacement for the…

Which is more complex - an apple or an internal combustion engine? Tis a trick question. The actual complexity experienced by humans depends on the job they are trying to do with the object. If you are a botanist/arborist driving to work, then clearly it is the apple. If you are a mechanic on your lunch break, then clearly it is the engine.

Inherent complexity is often ignorable, but bugs can and will sit anywhere. So, yea the fact an apple is vastly more complex than an engine is not always relevant, but when it is relevant you have real issues.

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

#317

Post by philplckthun »

calgoo wrote: post #247
philplckthun wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abstractions make things more complicated? I think you're missing the basic definition and purpose of abstractions. So how do you define "almost"?

I think the correct term is complex. Abstractions make things more complex, as there are more moving parts. This normally leads to complications when trying to debug some obscure error that you will get when the project gets bigger. At that point you feel for calling on some ancient deity to spite the developer who decided to use this framework 6 months, until you remember that you proposed it as replacement for the…

A good abstraction hides complexity without adding major tradeoffs. Presumably an abstraction makes it easier for a developer to reason about what is going on.

It's true that abstractions can lead to a lot of trouble when they are failing to work correctly. But when they are good they add a lot of good value. When did you last have to debug a system call, because you couldn't open a file? There are really good, old abstractions that no one thinks about anymore, since they're just really good.

A framework in web development is of course another matter, where complexity can sometimes be staggering. I believe that the lifecycle of React components is really nice. Instead of initialising X things you can think about how a single component will change over time.

There are endless examples of good and bad abstractions, I guess. But at the end of the day, we have to choose abstractions when we need them to reason about what we're doing, despite adding more points of failures.

After all, if an abstraction just enables us to think faster and more clearly about a problem, AND allows us to write less code, that means that less bugs will be in the final product, assuming that the density of bugs is constant. ;)

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

#318

Post by MustardTiger »

dspillett wrote: post #246
apatters wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I've always been puzzled by the urge to move more and more logic to the frontend. In backend development you have a choice of many mature languages, tools and frameworks which are fairly sane. I'll take that environment as the foundation of a web application any day and apply the mania of client-side javascript to it selectively in cases where we need to minimize server roundtrips.

> why I've always been puzzled by the urge to move more and more logic to the frontend. This is usually about a mix of scalability, responsiveness, and partition resilience; with the level of importance of those being dependent on the application. * Scale: if the client makes fewer request of the server(s) then you have reduced server and network requirements. As server resources get cheaper (and the cheap options mo…

>This is usually about a mix of scalability, responsiveness, and partition resilience; with the level of importance of those being dependent on the application.

I have never seen anyone make those arguments. I've seen people vaguely reference them in a hand wavey "I don't understand this but google facebook I am right" way. But that's as close as it gets. It is usually about following trends.

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

#319

Post by nurettin »

regularfry wrote: post #178
ivanhoe wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, what native UI system is in your opinion easier to work with than web? Why then so many devs choose to use WebBrowser wrappers to render their desktop/mobile UIs because it's way faster and easier to develop with?

Delphi 4's VCL and IDE was the high point. It's been downhill ever since.

Delphi 7 designer was a great improvement over delphi4 (we still use it at work) and yet delphi 2007 fixed some soap bugs and xe7+ is pretty decent as a cross platform ui development IDE.

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

#320

Post by jakobloekke »

dcposch wrote: post #262
niccaluim wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree—I loathe frontend development, but React made it tolerable to do for limited periods—but it's still a hack on a teetering Jenga tower of hacks.

The really funny thing is that the OS runs a simple event + render loop, then the browser implements a wildly complex stateful/declarative structure on top of that (the DOM), then React apps create a simple event + render loop again, this time with special diffing logic to update the underlying DOM as little as possible

Brilliant observation. That actually never occured to me.
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