421–430 of 688 posts
Some people have already mentioned GWT. I think this is the best evidence that yes, web programming is extremely hackish. GWT is an entire framework to write web applications in a strongly typed language - it compiles Java down to JavaScript. GWT was made in an era that we're just now escaping: the era of browser quirks. IMHO, GWT didn't take off because of one reason: Its target demographic, web developers, do not h…
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> I'd say building Win32 GUIs in C++ was easier than current Web stack. >Same with Java AWT and Swing libraries. I will have to vehemently disagree. I have no experience with Win32 GUIs, but I still have nightmares about wrangling nested LayoutManagers: comparing that to the current state of the web (especially after Flexbox) is downright absurd. I am very happy with: Typescript + (Sass|LESS) + framework (Angular|Boo…
And I have to disagree with you. Doing UIs in native frameworks like JavaFX or even in a pure C++/WinAPI, is much more saner than doing any kind of UI in HTML/CSS. Ignoring flexbox for a second, which is kind of bleeding edge new thing, remind me - how exactly do you vertically center stuff with CSS? :P. My two main issues with doing UIs on the web are: - web stack is terribly unpredicatable; you're trying to force a…
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…
* TypeScript * Sass * A data-binding framework like Angular
Problems solved :)
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> Facebook, Google and Microsoft all use the web stack to run huge companies. And they throw huge amounts of resources at the web stack to do it. It might work for them, but I'm not sure that makes it powerful, performant, and manageable for those of us who aren't huge companies.
You probably do not have the complexity level of these companies either. To me js and css are kind of manageable, a bit the same way as python: use strongly enforced linters forbidding anything ambiguous, do not jump every other day in a new sexy bandwagon, and do not let one line of code commited in without an automated test running it on a ci machine. What I found harder to manage is the young FE devs themselves: f…
This is because employers are demanding that candidates know the latest and greatest technologies (eg. looking for 5 years of experience in 1 year old technology). I'm an FE dev, and during my last round of interviewing 3-4 months ago I was asked about my thoughts on Redux, CSS Modules, Radium, Docker, GraphQL/Relay, ClojureScript/Om, etc.
If I need to be experienced with this stuff to stay employable because just doing my job isn't enough, then I'm going to learn it.
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Exactly. Intuitively, I don't think the problem can be solved with the same "let's glue together a bunch of stuff and call it a stack" approach that got us here.
I'm hoping it is. We have ended up with really good tools compared to what we had before. Think about using commonjs requires, compared to the craziness of the Rails asset pipeline and sprockets, or manually specifying js files. We just need to standardize the glue...
The approach itself yielded the issues such as that you reference, which have only been partially resolved by subsequent iterations of the same approach. I don't believe we should give credit for an approach that yields what is still a net-negative.
It's a new thinking that we need, not reluctant acceptance of the best sub optimal execution the old thinking can deliver.
It is scary how most commenters here are missing the point. No, not all programming sucks. Yes, web programming sucks more than other things. No, it doesn't have to be like this. Yes, even web programming was better 10 years ago. No, I don't know how to fix it. Neither do I know exactly where we took the wrong turn. One of my theories is this: had Sun not sued Microsoft over their extensions in JVM, MS would have kep…
I'm sorry but I beg to differ, web programming 10 years ago was a nightmare. It's much better today. It's not web programming that sucks, it's programming with others. I bet most people won't complain much if they got choose what tools they wanted and worked alone. When working with others, different ideas and opinion clash heavily. Programmers are not best known for their awesome communication and the lack of it lea…
I suppose you can dump everything to a text file.
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I'm sorry but I beg to differ, web programming 10 years ago was a nightmare. It's much better today. It's not web programming that sucks, it's programming with others. I bet most people won't complain much if they got choose what tools they wanted and worked alone. When working with others, different ideas and opinion clash heavily. Programmers are not best known for their awesome communication and the lack of it lea…
How can programming with others be the reason, if the OP is saying they find programming for the web with others is much harder than applications development with others?
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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?
We old timers have native experience.
Many of those that use WebBrowser wrappers never used anything else other than web tools and aren't even aware of the RAD tooling we used like Delphi, for example.
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…
I don't know that they're all "horrible" hacks, but yes. We still generally don't know the best way to build a complicated website. We can't even agree on the simple stuff -- for example Angular2 and React, two of the hottest frameworks, pursue wildly different philosophies. I think it's exciting. It keeps me motivated to learn new things, and really think about the code I'm writing.
> We still generally don't know the best way to build a complicated website We do. The web was supposed to be a content-delivery mechanism not an application-delivery mechanism. The problem is that it was shoehorned into an application-delivery mechanism, and the lines between content and user interface were blurred so much that it delivers neither particularly well any longer. This quote from Alan Kay sums up my (an…
I'm not saying the web is great or anything, but it's a little funny to me that people on a site for "hackers" are afraid to get their hands a little dirty. Yes, the web was shorted sight (what technology isn't?) but to me the fact that we're able to use it as an application-delivery system is something to awe at not complain about.