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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?

#671

Post by erlich »

rpeden wrote: post #641
erlich wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thinking on this is that everytime someone has tried to unify these tools it hasn't gone well. Think about Google Web Toolkit, or Microsoft's XAML. It's better to have everyone experimenting, blogging and doing their thing, and the best ideas rise to the top. 2015 was probably the worst time to be a web developer on a greenfield project. You had Angular deprecation and the Flux wars, and Babel 5 -> 6 migration. I…

Did GWT or XAML really try to unify things? Back in 2009, I worked on a complex SPA using GWT. With GWT, you could pretend to know nothing about HTML/CSS by just using the ugly build in components, but none of the GWT users I met did that. Our app used a Model-View-Presenter structure, dependency injection, and event bus for asynchronous communication to let components know when their data had updated, plus UIBinder…

The point I'm making is that when people have tried to develop a UI framework in a single language from scratch and offer the same functionality as the web, they fail. Performance sucks, or its not flexible enough to deliver certain functionality.

By XAML I guess I mean WPF or whatever it is called. The bet was that Silverlight would be installed in every browser and you could build more powerful apps. I remember reading a post about how Evernote rewrote their WPF app because performance was never good enough.

GWT tried to make a nicer API for building UIs. The API was nice, but I guess the whole transpilation caused issues with debugging etc.

---

HTML, JS, CSS is evolving in such unpredictable ways, each time getting better and better. It just has such a large community using it and experimenting with it all the time - I don't think anyone can compete with the hive mind of web devs.

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

#672

Post by rer »

nixos wrote: post #87
meshko wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, as said in other threads here -- large companies full of brilliant people can build good RIAs. Small companies full of OK people are suffering. Java Applets security could have been solved. I'm not even sure what problem you are referring to exactly. With todays web we get insanity of XSSs, CSRF and who knows what else. The only reason these are not killing modern web development is because this hydra has too m…

>XSSs, CSRF Java had drive-by malware downloads galore. Unfortunately, Javascript isn't immune from this, probably for the same reason: to increase performance requirements, they both JIT code, which allows potential buffer overflows, etc.

This doesn't sound like the full explanation about the security problems of Java applets. It sounds more like a JIT bug. One can fix the JIT to check for out of bounds errors.

What's the real reason Java applets were insecure?

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

#673

Post by alexbanks »

jinfiesto wrote: post #656
alexbanks wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever worked with a JS framework that wasn't angular? Ember, React, Vue, etc?

I've used react personally and like it rather well. I think it's much better than Angular, but I still don't think that Angular represents the 9th circle of hell, as seems to be implied above.

I think most libraries should be compared based on their worst-case implementations. As in, the "worst" react code is still much better than the "worst" angular code.

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

#674

Post by dllthomas »

Retric wrote: post #316
afarrell wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bugs are much more likely to be in the apple.

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

#675

Post by erlich »

rpeden wrote: post #643
erlich wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 best part will be when we're all standardized on ES2015 modules instead of commonJS modules. I agree with you that CommonJS requires are nice to use, but since they're not statically analyzable the way ES2015 imports are, optimizing compilers like the Closure Compiler can't really analyze your entire application, including its dependencies. Once we've completely made the ES2015 transition (at least for front end…

Yeh I initially hated that commonjs was not used for es2015 imports. Slowed down application startup and lack of node.js compatibility.

But after reading the justification it will be better in the long run.

We just need some way to lazy load modules.

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

#676

Post by 3ch1dna »

scriptkiddy wrote: post #648
LBarret wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a bit disingenuous. the back-end technologies are quite stable and based on not-perfect-but-reasonable semantics. Django/SQLALchemy don't change that much. Front-end on the other end is a mess. JS/HTML/CSS as tools are clearly unfit for the current needs.

I think backend frameworks do change. I think the difference lies in the velocity of change. Front-end frameworks tend to move laterally; e.g. implementing a new design pattern or changing the workflow with an existing API. Back-End frameworks tend to move vertically; e.g. adding new features or abstractions and developing generic bootstrapping procedures. I'm glad you brought up Django here. I work with Django as my…

The problem is that I think a lot of back-end frameworks change (and/or are created in the first place) as just a means to pad the developer(s) that coined it. All the new implementations of JS that are increasingly more backend just seem like a lazy way of not having to learn a "real" OOP language and just pressing boundaries. Which is great in some respects, but I feel like we could be making better headway as a collective resource by working on improving what's already there (without breaking it in the process) instead of making new things so the new kids to the game don't have to try so hard.

HTML is akin to translating. I know devs who have done front end for 20 years who can't begin to wrap their heads around scripting because it's not just wrapping text in brackets to translate to a screen, but they can pull of tricks in CSS like a shark breathes water. Yes, CSS is a mess and I think a lot of that was trial and error and needs to be standardized, but it's an example still of working to make something that is already there do its job better rather than making something new and shiny to replace it so you can add another language to your portfolio.

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

#677

Post by elg0nz »

barefootcoder wrote: post #528
elg0nz wrote: post #126

" In Richard Feynman’s popular book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” he tells how during his college years he “often liked to play tricks on people”. Most of these tricks were designed to show how dumb people are. For example, in a mechanical drawing class at MIT where the students were taught to use a drawing instrument called a French curve (a curly piece of plastic for drawing smooth curves), Feynman informed…

Somehow I feel like this comment is meant to be directed toward me (OP), but am struggling to see how it applies to what I was asking. In fact, I specifically asked for resources to assist me in orienting my mind to the web development way of doing things. Perhaps I've misunderstood and you're actually directing the comment at the hodge-podge of web frameworks that don't seem to follow the principles of design that o…

The main point I was trying to get across is that most software is indeed Hacky, not because Computer Science is terrible, but because the people who made it don't have a solid understanding of many fundamentals. They've taught themselves to "program in 21 days" and later have a hard time understanding why things break.

Peter Norvig said it better than I can, becoming a great programmer takes 10+ years. http://norvig.com/21-days.html

Data structures, design patterns, software & hardware architecture and, distributed computing are subjects that all engineers should be familiar with.

For example, the question whether to use NoSQL or SQL is another way of asking if you need to use a Hash or a Binary Tree.

Bad engineers pick one or the other based on Marketing or White Papers, Great Engineers pick the right one based on understanding how their algorithms will use that data and why there are no silver bullets.

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

#679

Post by MattSayar »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #241
sangnoir wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> how exactly do you vertically center stuff with CSS? :P

I know this was just a throwaway comment, but seriously, I love this site:

http://howtocenterincss.com/

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

#680

Post by MustardTiger »

dspillett wrote: post #403
MustardTiger wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

In some cases it may be about following trends. But this particular trend started from an effort to push things client-side for good reasons that are vital, or at least useful, to many projects. It being trendy doesn't necessarily mean it is wrong! Don't be so fast to dismiss something because to don't immediately see/understand the benefit. There is often some confusion between "mobile first" and "offline first" - t…

You are responding to a strawman. I said nothing about the trend, much less dismissed it. I addressed the reasoning I've seen people use exclusively to push for it.
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