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Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#81

Post by claudiawerner »

simonw wrote: post #55

Development environments. The amount of time and hassle I've seen lost to getting a working development environment up and running is incredible. Every time I talk to someone who's learning to program I tell them: "Setting up your development environment will be a nightmare. I have been doing this for twenty years and it's STILL a nightmare for me every time I do it. You are not alone." Docker is reasonably good here…

I'm interested in what features and integrations (possibly to be included in the default install) that Emacs and Vim need to compete with IDEs. A package for major OSs that contains Emacs+various packages, gcc, autotools and make all set up to run out of the box would be great.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#82

Post by claudiawerner »

petters wrote: post #10

A computer and OS that boots in 100ms. Every user action gives a response in 10ms.

On that note, the Slackware guy said that the startup speed advantage of systemd wasn't really worth it for his distro, on the reasoning that most people only rarely completely reboot their computer anyway, especially how we have hibernate and suspend today.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#83

Post by fsflover »

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #71

Having my phone as my ultimate CPU, immediately connectable to commodity peripherals (monitor, keyboard, printers) at home, office and on the street. Content would be stored on the phone following the "local fist" principle to favor speed and security. Something like Ubuntu Edge for those who remember it, but with more local storage -- TBs maybe -- more connectivity out of the box.

Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#84

Post by claudiawerner »

RNeff wrote: post #50

Develop a methodology for writing correct software. No bugs, guaranteed.

There's never such a thing as no bugs, even in any future hypothesized development methodology, for any given non-trivial program. The most you can do from the language side is reduce or eliminate certain types of bugs. The most you can get from a methodology is pour time (and/or money) into it.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#88

Post by andbberger »

par wrote: post #72
simonw wrote: post #55

Development environments. The amount of time and hassle I've seen lost to getting a working development environment up and running is incredible. Every time I talk to someone who's learning to program I tell them: "Setting up your development environment will be a nightmare. I have been doing this for twenty years and it's STILL a nightmare for me every time I do it. You are not alone." Docker is reasonably good here…

Also, at least on Mac, docker can be a major resource hog.

Pretty sure it just runs in a normal VM when not on linux

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#89

Post by cweagans »

petters wrote: post #10

A computer and OS that boots in 100ms. Every user action gives a response in 10ms.

This is definitely not near the top of my list when I think of things that get in my way on a day-to-day basis, but I'm genuinely curious about how/why it is for you. I can't remember the last time I waited for my computer to start from a cold boot (updates apply in the middle of the night and the reboot happens then). It wakes up from sleep quick enough for me, and pretty much anything I click on or type responds fast enough to appear instant.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#90

Post by dfabulich »

We need a faster web framework that generates HTML on mobile phones with no JS on the main thread.

The web is the "single top-priority" software platform, but it's in big, big trouble.

On mobile, users spend less than 7% of their time on the web. https://vimeo.com/364402896 All of the rest of their time is in native apps, where big corporations decide what you are and aren't allowed to do.

As a result, the money is going to native apps. The ad money is going there, the dev time is going there, and the mobile-web developer ecosystem is in peril.

The biggest reason people use native apps instead of mobile web apps is performance. Developers design web apps for fast desktop CPUs on fast WiFi data connections, and test their sites on top-of-the-line smartphones costing 5x-10x as much as the cheap smartphones people actually carry around.

Web developers have to solve this performance problem the way we've always solved our problems: with a new framework. ;-)

But specifically we need a framework designed to generate HTML with no JS at all, and designed to run in a Service Worker, which is a little web server that runs directly on the user's phone.

This style of app is often called a "Progressive Web App," and there are plenty of frameworks that support PWAs, but they generate PWAs on top of a single-page app framework that downloads megabytes of JavaScript running on the main thread. PWA is an afterthought for most frameworks, but we need it to be the centerpiece of the design.

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