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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?

#81

Post by copperx »

sp527 wrote: post #42

What you're witnessing is the migration of complexity to the frontend. It's becoming very difficult to find a backend problem that doesn't have a well-defined, generally accepted solution and accompanying FOSS that you would be stupid (or even borderline criminally negligent) to ignore. In fact, full-stack programming in general is boring enough that I welcome anything that stirs the pot a bit. That said, having trie…

> That said, having tried at one time or another PM, management, and sales: programming is the worst monetizable career option, except for all the others.

Could you clarify that sentence, please?

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

#82

Post by meshko »

nixos wrote: post #67
meshko wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's possible, but not necessary. Devs might have been smart enough to stay away from extensions. Microsoft might have been smart enough to not push it too hard. Your example of ActiveX actual supports that -- ActiveX never became super widespread, remaining a niche thing. Also keep in mind that this was only few years before OS X was released bringing the 2nd consumer desktop OS back onto the market.

Microsoft then had a near complete monopoly on anything computers. If you remember how Mozilla had to include all the IE6 mistakes all web programmers assumed were standard? And yes, back then definitely Microsoft was in EEE mode. They would do anything they possibly could do to keep the internet Windows only

They settled in 2001. OS X was released same year, signaling the beginning of the end of that monopoly.

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

nixos wrote: post #67
meshko wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that's possible, but not necessary. Devs might have been smart enough to stay away from extensions. Microsoft might have been smart enough to not push it too hard. Your example of ActiveX actual supports that -- ActiveX never became super widespread, remaining a niche thing. Also keep in mind that this was only few years before OS X was released bringing the 2nd consumer desktop OS back onto the market.

Microsoft then had a near complete monopoly on anything computers. If you remember how Mozilla had to include all the IE6 mistakes all web programmers assumed were standard? And yes, back then definitely Microsoft was in EEE mode. They would do anything they possibly could do to keep the internet Windows only

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by MrJagil »

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).

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

#86

Post by lobster_johnson »

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…

React is, in my opinion, a big step forward in reclaiming the front end as a mature UI environment.

I have also found that CSS becomes a lot more tolerable with CSS Modules, in combination with React, which allows you to write CSS that targets one component and only that component. By eschewing cascading, you can finally write modular, reusable CSS that avoids side effects and still allows fine-tuning (overriding) by the component user.

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

#87

Post by nixos »

meshko wrote: post #74
nixos wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java had another big problem. It couldn't interact with DOM properly. I mean, it could. But it was terribly hackish and anyways involved Javascript. So you had one of two options: 1. Write an HTML webpage or 2. Write an empty webpage with a large Java applet in the center, which would be function as a "virtual terminal". Both are ugly. That's why Sun created Java Web Start (IIRC), for complicated Java applications wh…

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.

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

#88

Post by flukus »

nixos wrote: post #62
meshko wrote: post #37

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…

Java had another big problem. It couldn't interact with DOM properly. I mean, it could. But it was terribly hackish and anyways involved Javascript. So you had one of two options: 1. Write an HTML webpage or 2. Write an empty webpage with a large Java applet in the center, which would be function as a "virtual terminal". Both are ugly. That's why Sun created Java Web Start (IIRC), for complicated Java applications wh…

Web start has to be one of the best web technologies that almost no one ever heard of. It had most of the benefits of the web for LOB apps, and most consumer apps are probably better off not being web based in the first place.

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

#89

Post by broodbucket »

Honestly, pretty much everything is hacks on hacks. As a kernel hacker, hardware is hacks, firmware is hacks, kernel is hacks, it's turtles all the way down. The fact that anything works at all is a miracle. Some systems are better than others, but everything has some duct tape somewhere.

Designs and algorithms are abstract, the implementation is never as nice. We as engineers have to make the best of what we have, and to prevent making the situation worse to the best of our ability.

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

#90

Post by detaro »

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).

Because JWZ doesn't like HN and thus has decided to childishly redirect all traffic coming from HN to this.
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