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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?

#131

Post by johncolanduoni »

idlewords wrote: post #123
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…

The web lets you reach a large audience in a way nothing else can. You have to get over yourself about the tools not being elegant, and make sure the thing you're using the flawed tools for is worth the aggravation.

That doesn't mean it isn't terrible to work with and couldn't be much better. Unless you think the tool flaws are inescapable aspects of reaching a large audience?

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

#133

Post by meshko »

segmondy wrote: post #127
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…

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…

it was a nightmare (because of the browser support), but it was a nightmare with a hope that it will get fixed (browsers will get better, there will be simple thin abstraction libraries added, etc).

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

#135

Post by richardw »

I use GWT for anything serious. It's not what the cool kids like, but it feels super-solid compared to the flake that I experience when working with a heap'o JS libs. And debugging it years later is awesome (barring a couple gotchas) because it makes sense.

I've always thought GWT has a crazy learning curve until we did a project in Angular2 on top of ASP.net core, using a customer-selected template that required tons of JS fun, with random CSS class names that have zero obvious semantic benefit so you have to look everything up. Not even Typescript could save the feeling that we were building a house of cards in a strong breeze. Same with Django + JS. Just felt too scripty for me.

I don't like leaky abstractions but honestly the modern web fundamentally forces you to use them for anything vaguely complex. It's not getting easier, it's getting much, much harder. GWT at least gives me a way to trade off complexity for a clunky but solid language, and I get to reuse code on the front and back ends.

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

#136

Post by goatlover »

ktRolster wrote: post #49

Web programming is ok. A lot of the complexity comes because it is actually two different problems: 1) The problem of displaying a (mostly static) page of HTML 2) The problem creating an application There are web frameworks in existence that solve either of these problems, but things get ugly when people don't think about which problem they are trying to solve.

The real problem is that 1 was turned into 2 without replacing 1. It's kind of amazing that HTML and CSS have survived all the way through 2016, and don't look they're going to be replaced for a long time.

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

#137

Post by goatlover »

ilaksh wrote: post #41

My take on this is that backend developers have always been at odds with frontend developers in terms of being given larger salaries than frontend while not having to keep up with new UI technologies and simultaneously downplaying the skills of the front end programmers. So now, when you have to learn about the web platform since you just cannot ignore it anymore, you are feeling pretty overwhelmed, and can't help yo…

The OP was opining that the web stack is hacks built on top of hacks, not that web developers are poorly skilled. They use what's available to them.

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

#138

Post by shurcooL »

I agree, and I decided I won't accept the hacks and compromises anymore, and started building everything in Go (even frontend stuff) in my free time. There's much to do, but at least the foundation (type system, type safety, etc.) is very solid.

This way, I don't have to build on top of the hacky and messy things anymore, but slowly take my time and do things very right.

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

#139

Post by fsloth »

captainbenises wrote: post #50
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…

This post makes me sad. Javascript, CSS and HTML can all be used powerfully, performantly and in a managed way where anyone can come on board and contribute. Facebook, Google and Microsoft all use the web stack to run huge companies. To broadly paint this web stack that so many people poured countless hours into making, as 'impossible' to use is doing it a great disservice. But hey man, that's just like your opinion.

anyone can come on board and contribute.

The corollary to that is that the system uses components that target the lowest common denominator. I'm not sure "anyone can contribute" is a good foundation for any complex technical endeavour - if we are speaking specifically of implementation.

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

#140

Post by raverbashing »

pixie_ wrote: post #58
captainbenises wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post makes me sad. Javascript, CSS and HTML can all be used powerfully, performantly and in a managed way where anyone can come on board and contribute. Facebook, Google and Microsoft all use the web stack to run huge companies. To broadly paint this web stack that so many people poured countless hours into making, as 'impossible' to use is doing it a great disservice. But hey man, that's just like your opinion.

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…

Complicated to create UIs? Win32 was complicated. MFC was complicated. GTK is hard

HTML and CSS aren't as complex as those. Not even close

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