Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks? • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by justifier » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:21 AM UTC

where does the hacking end?

i see using an electron passing over an elemental substrate as a hack of electromagnetism to allow its properties to represent arithmetic logic

i see little endian as a hack of binary notation of sets to be able to compose information

everything you do is a hack on top of a hack.. on the shoulders of giant stacked turtles.. or some such

what about web development sucks for you? in recognising them do you have any ideas for how to relieve your pain points?

web development is the same as application work.. solving problems

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

#212

Post by sangnoir » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:22 AM UTC

nivertech wrote: post #195

raverbashing wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was building GUIs in pure Win32, with my own C++ wrapper classes for Win32 and later with OWL and MFC. I'd say building Win32 GUIs in C++ was easier than current Web stack. Same with Java AWT and Swing libraries. Objective C / Cocoa is more complex - never really managed to learn it beyond basic stuff, maybe with Swift it's easier. Elm is close to those desktop GUI frameworks, but functional instead of OO. But Tcl/…

> 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|Bootstrap|ReactJS). I think the 'hardcore' devs who would rather avoid using abstractions (frameworks/JS transpilers) will have a torrid time with the front-end.

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

#213

Post by sangnoir » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:25 AM UTC

bbcbasic wrote: post #155

raverbashing wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can create controls in WIN32 or MFC that would simply be impossible in HTML for a reasonable level of performance

> You can create controls in WIN32 or MFC that would simply be impossible in HTML for a reasonable level of performance

Flip side: You can distribute/deploy the host HTML application with reach that will be impossible achieve with a WIN32 or MFC application.

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

#214

Post by pablovidal85 » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:30 AM UTC

roblabla wrote: post #162

EnigmaticLion wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "test".indexOf("st") == "test".length - "st".length I don't think this is a correct implementation of "endsWith". "testtest".indexOf("st") =/= "testtest".length - "st".length

Good point. Should have been "test".substr("test".length - "st".length) === "st" Or is it substring? Might there be an off by one in there? Anyway, this kind of reflexion only proves my point. There's no reason to question what endsWith does, because it's obvious. It's the correct abstraction in many cases.

Negative substr() already does the trick, I don't see the need for endsWith() at all.

  'test'.substr(-'st'.length) === 'st'

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

#215

Post by stockerta » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:42 AM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #170

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…

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?

I think they use it because they know that. Not because it is better. It is faster and easier for them, but the end product is a pile of ..... .

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

#216

Post by roblabla » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:43 AM UTC

pablovidal85 wrote: post #214

roblabla wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. Should have been "test".substr("test".length - "st".length) === "st" Or is it substring? Might there be an off by one in there? Anyway, this kind of reflexion only proves my point. There's no reason to question what endsWith does, because it's obvious. It's the correct abstraction in many cases.

Negative substr() already does the trick, I don't see the need for endsWith() at all. 'test'.substr(-'st'.length) === 'st'

The thing is :

1. You need to know and understand obscure behavior of substr

2. This hides the programmer's true intent. What you want is to know if the string ends with 'st', not that "the 'st'.length last characters of the string is 'st'". Why make it harder on your fellow coworkers to understand what you mean ?

If you only do this once, sure, maybe importing a whole module is overkill. But as you write it over and over again, in separate projects, having the code safely tucked away in a reusable module brings complexity down.

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

#217

Post by bartl » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:46 AM UTC

pablovidal85 wrote: post #214

roblabla wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. Should have been "test".substr("test".length - "st".length) === "st" Or is it substring? Might there be an off by one in there? Anyway, this kind of reflexion only proves my point. There's no reason to question what endsWith does, because it's obvious. It's the correct abstraction in many cases.

Negative substr() already does the trick, I don't see the need for endsWith() at all. 'test'.substr(-'st'.length) === 'st'

You can even do

    'test'.match(/st$/)

I don't see why people insist on doing all the low level shit themselves, and then still complain about "scalability" and "fitness for programming on the enterprise level".

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

#218

Post by lazyjones » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:53 AM UTC

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.

> Facebook, Google and Microsoft all use the web stack to run huge companies.

It does require huge companies like these to work with the web stack painlessly and they're behind initiatives to make it even more cumbersome. You could say that they have an incentive to hamper competition by screwing up the web and they're doing it well.

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

#219

Post by BerislavLopac » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:58 AM UTC

> I've always found it quite easy to move up and down the stack

This is the most important point that most people overlook: the Web doesn't have a single stack, even though we talk about "full stack developers" and similar. Web is your ultimate distributed system (which is why you have no other option but to make it static); you never develop a single application, but a multitude of applications often (usually, in fact) executing on systems you have next to no control over.

Just think of your quintessential "Web page": a server prepares an HTML page which is then rendered in a browser. First, you have a server, which you rarely control (unless it physically sits on your desk/rack, and even then you're at mercy of your ISP). Second, even assuming the page was served correctly, it then arrives to another system which has OS/browser/display/etc which you have absolutely no control over except for hoping that it adheres to all the standards you have adhered to when developing. Even if there is no client-side code (i.e. Javascript) to be executed, even the simplest HTML (as well as CSS) are instructions that need to be interpreted.

What you call "hacks" are essentially numerous solutions -- some good and others less so -- to inherent problems of distributed computing, working around the peculiarities of the underlying platforms (namely HTTP and TCP/IP) to ensure reliability. Many things that are taken for granted in platform-specific development simply don't exist here; as a reminder, take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_distributed_compu...

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

#220

Post by dordoka » Mon, Sep 12, 2016, 8:59 AM UTC

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.

The fact that you can reach a massive audience doesn't make any less true that the tooling sucks. If that first fact wasn't true, we would not be commenting on this issue...