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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?

#511

Post by reitanqild »

RussianCow wrote: post #452
reitanqild wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for web applications . There should be something in the license of JavaScript frameworks & libraries to prevent them from being used in blogs, newspapers, trade publications etc :-/ For now all innovations in JS just seems to provide us with even heavier web sites for no real benefits. I feel I'm starting to dislike JS the way I disliked Flash which would be quite a feat.

I think it's completely fine to write a website/blog/newspaper in React, provided you make it isomorphic and keep it as light as possible. Then you get all of the advantages of using React with almost none of the disadvantages. Of course, nobody does this in practice.

For those who like videos(unlike me) and Java (like me), this was a topic for one of the talks at JavaZone in Oslo last week and I watched that one on my way home today: https://vimeo.com/181925279

(Oh, BTW, JavaZone 2016 was Oracle-free and all talks seems to have been uploaded to vimeo with no restrictions on downloading.)

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

#512

Post by mmilano »

Are you sure the assessment web programming being a series of hacks on hacks isn't an artifact of inheriting a fairly long-lived and large code base?

I don't think I've touched a large codebase that has been around for a long time which didn't feel hackish.

I'd make the evaluation of web programming based on a language and framework that feels most proper to you, and based on the use of it with a brand new app.

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

#513

Post by lobster_johnson »

goatlover wrote: post #504
atombender wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not very impressed with "the whole purpose of CSS". CSS made a ton of design mistakes which we're still living with today. A big design mistake was the global cascading/inheritance system. It's a huge pain to write CSS that doesn't leak into nooks and crannies where it shouldn't. CSS is supposed to be modular, but you can't just import someone's stylesheet (e.g. for embedding something in your page, like a video…

What about full on web components? Then the designers can just target components, and leave the programming to the component makers.

I don't know enough about them to say for sure, but they do sound like a good solution. Haven't they been just over the horizon for a number of years now?

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

#514

Post by jensvdh »

zeveb wrote: post #412
9point6 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your use of "minimum" is wrong here. If you're using React running on Node and Webpack as your task-runner you just need Javascript and that's it. Node allows you to run isomorphic JavaScript that runs on both your server side and client side (to ensure you don't end up with the Angular-style skeleton pages coming from the server), You can pick a nice ORM (like sequelize) to abstract away SQL, and Webpack all…

> Node allows you to run isomorphic JavaScript that runs on both your server side and client side But then you're writing JavaScript on the server side, and I think I'd rather shove live weasels down my trousers than write one line more of JavaScript than I absolutely must.

This is where Typescript comes in. It's beautiful.

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

#515

Post by thrilleratplay »

Yes/no. Code is developing faster than standards update:

HTML - HTML 4.0.1 -> HTML5 (14 years)

CSS3 - in development since 1998

JS - ECMAScript 3 (1999) -> ECMAScript 5 (2009) -> ECMAScript 6 (2015...ish http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/)

I think web development is a lot like Perl. It is flexable enough for anyone to write something simple and quick but creating a large maintainable project takes a lot of discipline.

I use a series of linters, style guides and naming conventions to keep from shooting myself in the foot but still will need to go back and clean up from time to time.

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

#516

Post by barefootcoder »

OliverJones wrote: post #294

With respect, at least part of your frustration comes from the "curse of the installed base." Long-lived software with real users in any language running on any platform becomes complex, and picks up strange-looking appendages. Sometimes those appendages are nasty hacks, and sometimes they are well-built. But they are, in most cases, necessary to the proper functioning of the software, and responsible for its success…

Your comment ignores my introductory paragraph. I have many years of experience working on many different mature code-bases, including (and especially) C++. I know the pain of legacy code quite well, but web seems to be a whole other ball of wax.

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

#518

Post by barefootcoder »

ng12 wrote: post #450
aabajian wrote: post #348

Some people have already mentioned GWT. I think this is the best evidence that yes, web programming is extremely hackish. GWT is an entire framework to write web applications in a strongly typed language - it compiles Java down to JavaScript. GWT was made in an era that we're just now escaping: the era of browser quirks. IMHO, GWT didn't take off because of one reason: Its target demographic, web developers, do not h…

> Its target demographic, web developers, do not have the same technical training as traditional computer scientists I think this is the money quote, and the reason why this thread is full of such ill-informed opinions. I have a degree in CS. I've done systems programming, devops, and mobile before settling on web. Just recently I joined a company of very strong back-end people with a severe dearth of people who have…

It's funny you say that, because that's exactly why I avoided it for so long.

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

#519

Post by marpstar »

goatlover wrote: post #488
marpstar wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and? There are plenty of things that were "designed" for one thing and used for something totally different.

So using the right tool for the job is a poor metaphor in programming? Or is it advice that gets continually ignored?

Well, when HTML/CSS/JS are the only tool for the job, they're the right tool for the job, that's for sure.

Maybe HTML5 isn't the best option for mobile apps, but they can be used, and it even has advantages in some areas (ease of cross-platform development, for instance)

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