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In web design, everything easy is hard again

frankchimero.com

211–220 of 335 posts

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#212
I don't get all the ranting. I think the author would be better doing a research about the current technologies for doing websites (as opposed to web apps).

For websites I can recommend Bulma, it's an elegant base for modern websites. If you want to manage content for that website you can integrate Hugo an get into the world of static site generators.

If you really want to do anything more complex, there is Vue.js.

You can still use s for layout if you want, there is nothing forcing you to use CSS Grid. But if you do learn it, you'll be able to produce more complex layouts with a little less effort.

There is a free course for that: https://cssgrid.io/

I just moved my blog from WordPress to Hugo + Bulma and have been enjoying the journey all along: https://lobotuerto.com

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Debugging is one of the biggest problems with FP I don't see why that's a problem with FP and not just the lack of tooling in most FP languages. Debugging in F# via Visual Studio is a breeze, and OCaml's time travelling debugger looks pretty good.

For F#, is it a debugger designed for F# or just good integration with VS’s .net debugger? If the latter, I should mention that the problem remains even when using C# if your code gets too functional (e.g. getting rid of some LINQ for debuggability is a common trade off).

Indeed there are some quirks in VS 2015 even in C#, like writing a function as a generator isn't as pleasant as it could be. Haven't tried VS 2017 yet. I think we're a little spoiled on .NET though, we've forgotten how bad debugging is in other languages!

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#214
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the actually useful things You're pre-emptively trying to define what's useful for everybody else. That's the only way your premise works. In my equally subjective view, XMLHttpRequest radically altered and improved the useful things you can do with the Web. You can't use a 90s browser for Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, nearly any online productivity software, and dozens of other common activities on the Web toda…

All those things existed before they became web sites, and they aren’t web sites for any particularly good reason today. Email is a good example. GMail is Outlook rewritten in VBA running inside Word. Let me guess... you’re a JS dev and you think “little upvote arrows” are where the real value is?

Gmail is Outlook rewritten in VBA running inside Word, except it works better and doesn't leave you open to a bunch of viruses. I mean did you ever use the Windows client of Outlook? On the one hand your argument makes it seem that you did, but on the other hand you also seem to prefer it to Gmail which makes me distrust the argument completely!

Other than that Email is a good example.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#215
post #64
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern JavaScript is not a very badly designed programming language. It's a good, productive programming language. Most of the quirks can be disabled with a linter, and optionally a lot safety can be brought in with typing (using e.g. TypeScript). On the other hand, many developers don't know much about programming and JavaScript, and therefore tend to have unjustified criticism of the language. JavaScript was a perf…

this is all wrong, sorry. modern js is still js. the fact that linters are _required_ to keep code sane is proof enough. typescript is a different language, i'd wager it doesn't count, even though i agree it's a considerable improvement. au contraire, many developers know exactly what programming in js looks like, especially compared to other languages. i used to think that c++ and boost compilation was crazy. now i…

> python was and still is a good choice - twisted was used to create async services before ajax was a word.

Async was not part of the core language when Node.js was first released. Even today the library ecosystem of Python is fragmented, not everything works asynchronously.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#216
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern JavaScript is not a very badly designed programming language. It's a good, productive programming language. Most of the quirks can be disabled with a linter, and optionally a lot safety can be brought in with typing (using e.g. TypeScript). On the other hand, many developers don't know much about programming and JavaScript, and therefore tend to have unjustified criticism of the language. JavaScript was a perf…

>Modern JavaScript is not a very badly designed programming language. JS fans said the same thing years ago, claimed that it didn't need classes, more extensive core library, or better syntax. Then came ES6, almost a different language, and they magically changed their opinions to match. Apparently all those features they dissed were needed and good. After seeing this kind of switch-a-roo several times I realized tha…

>JS fans said the same thing years ago, claimed that it didn't need classe

Well, I didn't make that argument.

ES6 is not almost a different language. It provided many good features, though.

>JS was and is a horribly designed programming language.

Nope.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML is not inferior it's different. In the late 90s some people said the same about Java and Java applets in particular. The UX of those however often was significantly worse than that of roughly equivalent (but at that time less dynamic) web applications. Apart from the usual benefits like being able to easily link to and consume resources HTML affords you a great deal of flexibility. Desktop UIs for very good reas…

If you are trying to tell me that HTML was purpose built for the task that it does today, then I'm sorry but I do not agree.

Tools can be used beyond the area they were originally intended for and still be useful and appropriate.

Tim Berners-Lee probably didn't have single-page applications in mind when he invented HTML but hyperlinked documents are also inherently more dynamic and application-like than traditional documents. Just think about HyperCard, which is a similar concept HTML and the World Wide Web were inspired by.

So, yes in a way indeed HTML was also built for many of the purposes it's used for today.

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#218
post #26
post #16

Choice quotes: > Directness is best in my experience, so a great photo, memorable illustration, or pitch-perfect sentence does most of the work. Beyond that, fancy implementation has never moved the needle much for my clients. > Last month, I had to install a package manager to install a package manager. ... I sure as hell know about spaghetti workflows and spaghetti toolchains. It feels like we’re there now on the w…

If I want to install Pip, Maven or what-have-you, I'd be using apt.

If I wanted to install pip, I'd install virtualenv. (I'd use apt to install virtualenv, sure, but using apt to install pip will eventually turn out to be a mistake.)

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#219

This is my experience of web development, every time I return to it. I’m really not an expert in web dev, but it _feels_ like web dev has been badly engineered. JavaScript is a very badly designed programming language (yes, even in its modern form), which I think has caused a lot of problems. Many JS developers don’t know much about programming language design, so they can’t see how bad it is, and they make matters w…

What is "PL"? I find it kinda funny that you compare to Python as the way you want webdev to be, since Python and JS are very similar in my mind, aside from minor syntax differences and JS keeping more warts from it's early days, they are very similar environments. I like Python and have been doing some Tensorflow recently, and one thing I've definitely noticed is that Python docs really suck compared to mdn JS docs.…

PL = Programming Language

Re: In web design, everything easy is hard again

#220
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't find JS any worse than Java, PHP or Python. They all have really ugly parts at least in JS they don't slow you down.

I disagree. While Python, for instance, certainly has its quirks, it doesn't have multiple ways of declaring a function, each with their own scope and hoisting gotchas. In Python, self isn't ambiguous the way this is in JavaScript. Python's datatypes are straight forward, unlike JavaScript, where 1 + "1" produces a valid result. In Python, 9999999999999999 is precisely 9999999999999999, however in JavaScript this is…

9999999999999999 > Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER === true

JavaScript numbers are IEEE754 double precision floating point format.

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