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Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#181

Post by dfabulich »

azemetre wrote: post #152
dfabulich wrote: post #90

We need a faster web framework that generates HTML on mobile phones with no JS on the main thread. The web is the "single top-priority" software platform, but it's in big, big trouble. On mobile, users spend less than 7% of their time on the web. https://vimeo.com/364402896 All of the rest of their time is in native apps, where big corporations decide what you are and aren't allowed to do. As a result, the money is g…

How do you feel about JS frameworks like NextJS [1], Razzle [2], and Gatsby [3]? They try to reduce the bundle and first times to paint and interactions. [1] https://nextjs.org/ [2] https://github.com/jaredpalmer/razzle [3] https://www.gatsbyjs.org/

I'm not very familiar with Razzle, but Next and Gatsby are examples of what I was referring to in the last paragraph, SPA frameworks that have a PWA mode.

https://github.com/zeit/next.js/issues/5054

Gatsby has a no-JS plugin https://www.gatsbyjs.org/packages/gatsby-plugin-no-javascrip... but that also disables the PWA. The Gatsby team doesn't seem to be interested in no-JS mode. https://www.gatsbyjs.org/blog/2020-01-30-why-gatsby-is-bette...

https://twitter.com/kylemathews/status/1225541855925985280

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#182

Post by cs02rm0 »

markbnj wrote: post #140
cs02rm0 wrote: post #12

I seem to spend far more time on the deployment of code than I ever used to, more time writing CloudFormation and ansible than the Java backend, python lambdas and static UI that it deploys. That seems nuts to me. I'm not sure how you fix it without being Amazon/Google. People moan about Terraform too before that gets mentioned.

> I seem to spend far more time on the deployment of code than I ever used to, more time writing CloudFormation and ansible than the Java backend, python lambdas and static UI that it deploys. I'd really like to understand more about what the pain points are here. In contrast to your experience I spend almost no time deploying code. We commit, tests run, we click a button and the deployment is updated in our kubernet…

Part of it is perhaps that I mostly do consultancy work. So rather than a product a company lives and breathes through the success of, they're usually costs that just need to be done sufficiently, quickly and then left to run themselves. 2 months is an awful lot if the project only runs for up to 6 months.

The last project I worked on was deployed to two different environments (double the headache in itself). One side required AWS CloudFormation (requirement imposed on us for that side to be serverless) which we were new to, so we brought in three different specialists one after another. None of whom could really help other than to tell us it was messy and confirm that we were on the right track.

There was a time when I'd just drop a jar and an init script on a linux box for an MVP, now I'm looking up what the yaml should be for sticking a lambda in a VPC, or adding security groups to EC2 instances or whitelisting CloudFront access IP addresses. And redeploys involving CloudFront are slooow. I think that project must have used a dozen AWS services and a few thousand lines of CloudFormation - for deploying perhaps half that many lines of code.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#183

Post by jasondclinton »

dfabulich wrote: post #90

We need a faster web framework that generates HTML on mobile phones with no JS on the main thread. The web is the "single top-priority" software platform, but it's in big, big trouble. On mobile, users spend less than 7% of their time on the web. https://vimeo.com/364402896 All of the rest of their time is in native apps, where big corporations decide what you are and aren't allowed to do. As a result, the money is g…

You're right to raise apps as a threat to the open web. And about performance being a factor (WASM could help there).

However, the real reason that the ad money (and engineering effort) is going to apps is that app platforms do not protect privacy at the same level that the open web does. There's so much more tracking available on mobile platforms than there is on the open web.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#184

Post by nicoburns »

dfabulich wrote: post #90

We need a faster web framework that generates HTML on mobile phones with no JS on the main thread. The web is the "single top-priority" software platform, but it's in big, big trouble. On mobile, users spend less than 7% of their time on the web. https://vimeo.com/364402896 All of the rest of their time is in native apps, where big corporations decide what you are and aren't allowed to do. As a result, the money is g…

JS isn't the bottleneck, the DOM is. A new framework isn't going to solve that.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#185

Post by andy9775 »

dfabulich wrote: post #90

We need a faster web framework that generates HTML on mobile phones with no JS on the main thread. The web is the "single top-priority" software platform, but it's in big, big trouble. On mobile, users spend less than 7% of their time on the web. https://vimeo.com/364402896 All of the rest of their time is in native apps, where big corporations decide what you are and aren't allowed to do. As a result, the money is g…

Svelte comes close, stencil.js looks to have a focus on PWA's. I've played a bit with svelte and want to try stencil

My one issue with PWA's is iOS doesn't support all the features.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#186

Post by petters »

dahart wrote: post #129
petters wrote: post #10

A computer and OS that boots in 100ms. Every user action gives a response in 10ms.

My newest laptop is closer to that than any computer I’ve ever had since 1984. Mostly because of SSDs I guess, but Windows boots in a few seconds. Usually takes longer to shutdown than to boot. 10ms response is a bit on the fast side. Aside from pros doing sports or music, we (humans) don’t register most kinds responses that fast. Plus a 60hz display is 16ms anyway. These days browsers, editors, and OSes really do us…

100ms is too slow for e.g. a pen on a touch screen. The ink will lag behind the pen.

But for worst case in general, not bad.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#187

Post by mch82 »

repsilat wrote: post #121
oli5679 wrote: post #49

Open source implementation of Microsoft Excel, which lets you write macros using Python and has the plotting, scheduling and report sharing functionality of Tableau.

> which lets you write macros using Python Someone upthread said "nocode", and I think that's more on the money. Most people will never be "programmers" as we understand the term, but they could still benefit from a narrowing of the gap between what Excel can do and what (say) Python can. An old hobby project of mine[1] had a go at this by letting spreadsheet users write functions in the spreadsheet itself, in exactl…

I was working with people in finance & they found it difficult to follow the flow through VBA. I used Blockly to model the code & they were instantly able to provide me with feedback. It was pretty cool!

Not sure if Blockly is “no code”, but it can be more intuitive.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#188

Post by hoten »

bordercases wrote: post #150
dfabulich wrote: post #90

We need a faster web framework that generates HTML on mobile phones with no JS on the main thread. The web is the "single top-priority" software platform, but it's in big, big trouble. On mobile, users spend less than 7% of their time on the web. https://vimeo.com/364402896 All of the rest of their time is in native apps, where big corporations decide what you are and aren't allowed to do. As a result, the money is g…

Why HTML whatsoever?

Because browsers. And because HTML isn't the issue, it's main thread JS.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#189

Post by petters »

detaro wrote: post #102
cweagans wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely not near the top of my list when I think of things that get in my way on a day-to-day basis, but I'm genuinely curious about how/why it is for you. I can't remember the last time I waited for my computer to start from a cold boot (updates apply in the middle of the night and the reboot happens then). It wakes up from sleep quick enough for me, and pretty much anything I click on or type responds fa…

This probably isn't quite what the commenter had in mind, but boot time matters a lot for embedded devices. It's quite possible the "Linux box" you cold boot the most is the center console of your car.

I think you make a great point. I agree that waiting for my computer to boot is a non-issue today. (Other latency certainly isn't)

But my Chromecast takes a very long time to start, modern TVs, Blurays, mobile apps etc.

Re: Ask HN: What is the single top-priority software engineering problem?

#190

Post by pesfandiar »

fmjrey wrote: post #70

What matters most is what you want to still be there when the power goes off: data. No amount of processing power matters if you don't have the data. Everyone in the industry focuses too much on the processing side: objects, functions, containers, VMs, k8s, etc. but nobody really gives proper attention to data, its provenance, where it stays and where it goes, etc. I'm not saying engineers don't think about these thi…

The problems around data are in general harder to address than the processing part. Most people dabbling in software engineering don't have the skills or attention span to work on those, and most of the issues are already solved by extremely complicated systems (e.g. DBs, Apache projects, ...).

As for 12 factor principles, it was first touted by a PaaS provider. The whole idea is that they take care of the nitty gritty, while you can focus on the exciting (and technically easier) parts of software systems.

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