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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?

#261

Post by acoma »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #59
js4ever wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you agree to spend 5 to 10 more time and budget to write a software in exchange for the no bugs guarantee? I have thinked a lot about this and my conclusion is that this requirement is foolish when you compare it to the cost/time drawback.

It’s conceivable to have a language or markup where you can specify on more detail what the code should do. This could then be checked automatically. Things are already going in that direction with things like non-nullable but I am pretty sure this could be taken much further.

I imagine an implementation of this is equivalent to writing code and tests with the same level of detail as one might today. Language features put constraints on the solution, but do not reduce the essential complexity of a problem.

Could you elaborate more on what you mean by "could be taken much further"?

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

#262

Post by ronyfadel »

tomc1985 wrote: post #42
ronyfadel wrote: post #20

Decent nocode, or some sort of nocode holy grail. I want to be able to plug APIs together, process user input, have persistence and identity, without writing so much boilerplate.

Ah, the impossible holy grail of businessmen and marketeers everywhere

I’m a developer by trade and I want nocode, albeit thinking as a product guy/entrepreneur. I want to get to market fast, and then possibly iterate with code.

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

#263

Post by tfolbrecht »

k__ wrote: post #240
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using VSCode's remote development extension? In a nutshell: your repo contains a file (or directory) with everything needed to set up a containerized run environment for the project. VSCode adds its own server daemon, and your IDE runs half inside the container, half on the host machine. Once it's set up, everyone on the project (who has vscode) instantly has a one click clean, working development envi…

I thought about creating an AMI for AWS that uses code-server instead of Cloud9.

Theres a great tool by cdr that uses ssh to prepare and launch a VScode environment. Works great in conjunction with AWS ec2 tools like the awscli.

https://github.com/cdr/sshcode

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

#264

Post by l0b0 »

Cross-platform, low latency, FOSS graphics and audio stacks. Basically something combining the best desktop frameworks of the last 30 years, rather than the last six months. Let's have some actual UX rather than 10 different ways of toggling a boolean.

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

#265

Post by Ididntdothis »

acoma wrote: post #261
Ididntdothis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s conceivable to have a language or markup where you can specify on more detail what the code should do. This could then be checked automatically. Things are already going in that direction with things like non-nullable but I am pretty sure this could be taken much further.

I imagine an implementation of this is equivalent to writing code and tests with the same level of detail as one might today. Language features put constraints on the solution, but do not reduce the essential complexity of a problem. Could you elaborate more on what you mean by "could be taken much further"?

I think a language could even more constrain expected behavior so the compiler can catch problems without having to write tests. With tests you have describe the design constraints in two places: the code and the tests. If we could reduce the number of tests and more information into the code it would be a big win. Or a language that can model distributed systems and their interactions. The problem is to still be flexible enough so it will be hard to find the right level. I am pretty sure we will see a lot of development in the next decades. Systems are becoming very complex. If you think an old COBOL codebase is hard to maintain, good luck with a legacy microservice architecture in a few years. And it seems to be getting worse.

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

#266

Post by BubRoss »

petters wrote: post #197
BubRoss wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern lightbulbs don't even turn on in 100ms. I have a hard time believing sub second computer booting is really at the top of anyone's priorities.

I think it is important for embedded, but sure, not for mobile and desktop. App start time being instant is much more important.

TVs and monitors don't even turn on in 100ms

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

#267

Post by ohthehugemanate »

k__ wrote: post #240
ohthehugemanate wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using VSCode's remote development extension? In a nutshell: your repo contains a file (or directory) with everything needed to set up a containerized run environment for the project. VSCode adds its own server daemon, and your IDE runs half inside the container, half on the host machine. Once it's set up, everyone on the project (who has vscode) instantly has a one click clean, working development envi…

I thought about creating an AMI for AWS that uses code-server instead of Cloud9.

right, this is something like what VSCode has built in, except rather than hosting all of VSCode on the remote server, it splits itself into a thin client on your host and a server backend on the remote machine. You can use SSH, or my preference is a local container.

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

#270

Post by l0b0 »

Replace POSIX shell with something reasonable. Anyone trying to bring in a feature or name "because history" is temporarily banned from the working group. Other than that I've no idea how it should be done or what will emerge, but I would hope for it to include words like "exception handling", "test framework", "API", "concurrency" and "asynchronous stream processing" non-ironically.
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