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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?

#271
post #219

A constantly cycling proliferation of different languages, frameworks, libraries, etc. that all do the same things in a different way and are most often mutually incompatible with each other and have entirely different ecosystems with their own comparative advantages but also major pitfalls. This causes tech workers’ investment in skills to get more out of shallow knowledge and trivia than on deeper concepts, creates…

I was thinking about the reasons why this happens, and I see two major factors:

1) Tension between abstraction and optimization. To put it shortly, abstraction is about ignoring the details, optimization is about fine-tuning the details; you can't do both at the same time. Which is why different programming languages make different kinds of compromise. You could make a beautiful language or framework with elegant abstractions, then look at the performance and cry. Or optimize for performance, and then cry while reading and debugging the code.

2) Tension between mathematical elegance and the cost of hiring people who are great at math. Some developers care about having the code elegant from mathematical perspective, but the companies optimize for having a product to sell, as cheaply as possible, which involves a lot of cutting corners. A product full of bugs can still make you millions of dollars. And what's the point of having a mathematical proof of correctness of your current code, when the business requirements are going to change tomorrow anyway.

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

#272

I would fund a rigorous study of frontend development with a team of academics who would gather details from a very large sample of organizations about frontend development projects. My theory that I would seek to validate is that the vast majority of frontend work was unnecessary, overly complex, costly, and shouldn't have ever been funded. Chasing new approaches creates new problems. Following FAANG solutions to pr…

Can you give some specific examples of this problem? Frontend developer curious what kind of trends/solutions you mean.

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

#273
post #239
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my calling. I'm the cofounder of Repl.it and I've dedicated my career to solving this problem. Simon -- since you're the cocreator of Django, you might get a kick out of this: From loading up a Django environment to adding and rendering the first view takes less than a minute: https://gifs.amasad.repl.co/django.gif Before starting this company I was a founding engineer on the React Native team where I focused…

How does it compare to Codesandbox?

Focused on simplicity, speed, and generality. They do really well on frontend and client-side execution. Our speciality, on the other hand, is language support and containers/general dev environments.

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

#274

My kingdom for a technology that lets me write an app once and run it acceptably on Android, iOS and in the browser. This probably beats everything else listed in this thread in terms of developer hours saved.

Are you aware of Apache Cordova? I've used it a couple times to deploy simple web apps as Android apps and I have no complaints about the result. Supports iOS also.

https://cordova.apache.org/

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

#275

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.

What kind of alternatives exist to the DOM? Even conceptual ones?

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

#276
post #272

I would fund a rigorous study of frontend development with a team of academics who would gather details from a very large sample of organizations about frontend development projects. My theory that I would seek to validate is that the vast majority of frontend work was unnecessary, overly complex, costly, and shouldn't have ever been funded. Chasing new approaches creates new problems. Following FAANG solutions to pr…

Can you give some specific examples of this problem? Frontend developer curious what kind of trends/solutions you mean.

Here's my take on it from a few months ago:

----

...

Claim: Most sites are mostly static content. For example, AirBNB or Grubhub. Those sites could be way faster than they are now if they were architected differently. Only when you check out do you need anything resembling an “app”. The browsing and searching is better done with a “document” model IMO.

Ditto for YouTube... I think it used to be more a document model, but now it’s more like an app. And it’s gotten a lot slower, which I don’t think is a coincidence. Netflix is a more obvious example – it’s crazy slow.

To address the OP: for Sourcehut/Github, I would say everything except the PR review system could use the document model. Navigating code and adding comments is arguably an app.

On the other hand, there are things that are and should be apps: Google Maps, Docs, Sheets.

edit: Yeah now that I check, YouTube does the infinite scroll thing, which is slow and annoying IMO (e.g. breaks bookmarking). Ditto for AirBNB.

https://lobste.rs/s/jmmr3w/interview_with_drew_devault#c_wuc...

context: https://lobste.rs/s/jmmr3w/interview_with_drew_devault

I haven't used sourcehut much but the UI is going in the right direction IMO. It looks nice and is functional, at 5% of the weight and 20x the speed of similar sites.

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

#277
post #276
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some specific examples of this problem? Frontend developer curious what kind of trends/solutions you mean.

Here's my take on it from a few months ago: ---- ... Claim: Most sites are mostly static content. For example, AirBNB or Grubhub. Those sites could be way faster than they are now if they were architected differently. Only when you check out do you need anything resembling an “app”. The browsing and searching is better done with a “document” model IMO. Ditto for YouTube... I think it used to be more a document model,…

Isn’t Github following the document model? At least, that’s my impression of how the UI works (I.e. none of the consistent UI elements stick around as you navigate)

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

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just post a bond that is forfeited if you engage in verifiable abuse, the proceeds of which are used to compensate the victims (if applicable). Use pseudonymous identity to link any number of site-specific "identities" to that same initial posting. Real-name identity can then be optional (although some sites may still insist on it), but users in good standing are protected from "sybil" attacks because each entirely-n…

Posting bonds might be part of a solution, but there is still a question of who gets to decide whether or not something is abuse (or who is a victim, for that matter). The closest I've seen to this sort of system is OpenBazaar's use of "proof of burn": https://openbazaar.org/blog/why-proof-of-burn/

> but there is still a question of who gets to decide whether or not something is abuse (or who is a victim, for that matter)

In principle, all you need is a trusted arbitrator that's acceptable to all involved parties. This is how "multiple signatures" work on Bitcoin already; the third-party escrow can decide who's going to keep the coins by adding her signature to either party's claim.

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

#279
post #114
post #55

Development environments. The amount of time and hassle I've seen lost to getting a working development environment up and running is incredible. Every time I talk to someone who's learning to program I tell them: "Setting up your development environment will be a nightmare. I have been doing this for twenty years and it's STILL a nightmare for me every time I do it. You are not alone." Docker is reasonably good here…

This is my calling. I'm the cofounder of Repl.it and I've dedicated my career to solving this problem. Simon -- since you're the cocreator of Django, you might get a kick out of this: From loading up a Django environment to adding and rendering the first view takes less than a minute: https://gifs.amasad.repl.co/django.gif Before starting this company I was a founding engineer on the React Native team where I focused…

That gif is a really excellent demo. I'd been mislead by your name - I assumed you were all about Jupyter-style REPL consoles. I didn't realise how much closer you were to Glitch.

I'll take a deeper look.

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

#280

A piece of technology that seems to be missing is a global decentralised anonymous identity and trust framework. It probably requires a leap of engineering comparable to the invention of the blockchain (although I don't think that a blockchain is necessarily the model to follow here, since the data should be encrypted). Every website and app and network service seems to be reinventing the wheel here, and end up creat…

Sounds like urbit.

https://urbit.org/

https://media.urbit.org/whitepaper.pdf

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