Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advice to Young Web Developers

tumblr.beesbuzz.biz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 328 posts

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#311

Post by ehutch79 »

freehunter wrote: post #310
ehutch79 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PHP wasn't good, fine maybe, though I understand it's better now. it was kind of slow, and all the functions were inconsistent, and had a lot of foot-guns. It was easier to write more robust code and model-view-controller code in other languages. (not that it was impossible in php)

It’s hard to make the claim that PHP is a bad language and also claim that very similar complaints don’t also apply to Javascript. They’re both languages defined by their popularity in spite of how poor the language actually is.

javascript is a dumpster fire.

unfortunately it's the only actually viable language in the browser.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#312

Post by stevenwliao »

laurentdc wrote: post #27
CM30 wrote: post #18

Seems like a list of every web development ideal that gets upvoted on Hacker News. Still, I think the list can pretty much condensed down to one point: Use whatever technology is appropriate for this site or web app. Because a lot of developers seem to have a 'when all you have is a hammer' attitude towards web development. They learn React/Vue/Angular/whatever, then seemingly decide everything they will ever build w…

I can't count the times I've started to write some basic internal tool with React only to rm -rf everything 1 hour later and replace it with 20 lines of jQuery/vanilla js

How did you handle XSS?

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#314

Post by Shared404 »

mikorym wrote: post #300
non-entity wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing pisses me off like getting a message that some website only supports Chrome in 2020

This is completely irrelevant, but I get pissed off even when websites don't support Lynx.

Not entirely irrelevant, the thread is about browser support.

Also, I agree. I have a laptop with about 256 mb of working ram, so I only use terminal apps with it. If I'm trying to look up documentation and the site doesn't work with lynx it is not a happy day.

And that doesn't even touch on servers.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#315

Post by NateEag »

collyw wrote: post #281
NateEag wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have grokked Lisp, everything else feels weak by comparison, as I understand it. Mostly the appeal is how easy it is to extend the syntax (because there is barely any syntax at all). Disclaimer: I have written a good hunk of Emacs Lisp and also written Scheme professionally, but I have yet to grok macros.

Never used Lisp, but this sounds like a case of offering you loads of cool stuff when writing new code, which in turn will make debugging the code an absolute nightmare. This is based on my experience with mixed metaphor languages like Python. You can do some clever stuff like generating functions dynamically and passing them around, but when you need to debug these bits of code they can be a nightmare. Does Lisp imp…

I believe that macros can increase the complexity of debugging.

However, I believe they're much more debuggable than dynamically-generated functions in most languages. There's another layer of translation from your baseline code, but due to the nature of macros, you can usually just step right into them and see the expanded, generated macro code, if my rusty memories of debugging elisp are correct.

Here's one person reading about Common Lisp's debugging infrastructure, FWIW.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#316

Post by arvinsim »

mroche wrote: post #5

> Browsers change. Relying on browser-specific behavior means you’re relying on that one browser at that one point in time. Code to the standard, and test everywhere. I wish this was listed at the top of the list, in the middle, and at the end. It’s super annoying when a site or application isn’t “supported” because it wasn’t tested in a separate browser (i.e. non-Chrome browsers). I know it’s not always easy with a…

Testing for all browsers is untenable unless you are. a big company.

Companies also frequently skip testing in favor for faster release times.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#317

Post by andai »

onli wrote: post #259
andai wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried it again last week. Still slow, I'm afraid, despite Mozilla literally inventing a new kind of programming language to speed it up! A lot of it has to do with design, though. ie. when opening a new window, Chrome draws the window instantly and then fills in the UI, while Firefox waits until the window is completely built to display it. Even though they become usable at roughly the same time, Chrome responds inst…

Every new windows FF can open opens immediately on my system. What kind of window are you opening there?

Ctrl+N. New browser window. This is true across computers and across operating systems.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#318

Post by onli »

andai wrote: post #317
onli wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every new windows FF can open opens immediately on my system. What kind of window are you opening there?

Ctrl+N. New browser window. This is true across computers and across operating systems.

Definitely not true on my system. There is a flash of some reorganization of the windows content that Chromium does not do, but both windows open instantly.

And also: Come on, that wouldn't make a browser slow. Users open new windows once when starting the browser. The rest is about how fast they render pages, react to JS workloads, and maybe how fast they open tabs. FF is more than on par in all of this.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#319

Post by pull_my_finger »

> Use polyfills to support browsers that don’t yet support the standard you’re using.

Unless your target users can't switch their browser (it happens), I tend to feel this is slowing new browser adoption. Developers keep coddling users by making sure everything works, and users have no reason to upgrade. Make their obsolete browser function like an obsolete browser and they might just update.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#320

Post by mikorym »

Shared404 wrote: post #314
mikorym wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely irrelevant, but I get pissed off even when websites don't support Lynx.

Not entirely irrelevant, the thread is about browser support. Also, I agree. I have a laptop with about 256 mb of working ram, so I only use terminal apps with it. If I'm trying to look up documentation and the site doesn't work with lynx it is not a happy day. And that doesn't even touch on servers.

Looks like we are silent friends. The one thing I often get is just a message "JavaScript is not supported" and the other is wacky and long indices at the top. But, just having mywebsite.com/txt would not be a crazy idea...
Post reply on HN