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Why can't I write code inside my browser?

tomcritchlow.com

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Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#91

Post by ccmcarey »

DanielKehoe wrote: post #77

The author is right when he says "coding is still too damn hard for beginners." That's because he's been led to believe he needs to install Node to join the "code club." Contemporary professional web development (as practiced by members of "the code club") is madness. We owe it to beginners to show there are easy, practical, sensible ways to get started. He needs to look at tutorials that show how to write code with…

> Contemporary professional web development (as practiced by members of "the code club") is madness

In what way is it madness?

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#92

Post by oefrha »

ccmcarey wrote: post #82
oefrha wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vitriol, if any, comes from eventually having to use products created by programmers without a shred of curiosity, expect everything handed to them, and do the bare minimum to create a semblance of working products. How many times have you used a website/app and it works so bad that you want to hit the programmer who wrote it? Frankly, “why do I need to figure out what PATH means” is shockingly non-curious even a…

Exactly this. It's frustrating reading this article and the author's comments in this thread as it's apparent that they don't want to put the smallest amount of effort into learning something that is by its nature complicated. They don't want to have to google what $PATH does, they want the browser to come with an IDE (and massively ramping up its complexity because why ?) instead of actually downloading an IDE . The…

> The author has weirdly treated the problem of not knowing something as that it is wrong that they need to know it.

Yes, that’s TFA in a nutshell.

The title is deceptively “normal” though, so lots of people are making good faith attempts at answering the question. Except cloud9, code-server or whatever aren’t what TFA asks for, since you still need to understand what’s going on in the server to use them effectively, you’re only offloading storage and computations to a remote machine.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#94

Post by kodoque2 »

zwp wrote: post #85
kodoque2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the case, it is because people were conscious that there was in issue in how computer turned into more and more as an appliance mean to consume information [1] (The C64 had a full programming manual delivered with it, booted directly to an interpreter and even had schematic of the machine reportedly!) and tried to counter it. Even then despite all the amazing ressource available, there is a risk of digital…

The schematic wasn't in the C64 User Guide delivered with the machine, but it was in an additional Commodore publication "Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide". The PRG was essential if you wanted to do anything more than the most basic BASIC contained in the UG. See p.514- for the schematic https://archive.org/details/c64-programmer-ref/page/n513/mod...

Thanks I was not sure if the PRG was delivered with the C64.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#95

Post by DanielKehoe »

antisol wrote: post #36

>Why can't I write code inside my browser? um... because you didn't press ctrl-shift-I? But frankly, if you can't manage to install ruby and think $PATH is somehow complicated or scary, I don't want you writing code. So maybe it's for the best that you haven't discovered the developer tools built into every browser.

$PATH is complicated and scary for most beginners, just as math can be scary for many kids, especially if they don't have a good teacher. Do we say we don't want kids learning math? No, we need to be better teachers. There are so many people with great ambitions and ideas who just need good guidance. Let's help them, not dismiss them.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#96

Post by kichimi »

I try to keep my comments nice on HN but in this case I can't, I've met this kind of person many times now and I just can't hold back.

The author is lazy, and is channeling his energy into complaining rather than learning. He believes he is by default an expert on the 'user friendliness' of programming.

His comments don't really make much sense, and come across as whining that should be ignored.

"People hate command lines - not only do they LOOK scary, they give weird unhelpful error messages and… you have to type everything. Ugh. "

You have to type to write programs. I truly believe that this person has had a conversation with friends about how programs should write themselves by you just telling them vaguely what problem you'd like to solve. And unhelpful error messages? You know what would be an unhelpful error message? 'ls' outputting a commandline tutorial every time I mistype a directory name so that people like this can have his hand held and continue to be intellectually lazy.

I have no patience any more for lazy know it alls in regards to programming.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#97

Post by DanielKehoe »

ccmcarey wrote: post #91
DanielKehoe wrote: post #77

The author is right when he says "coding is still too damn hard for beginners." That's because he's been led to believe he needs to install Node to join the "code club." Contemporary professional web development (as practiced by members of "the code club") is madness. We owe it to beginners to show there are easy, practical, sensible ways to get started. He needs to look at tutorials that show how to write code with…

> Contemporary professional web development (as practiced by members of "the code club") is madness In what way is it madness?

For beginners who've started with HTML, React or Rails is a huge cliff to climb. Yet that is the expectation we've set as professional web developers, when in fact we're often over-engineering our projects. There's no need for build tools in development when we can use module CDNs. There's no need for frameworks in many use cases (unless you need state management but that's not for beginners anyway).

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#98

Post by msh »

malux85 wrote: post #88

If the author has “been playing with the web and code for years” and is still “wtf” on /usr/local/bin in $PATH it shows a lack of discipline and structure in their learning. I see this in many in many of my apprentices - the desire for instant gratification and the lack of experience means they refuse to do anything that doesn’t immediately proceed them closer to their goal. Here’s the thing with programming - you ca…

Immediate gratification does have its purposes.

It helped me a lot as a teenager in the late nineties that I could install borland delphi and very easily have a self contained windows app running without understanding too much, it gave me the confidence to go on and learn the lower level stuff.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#99

Post by dagw »

ccmcarey wrote: post #76
catlifeonmars wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s all about reducing the barrier to entry. Many people find the command line daunting. Why not reduce these barriers to entry? Why require someone to understand $path to start coding in JavaScript?

> Many people find the command line daunting Then they need to get over that if they want to learn to code or use scratch.

Then they need to get over that if they want to learn to code

On the one hand I've been using the CLI for my entire career and and would be lost without it. On the other hand also I have colleagues who learnt to code after Visual Basic/Studio became a thing and work entirely in Visual Studio and manage to deliver top quality work year after year without basically ever having to touch the command line, so it certainly doesn't seem to be necessary.

If you really want to learn to program without learning to use the CLI you probably shouldn't pick and OS who's entire development environment is built around using the CLI.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#100

Post by iso1631 »

csense wrote: post #34

A lot of you guys are hating on the author for not being able to figure out how to install Nodejs. Yet if you're old enough to have gotten started in the time of JavaScript in the late '90s, or QBasic in the early '90s, or systems like the BBC Micro or TRS-80 in earlier decades, you should know what the author's talking about. Everything you need to program is just there . It just works , there's no extra installatio…

I seem to remember Microsoft removing qbasic from normal machines at some point in the 90s, either way it wasn't much use after windows 95 came out.

Visual Basic was essential in th e90s if you wanted to create a gui app, but it was a £500 piece of software you had to buy and install on top of windows.

Now sure, if you installed a standard linux desktop in the 90s you'd have things like gcc, perl etc built in, but you do today.

Nowadays you don't need a compiler for a lot of things, your interpreter is your browser which everyone has, you can just start up your text editor and create a html/js/css page, just like you could on your BBC Micro or Dos 5 machine and start creating a program by copying things out of a magazine. The standard debugging built into firefox and chromium is amazing compared to what you had with QBasic or the Spectrum 48k.

You've also got a realm of information on the internet available on how to start. If you do want to download something like Atom or VSCode it's three clicks away (literally you type "vscode" into ddg, click the first link, then click the deb)

If you want to program something even simpler from entirely in your browser you can pop over to Scratch or Purple Mash and build a game from the browser.

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