161–170 of 624 posts
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But why stop there? Let’s bundle something like Excel or Powerpoint, or Photoshop or Final Cut. If we’re deciding to bundle additional software with a browser, why would a programming environment (chosen based on someone’s favorite language) be top priority?
Because installing Excel is simple already
I am fascinated by the continued prevalence of excel in many industries. It feels as if some modern scripting language should be able to replace some aspects of the spreadsheet and work much better.
This is huge. Can you name any other programming language that automatically saves database + code in a single file?
Think about how many files you have to share if you use a script + database. At least 2 files. And then you have to zip it and the recipient has to unzip it. (cluttering your downloads folder)
However, at a certain point you have to make the jump and install/configure a database, even if it's just SQLite.
I agree with a lot of the commenters here that eventually you'll need to learn the arcane things! But I think there's something to be said for being able to just get started writing code and having it run. I did a lot of my early programming on a TI-83 in math class in high school while pretending to pay attention to my teacher. I didn't have to configure it, or do much other than learn the programming language I was writing code in. Later, in college, my intro-level classes were in purpose-built educational IDEs like DrScheme, where I once again just typed my code into the textbox and then ran it from the same UI. I probably would've grit my teeth and pushed through learning all the extra stuff anyway if confronted with an emulator, a shell, and figuring out what `$PATH` refers to, because I was pretty into computers and had high mental pain tolerance. But I can't say it would've been a better onboarding experience, and eventually, I learned all of that stuff anyway -- so why put people off with it at the beginning? Let them do the fun stuff first, then teach them how to do it "for real." In a lot of cases, the not-"for real" version might even be enough to suit their needs.
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…
How is your comment different from his post? Why I am questioning you is that You cannot call the author lazy. Just because one post gives you that opinion, doesn't mean he is a lazy person. The author gave a fresh opinion about web browsers and shared it with everyone. appreciate that. Problem - Browsers dont allow us to write code/ Solution - create browser extension / use console. Thinkers talk, doers do.
>The author gave a fresh opinion about web browsers and shared it with everyone. appreciate that.
The author gave a stale opinion that can be answered by typing his post title into google and hitting enter.
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Because installing Excel is simple already
Install excel and nodejs. Then evaluate which was easier. I suspect node will win by a wide margin.
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Mentioned Glitch and Replit in the article - they're great and I love them but there's still something missing about relying on these platforms imho. I think cementing a default coding environment right into the browser would make it a lot more accessible - and actually be much closer to real coding where you're manipulating files and running code. Plus: glitch/replit are quite slow to do any real coding inside of vs…
If you open the dev tools in your browser there's a full sandbox environment right there, not to mention the load of other sites available. I don't see why specifically Node should be installed.
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/usr/local/bin has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with programming. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. It is completely superfluous knowledge. It is only required because, as the author correctly points out, the tools we use are BAD. They are absolutely fucking AWFUL. /usr/local/bin is an implementation detail from an OS nobody has used for decades. It's still here because we refuse to fix these ridiculous things. Nobody sho…
> /usr/local/bin is an implementation detail from an OS nobody has used for decades. Are you taking the piss? Should we also remove SOCKET's because they were introduced in that same OS? It should be noted that _EVERY_ modern operating system implements a "path" system, even the ones that are very divergent.
Even in normal Life, when identifying people or things, we have concepts of this everywhere. How can people see that as pointless?
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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).
> For beginners who've started with HTML, React or Rails is a huge cliff to climb These are highly orthogonal concerns. html is markup, React and Rails are client/server side ways of generating that markup. > Yet that is the expectation we've set as professional web developers This is so weird to read. Like yes, obviously it's an expectation that you need to know a way of generating html if you want to have any more…
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The command line is a layer of abstraction that could be made unnecessary for programming. You could program in Turbo Pascal without a command line in the 90s
What would be the layer below it? It's certainly not GUIs, which are a significantly more complex layer of abstraction.
But as they mention, it can be hard to install ruby/python. Node is normally much easier. I've given up on getting react native going on my personal laptop, and I do react for a loving.