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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?

#561

Post by thangalin »

aaomidi wrote: post #507
kichimi wrote: post #96

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…

You probably should've held back. This is the exact type of behavior thats unwelcoming in this industry. You don't have to type to write programs. Many people don't. It's why applications that do visual programming have opened the way for AMAZING bursts of creativity. Everyone should be able to communicate with a computer. The more people that are the more likely it is were going to make fascinating things. Your elit…

Bret Victor's, "The Future of Programming" is illuminating. He walks through what "programming" means and how the concept of "programming" has shifted in little evolutionary leaps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=167&v=8pTEmbeENF4

"There can be a lot of resistance to new ways of working that require you to unlearn what you've already learned and think in new ways. ... And there can even be outright hostility."

Programming Baduk used to involve expert systems. Now convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can hoist a computer to superhuman performance, even doing so without pre-programmed rules (see MuZero). We no longer "program" computers to play Go, chess, shogi, or even Atari games.

Some people have difficulty keeping code structures in their mind's eye. Here's a conceptual development environment for navigating code visually, ending with a dual text editor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3QqjhzhnAw

Is that programming?

What's the difference between _typing_ instructions into a computer to place a graphical user interface widget on a screen and _telling_ the computer you'd like to put a toroid on the screen? Computers can use CNNs to fill in knowledge gaps. Even though the computer wasn't told the colour, size, shading, material, or location of the toroid, it can still show us the ring.

Is telling a holodeck that you'd like to replay a scene from a novel a form of programming?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7dfsLfWJvc

Each evolutionary step in programming has given us more powerful ways to express ideas in ever terser forms. Few people code in binary anymore. Did Picard need to tell the computer where to put every chair, table, glass, and machine gun?

What is programming?

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

#562

Post by kaoD »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #545
kaoD wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was there in the past and the tools are really not comparable. I just inserted a floppy disk and did A: then TP.EXE (which was just as arcane as knowing $PATH) but do I really want to work on Turbo Pascal in MS-DOS? Of course complexity skyrocketed! That's not a counterexample because beginners have contemporary expectations. There are simpler alternatives that just work. Why do beginners want to use Node.js locall…

> I was there in the past and the tools are really not comparable. I just inserted a floppy disk and did D: then TP.EXE but do I really want to work on Turbo Pascal in MS-DOS? Of course complexity skyrocketed! Did it do so for reasons that are still relevant today, is the question. > That's not a counterexample because beginners have contemporary expectations. Alright I'll present a counterexample: Lazarus. You downl…

I see what you mean. Lazarus look great, I might try teaching it to a friend!

EDIT: Any good small-ish project in GitHub to get a feel for the language?

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

#563

Post by malux85 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #460
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…

While I'm not a low code fan, I would say please don't read Learn Python the Hard Way. https://sopython.com/wiki/LPTHW_Complaints

Rather than just criticise, can you please suggest a better alternative?

I am always looking for better tools and tutorials for the people I mentor, but LPTHW has been great, I have mentored 15 or so people so far from no coding to starting and running their own companies, and I have yet to find something better.

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

#564

Post by kllrnohj »

brundolf wrote: post #559

Lots of commenters here are failing to see past the snarky (in my opinion, tongue-in-cheek) tone and missing the greater point, which isn't a fundamentally new idea, but is always worth revisiting for discussion: How can we remove as much yak-shaving as possible, so that a person who can understand logic can use it to make computers do things without first learning a bunch of esoteric knowledge required to get the ba…

Counter-argument here is that what the author wants already widely exists. There's a ton of one-stop "install this app & start coding!" apps out there. Someone wants one of those for node.js, sure, knock yourself out, go for it. It'd be just one of a dozen such apps, not a new concept, and not unexplored territory.

But the authors request that this is built into the browser seems insane to me. Why would we bloat browsers with unnecessary stuff just to avoid hitting an app store, which is also extremely user-friendly? It's literally a request for bundled bloatware. No, hell no.

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

#565

Post by bitwize »

I dunno, mate. Why can't I open Jira tickets, access corporate apps and resources, monitor builds and deploys and app health, all from my code editor (Emacs)? Because I'd rather do that.

Although, his idea almost came to pass: Back in the day, the W3C's reference browser, Amaya, had a built-in HTML and CSS editor allowing for in-place editing of any content the browser could view. You could only save back if you had upload credentials, but still. With continued development, Amaya would have probably grown a JavaScript editor as well.

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

#566

Post by bambax »

potta_coffee wrote: post #500
bambax wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not just lazy, he lacks some basic understanding: > Here’s my pitch: build a browser that comes pre-installed with node.js Okay, you don't have to know anything about JS or V8 or Node to live a normal life; most people don't and they're fine. But if you're going to complain that you can't "code in the browser" you should try to understand what you're talking about a little more. This sounds like an elaborate pra…

That one statement makes me almost convinced that this is satire.

Yes it very well could be.

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

#567

Post by moistbar »

I think the most infuriating thing to me about this article is that the author doesn't understand the existing tools well enough to have any idea why we need new ones, and instead decided to complain on his blog about how programming is too hard.

ANYTHING is hard when you first start out. Try making a table out of wood, or doing origami, or playing an instrument for the first time, and unless you're some bizarre savant you're going to effing SUCK at it. Learn why things are the way they are, or in this case learn the way things are in the first place, and your results will improve.

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

#568

Post by sidlls »

potta_coffee wrote: post #516
sidlls wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s because they forgot to vet their dependencies. I think it’s because there’s a culture of “just get it done” that fosters short cuts, and it’s coupled closely with a culture of worship around open source as if it should be implicitly trusted. The result has been a massive proliferation of perpetually-junior engineers writing code and rising in ranks to run things.

The worst kind of toxicity is when your senior engineers and team leads are actually junior engineers.

It’s hard to be too hard on them though: they never had proper mentorship as junior engineers and their practices are reinforced by modern practices.

There is a worse toxicity in my opinion: when engineers at all levels religiously adhere to fads or practices just because others do (see: OO, TDD, etc.)

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

#569

Post by wizzwizz4 »

gjvc wrote: post #211
_y5hn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already put entire desktop environments in some two decades ago. It never took off.

With good reasons at the time -- browsers were slow and heavy. Now we have (among others) the V8 Javascript engine and insanely fast client computers (all of any recent desktop, laptop, and mobile device)

Browsers are slower and heavier than they ever were. V8… you could argue it's faster, if you neglect warm-up time, but even it is heavier.

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

#570

Post by brundolf »

kllrnohj wrote: post #564
brundolf wrote: post #559

Lots of commenters here are failing to see past the snarky (in my opinion, tongue-in-cheek) tone and missing the greater point, which isn't a fundamentally new idea, but is always worth revisiting for discussion: How can we remove as much yak-shaving as possible, so that a person who can understand logic can use it to make computers do things without first learning a bunch of esoteric knowledge required to get the ba…

Counter-argument here is that what the author wants already widely exists. There's a ton of one-stop "install this app & start coding!" apps out there. Someone wants one of those for node.js, sure, knock yourself out, go for it. It'd be just one of a dozen such apps, not a new concept, and not unexplored territory. But the authors request that this is built into the browser seems insane to me. Why would we bloat brow…

A big part of why BASIC took off with "non-programmers" (for a while) is that it was bundled on every DOS/Windows install. The same is true of Excel: people already have it and are using it, so they just organically start learning the more advanced things you can do with it, and before long they're basically programming.

We aren't talking about people who make a concerted decision to "go find and install a tool for programming", and who just don't want to put in the effort to learn the "real tools". We're talking about people who would never think of themselves as programmers in the first place. I think you underestimate the significance of the small barriers, even ones as small as a search-and-install step.

I do think it would be silly to drop Node into Chrome wholesale, since the bulk of Node is V8, which is the JS engine Chrome already includes. But what about a version of the JS console that's designed to be exposed to everyday users, for interaction with the sites they use every day? What about a button on the New Tab screen for opening an interactive web dev space similar to CodePen, which can trivially save the resulting files to the local file system (and load projects from there)? They could re-use most of the GUI components from the existing Sources tab in the dev tools. What if it included a preconfigured (simplified) reactive front-end framework so people could get started making custom GUIs? Something like this: https://mavo.io/

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