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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?

#601

Post by luord »

Conversely, I wish that the nodejs command line debugger were nicer to use. I can get it working—usually after a lot of crying and wishing I weren't too lazy to try to improve it myself and contribute such improvements—and after I do, it's actually pretty fulfilling to use the clunky, limited capabilities it offers. It could be a lot further ahead, or at least as good as pdb (which isn't precisely the bee's knees, but usually gets the job done), but alas, seems like most developers prefer to use the browser for debugging, so that gets a lot more attention.

Well, I'll keep using it, dragging it along kicking and screaming... until it's deprecated or improved, I guess.

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

#602

Post by Brian_K_White »

kodoque2 wrote: post #228
Brian_K_White wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A lot of you guys are hating on the author for not being able to figure out how to install Nodejs." Nope. That's not what they're criticising. "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.…

How can I easily draw pixel with Bash? Easily inspect and modify the whole memory with it? There should be an "educational" mode on every computer where you can just boot into it.

How can I easily make a tcp connection with basic?

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

#603

Post by moistbar »

user-the-name wrote: post #423
iam-TJ wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to put one of your comments in a different but maybe enlightening context: What I am saying is, as soon as someone new to gardening points out, entirely correctly, that the tools we use are weird, obscure and difficult to use for no apparent reason, gardeners will scream in rage that no, they are not, and by the way, you are stupid for saying it, you clearly have no idea what you are doing and you will never…

Now imagine that gardeners all use chainsaws. They are very proud of how skilled they are at their chainsaw usage. A new person comes in, and asks, why on earth do you all use chainsaws for this? Wouldn't it be easier to use more appropriate tools? And the gardeners immediately call him clueless, make fun of him for not being able to handle a chainsaw, and tell him he will never be a gardener if he can't even figure…

A new person has no grasp on what constitutes a "more appropriate tool." People with zero experience don't get to dictate what tools people who know what they're doing should use.

Can you imagine if a layman walked into a mechanic's shop off the street and started trying to tell the workers there the same thing? Or a bakery?

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

#604

Post by MaxBarraclough »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #555
user-the-name wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We have X11 for this" just means "we can't do this, use a different environment". The point is, we should not HAVE to use a different environment. Images and media should be first-class citizens in a CLI just as much as they are in a GUI. There is nothing about a CLI that says it has to only handle text.

Thank you, you understand my point correctly. It's frustrating that most of the responses think that X11 is a solution to this.

Do you have a specific gripe against X11? Again, it would be very much against the Unix philosophy to roll that highly complex functionality into the core SSH protocol. The problem would still be just as complex and challenging. Implementing a network-transparent GUI always is. You'd lose the separation of concerns, and you'd end up running two GUI systems rather than one.

If you want a very basic GUI over SSH without a full-blown GUI like with X11, you already have the option of using a TUI like Midnight Commander. You can preview images on the command-line, with a tool like imcat. [0]

[0] https://github.com/stolk/imcat

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

#605

Post by rpdillon »

topcat31 wrote: post #16
meekrohprocess wrote: post #5

I'm curious if the author has heard of sites like: * https://repl.it/ * https://jsfiddle.net/ I didn't see anything like that mentioned in the article, but I think that you can easily write code inside your browser today. Also, web browsers are already extremely heavy and complicated. That complexity is convenient for end users, but it also has costs, like making it very difficult and expensive to create a new compet…

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…

I think you're craving a 21st century version of Emacs, where the development environment is baked into the product. I agree it's awesome, and I think the browser comes the closest, but you're right, it's not there yet. I fear the reason is mostly security: browsers are used by billions, but Emacs benefits from relative obscurity.

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

#606

Post by humanrebar »

macspoofing wrote: post #406
humanrebar wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything happens for some reason if we want to be pedantic. I think the point was that some things do not justify their complexity. Especially if you discount inertia. Trivial example: the creat function could have been named create. That's one more thing folks just have to know and the reason for it isn't much better than "just because".

>I think the point was that some things do not justify their complexity. Especially if you discount inertia. Again, can you provide an example? Because like you implied, tools like node.js and npm, were made with a purpose. They are professional tools made for professional programmers to solve commercial problems. They aren't made for beginners and novices to teach them about programming concepts. Their complexities…

It's a trivial example, but a valid one. Those sorts of "it works great as long as you remember..." things are complexity, often unneeded. There are more severe examples of this involving frameworks with assumptions being too hardcoded (or softcoded!) as well.

Some are essential complexity, sure. But many aren't.

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

#607

Post by antisol »

DangitBobby wrote: post #571
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…

This is not an excuse for being a dick.

I know right. The person who posted this article should have hit up a search engine before wasting all of our time. Very dickish behaviour.

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

#608

Post by Izkata »

user-the-name wrote: post #423
iam-TJ wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to put one of your comments in a different but maybe enlightening context: What I am saying is, as soon as someone new to gardening points out, entirely correctly, that the tools we use are weird, obscure and difficult to use for no apparent reason, gardeners will scream in rage that no, they are not, and by the way, you are stupid for saying it, you clearly have no idea what you are doing and you will never…

Now imagine that gardeners all use chainsaws. They are very proud of how skilled they are at their chainsaw usage. A new person comes in, and asks, why on earth do you all use chainsaws for this? Wouldn't it be easier to use more appropriate tools? And the gardeners immediately call him clueless, make fun of him for not being able to handle a chainsaw, and tell him he will never be a gardener if he can't even figure…

I find this a highly amusing example, as gardeners do use chainsaws. Possibly not often, but it is a tool with a purpose that they do use.

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

#609

Post by Izkata »

na85 wrote: post #499
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…

I'm not a software engineer, nor a comp sci grad, nor a professional coder. I've ranted on HN about bad documentation in programming before (Lisp being a notable target of my ire recently), and I'm by no means an expert. But when you have someone who by his own admission can't install node.js, pip, or ruby and yet claims >Because I love building things using code. I mean, someone who "builds things using code" should…

For that matter, I apparently already have ruby installed and I don't know when or why that happened. I don't use the language.

(Ubuntu 18.04, maybe it just came with this distro?)

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

#610

Post by aspyct »

omegote wrote: post #134

The case here is that, if it were up to nowadays frontend developers, it would not be possible to write simple JavaScript code in notepad to quickly run in the browser. The frontend scene has evolved to become an unmanageable monster of cargo-cult programming, unnecessary complexity, infinite scaffoldings and huge node_module folders, and frontend developers are proud of that complexity. They enjoy running npm init a…

Yes you can: . It still works, you know.
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