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

Why must you laugh at my back end?

blog.pud.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 230 posts

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#111

Post by shadowfiend »

zaphar wrote: post #84
pyninja wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using `display: table` is a great way to lay out your elements in a grid while keeping your HTML semantic.

who said tables aren't semantic? Tables say "Hey, I'm going to show you some things with a row column relationship now." Some times table is exactly the semantics you need. It shouldn't be your primary and only tool but if your showing a set of numbers collated and sorted by rows and columns then its pretty much semantically a perfect fit.

I see this argument a lot. You're right, there are situations where tables are semantic. But unless otherwise stated, it's fair to assume that someone who's talking about semantic markup knows that semantic markup includes tables, but simply discourages them for 99% of layout purposes.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#112

Post by FuzzyDunlop »

drblast wrote: post #71
ary wrote: post #51

Cold Fusion? No, no... no . > CFML. I really like programming in CFML (a programming language, “ColdFusion Markup Language,” as opposed to ColdFusion, a commercial CFML interpreter made by Adobe). I know it’s not "cool" like Node.js or Clojure or even RoR. Doctors used to bleed people with leeches to get out the "bad humors". They stopped using that "tool" for a reason. It was a bad tool , and better "tools" came alo…

>These are the kind of people (I kid you not) that think HTML tables are a great way to get your page layout just right. Is there are good replacement for HTML tables yet that works well in all browsers? I'm talking about for things that actually need to be laid out in a grid, which, in my experience, is many things. Grids are fairly fundamental to layout and design.

Tables are for tabular data. You wouldn't use a spreadsheet to design a web page so by the same token a table is just as unsuitable.

CSS support is a lot better and more consistent across browsers now than it was even just a year ago, and there are CSS 'frameworks' that make grid based design a trivial task without cluttering your page with table markup where it's not required.

There are even plenty HTML5 'frameworks' (or templates if you prefer) that take backwards compatibility and such like into account so you don't have to faff about with all that yourself.

http://www.blueprintcss.org/ http://960.gs/ http://html5boilerplate.com/ http://www.initializr.com/ http://codekickoff.com/

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#113

Post by bobstobener »

beernutz wrote: post #96
ary wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand by my comment. A few things to note. > Some people write crappy code in CFML. Yes. But people write crappy code in [your preferred language] too. No, I said CFML code is universally hard to understand. Even more so for people already familiar with more popular languages. > OMG can you believe some people still use TABLES??? view source. That example was given to make a point about dated skill sets. I didn't i…

CFML is NOT universally hard to understand. I have been programming over 25 years, and use/have used all kinds of languages. CFML is just another tool. If you don't like tag based language, you can use pure scripting in CFML pages. Also, nothing in CFML requires or even leads ANYONE to use table based layout. I don't know where you got that idea from. When i first looked at CFML I had distaste for what i saw. The pro…

CFML has great frameworks as well. One of many ... https://github.com/seancorfield/fw1/wiki

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#114

Post by ary »

sfk wrote: post #88
ary wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand by my comment. A few things to note. > Some people write crappy code in CFML. Yes. But people write crappy code in [your preferred language] too. No, I said CFML code is universally hard to understand. Even more so for people already familiar with more popular languages. > OMG can you believe some people still use TABLES??? view source. That example was given to make a point about dated skill sets. I didn't i…

Does anyone here think HN's markup is meant at all to be inspirational? Yes, it's one of the most usable and beautiful sites on Internet.

Markup, not layout.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#116

Post by slowpoke »

olliesaunders wrote: post #107
pyninja wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using `display: table` is a great way to lay out your elements in a grid while keeping your HTML semantic.

No good if you care about IE6 support

Unless you have a boss telling you to support IE6, you don't. People need to stop using this prehistoric excuse for a browser.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#117

Post by [deleted] »

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #112
drblast wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These are the kind of people (I kid you not) that think HTML tables are a great way to get your page layout just right. Is there are good replacement for HTML tables yet that works well in all browsers? I'm talking about for things that actually need to be laid out in a grid, which, in my experience, is many things. Grids are fairly fundamental to layout and design.

Tables are for tabular data. You wouldn't use a spreadsheet to design a web page so by the same token a table is just as unsuitable. CSS support is a lot better and more consistent across browsers now than it was even just a year ago, and there are CSS 'frameworks' that make grid based design a trivial task without cluttering your page with table markup where it's not required. There are even plenty HTML5 'frameworks…

[deleted]

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#118

Post by Pheter »

dgallagher wrote: post #60
PedroCandeias wrote: post #18

I don't hang out with a lot of programmers and I guess this is the reason. This "laughing" the op alludes to. This endless discussion of what language or back end is the best. I find it impossible to talk about programming with people who would rather indoctrinate me on the benefits of their chosen language than talk about, say, data structures. It's like arguing about what colour is the best. It's pointless. So big…

It's like arguing about what colour is the best. It's pointless. I have a theory that people act this way because of evolution. -------------------- Imagine you live in a tribe of 10 people, and there are 5 different ways the entire tribe can use to hunt animals for food. All 10 people must hunt together, and each of the 5 ways are equally successful. After an animal is killed, the tribe determines who was most respo…

I don't see how evolution has anything to do with your theory.

Furthermore I doubt that the motivation behind arguing about 'pointless' topics is to sway the population to your side so that you can benefit.

Unfortunately, however, I do not have an explanation as to why people may argue over such topics though I suspect that it may be related/due to cognitive dissonance. There is a conflict between what they have concluded and what someone else has concluded. This could be for many different reasons such as different needs, different preferences, or different skills, but on the surface someone else has made a different choice for what seems like a similar task.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#119

Post by radagaisus »

wynand wrote: post #15
nhashem wrote: post #9

This is great. Seriously. I cut my teeth in the early 2000s writing the type of PHP code that would make your eyes bleed. Global variables everywhere. HTML/PHP/MySQL in the same file. Career-wise I ended up going down a backend/database developer path, so if I do anything with consumer-facing web applications, it's on my free time. I'm working on such an app now, and right now the fastest way I can get anything done…

I have respect for people that can deliver, regardless of what they use. The allure of cool tech is strong but tech doesn't make products: people do. I cannot see what is wrong with your using plain PHP if you can get the job done faster (as long as you avoid things that make exploits easy, such as raw mysql db functions). When the time for a framework comes, you'll know. Stop worrying about what others think and goo…

here's how I learned Python without noticing it:

(I had a background in PHP, JS, C++) 1. Off hours on 2-3 days with dive into python 3. 2. A month later - 'oh let's do this in python!' on google code jam 3. 'python challenge? that's cool' - one night hackathon a month later 4. 'I hate php, I'll do this new web app in django' 5. Two days messing with django 6. Five days and the app was done.

I don't know if I write 'best practice' python or django but it's about x6 less code than in PHP. I can rewrite my app completely in 2 days.

For me, the biggest problem in learning a new technology is finding the balance between cowboy hacking & analysis paralysis.

Re: Why must you laugh at my back end?

#120

Post by gaius »

wynand wrote: post #15
nhashem wrote: post #9

This is great. Seriously. I cut my teeth in the early 2000s writing the type of PHP code that would make your eyes bleed. Global variables everywhere. HTML/PHP/MySQL in the same file. Career-wise I ended up going down a backend/database developer path, so if I do anything with consumer-facing web applications, it's on my free time. I'm working on such an app now, and right now the fastest way I can get anything done…

I have respect for people that can deliver, regardless of what they use. The allure of cool tech is strong but tech doesn't make products: people do. I cannot see what is wrong with your using plain PHP if you can get the job done faster (as long as you avoid things that make exploits easy, such as raw mysql db functions). When the time for a framework comes, you'll know. Stop worrying about what others think and goo…

Delivering version 1 is very different from delivering version 2, 3 4... That's when the real test of engineering is.
Post reply on HN