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Is the madness ever going to end?

unixsheikh.com

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Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#111

Post by meetups323 »

SahAssar wrote: post #109
meetups323 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. When I saw the tired "Electron = bad" rant I immediately went to look for a tab entitled "Projects" to see if the author had created a native desktop app with "value"[1] equal to or greater than what a good Electron app provides (Slack, Spotify, Discord, VS Code). But lo and behold, no such tab. [1]: [Electron apps] constantly crash and has no value over a native desktop application what so ever

> Slack, Spotify, Discord All those examples could or do work just as well as web apps, right? I don't think that's the authors message, but I'd rather have those type of apps be web-based instead of electron-based or native.

They are web apps... open.spotify.com, discord.com, app.slack.com. Even vscode.dev. The desktop product is just a repackaging of the web app with perhaps more OS integrations. If you don't want the OS integrations, use the web app. Some are available as a PWA too, which provides a nice middle ground.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#112

Post by switchbak »

323 wrote: post #89

This article reminds me of when assembly programmers were ranting how stupid it is to use the bloated C language to create apps when assembly is perfectly fine for that, and how it's all driven by lazy programmers who don't want to learn how to write efficient code.

Very true. Though early C compilers were pretty crap, and old machines unbearably slow. It's easy to look back from a modern context, but in the early days those arguments had some merit (at least at first).

I find it important to keep that in mind when arguing against shiny/heavy/silly new tech in the present! Things like virtual machines, blockchain, new lang's, etc. In the era of the mainframe, 'microcomputers' were jokes, until they definitely weren't.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#114

Post by stillkicking »

tuatoru wrote: post #87
com2kid wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile, the shitty tech is winning. According to this author, bad code and bad tools and bad frameworks are reigning supreme over real engineering. Why? The funny thing is, 20 years ago the same arguments were being made. "Windows MFC is a nightmare to write against!" "X11 is terrible, why are we using it?" "Everything we write is built on so many abstractions developers don't know what they are doing." "VB6 is…

All of them are still true, except for the last one (for nearly all use cases).

Java got its slow reputation mainly because any early encounter with a Java applet would proudly display the Java logo and then cause your computer and disk to thrash for 30 seconds.

Then Java developers heard this, confused it for "Java executes slowly" and so they never fixed it, until Java applets just became obsolete.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#115

Post by cryptica »

I fully relate with this article. Especially this point:

> Why in the world has this idiotic trend of abstracting everything away by layers upon layers of complexity gained such a strong foothold in the industry? Has everyone except the "unix greybeards" gone mad!?

The complexity adds brittleness and security vulnerabilities to software. Essentially every popular tool these days is over-complicated. Also, the fact that the industry has evolved into some kind of monolithic hivemind has had the effect of forcing everyone into these brittle, over-complicated technologies and has censored much of the nuanced dialog around software design in favor of blunt dogma.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#116

Post by bavila »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #91

> The entry barrier to programming needs to high! Programming is engineering, it's not something where you throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks and just assume that programming languages, browsers and operating systems are made of magical dust. Reading this, made me wish the entry barrier to writing was higher. I mean you should definitely have a copy editor and proof reader to make sure you are not leaving ou…

I'm not normally one to fuss much over typos, but I similarly found it hard to take the author seriously when he makes a typo in the very same sentence that he attempts to extol the superior intelligence of IT professionals of yore.

> In the past IT people, whether we're talking about programmers or something else, where very clever people.

If you're going to talk down to people and insult their intelligence, please at least have the good sense to spell "were" correctly.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#117

Post by strken »

petepete wrote: post #106
meetups323 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually they are websites. That's kinda the whole point... Spotify's desktop app is the same as open.spotify.com, Discord's is the same as discord.com, VS Code's is the same as vscode.dev, Slack is the same as.. something. But yeah, instead of those companies all needing 5 separate engineering teams (Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and you're joking if you think they'll make a Linux native app), they just make a web…

I think it's a huge pity that we're so reliant on platforms instead of protocols - there would be native Slack clients for every platform. Few companies even allow proper API access. Spotify buck the trend, Spot is a fantastic app https://github.com/xou816/spot

Even Spotify don't make it easy. The librespot library is a rewrite of libspot, which Spotify deprecated.

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#118

Post by afarrell »

hnuser847 wrote: post #104
afarrell wrote: post #17

> Programming is engineering Is it? Genuine question that I've been asking myself for the past several years: In what senses is software engineering actually an engineering discipline? If you make a project trade-off for the sake of code maintainability, is that based on empirically tested knowledge or following a design pattern guided by an artisan's intuition about how code will be interpreted?

I truly think it's more craft than engineering, and even that's somewhat generous. It's mostly guesswork, hacks, inter-team politics, and trend chasing. Imagine an engineering team designing a toaster. They have real constraints to consider, like physically fitting all of the components inside a single package and selecting materials that won't melt during operation. They have to ensure that product won't injure the…

Right. Software is more like a form of artistic/literary expression.

We can fight this and find ourselves confused and frustrated.

Or we can embrace this and start adopting the techniques of the worlds of art and literature.

* Design Crits as an available alternative to doing code reviews solo -- https://digitalblog.coop.co.uk/2018/03/28/how-to-run-a-desig...

* Embrace writing first drafts and then revising them -- https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1363503835390558208

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#119

Post by slothtrop »

Pxtl wrote: post #99
meetups323 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually they are websites. That's kinda the whole point... Spotify's desktop app is the same as open.spotify.com, Discord's is the same as discord.com, VS Code's is the same as vscode.dev, Slack is the same as.. something. But yeah, instead of those companies all needing 5 separate engineering teams (Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and you're joking if you think they'll make a Linux native app), they just make a web…

I'm kinda hopeful that Maui+Blazor will eventually let us have our cake and eat it too - instead of "everything is web", do "everything is a desktop-style gui framework" including the web. Although AFAIK they don't even have a web renderer on the horizon right now - purely desktop+mobile. Of course, there will be angry PMs and designers that will be upset that their website looks like it was spat out of a desktop GUI…

Should it not be possible to style a native GUI application with the same framework language as for a website?

Re: Is the madness ever going to end?

#120

Post by distrill »

> In the past IT people ... where very clever people. People with a high level of intelligence ...

I normally don't mind typos and would never comment on a misspelling like this. But I also cringe pretty hard at people lamenting over how dumb people around them are. The fact that this kind of rant is so full of typos is fairly appropriate.

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