I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps • Hacker News Board

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#71

Post by kimi » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

rektide wrote: post #57

jdougan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the dev pool of 2022 was like the dev pool of (for example) 1994, just larger, you would have been right. But the software goldrush came and attracted many more who were just in it for the money or just weren't as thoughtful. Scale matters, upscaling people is hard.

The scope of problems being solved is much higher. Adding a two or three libraries- jquery and a plugin or two- and not giving a toss about performance was indeed easy. Few auxiliary tools were required. Back then, we all could have a pretty strong hand on the wheel of our websites & how they functioned, at a detailed level. It was feasible, for the scope was small. But now, we all use package managers, we all use bu…

> and not giving a toss about performance was indeed easy. Few auxiliary tools were required.

When the internet came through a modem and bandwidth was very expensive, performance was concern #1. So pages were kilobytes, not multi-megabyte monstruosities.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#72

Post by xwdv » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:30 AM UTC

croes wrote: post #54

omarhaneef wrote: post #28

The author complains that developers argue about their tools and methods, insist on their favorite techniques, but produce (more) worse apps. Particularly for the amount of time and effort expended on developing the apps. The thing is: the debates aren’t naive. They’re exactly trying to workout the details. When someone says, hey forget postgresql and just use SQLite, and someone else says good luck if you hit n rows…

I disagree. Web devs aren't discussing characters and plots but instead argue which typewriter to use. Better tools don't make better apps just like word processors don't make better books. The best web dev tools are worthless if the UX is bad.

Frameworks are not tools. You select technologies based on their fit for the requirements of the web app.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#73

Post by na85 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:32 AM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #72

croes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Web devs aren't discussing characters and plots but instead argue which typewriter to use. Better tools don't make better apps just like word processors don't make better books. The best web dev tools are worthless if the UX is bad.

Frameworks are not tools. You select technologies based on their fit for the requirements of the web app.

Frameworks have a direct impact on UX though. How many React monstrosities are snappy and responsive? Certainly none that I've used.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#74

Post by iratewizard » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:35 AM UTC

chefandy wrote: post #70

iratewizard wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a strong suspicion that there would be more productivity if the bottom half of developer (or more) left the industry. Control for seniority, of course. The majority of 1Xers produce outright bad code, contribute disproportionately to tech debt, don't read user stories thoroughly, don't test their code properly, and generally get in everyone else's way. The most productive thing our industry could do is creat…

Really? I think the most productive thing the industry could do is get rid of developers who drastically overvalue their own work, methods, and ideas, haughtily dismiss the value of others’ contributions out of hand, and blame everyone else for a project’s shortcomings. You can usually ID them by their persistently rolled eyes, big fish in small pond mentality, and 1.9 septillion reputation on Stack Overflow.

It sounds like I struck a nerve. Does it hurt you knowing there are a lot of developers out there that contribute more in a week than you do in several months?

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#75

Post by abc_lisper » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:39 AM UTC

aranchelk wrote: post #29

> Everybody seems to have an opinion on how you do your web dev and how websites and web apps should be structured. It’s true and it leads to many annoying unproductive arguments, IMO the reason is a fundamental lack of a scientific mindset in evaluating techniques and tooling. We don’t have theories or testable hypotheses, we have opinions. On one level I like and agree with the author’s idea that results are what r…

This is a wonderful comment! There is missing descriptions of things, the quality, the metrics to use when describing such things and we, the users of those said tools end up spending a lot of time going through bad documentation and learning things by practice. For a trade that pushes the digital frontier to everything it touches, the learning is surprisingly analog.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#76

Post by loh » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:40 AM UTC

I was just thinking about this exact topic less than an hour ago.

We seem to be slowly reaching a consensus on various best practices and tools, and it's obvious which ones are winners and will be here to stay for the foreseeable future, despite the inevitable churn. There will always be discussion (and disagreements) on how to make things better, and when I was less experienced, I (ironically) used to be way more opinionated on the best approaches, but over time, after witnessing the evolution over the years, it always comes down to one core tenet: choose the best tool for the job. Even this isn't purely objective, as it can vary depending on your individual circumstances, time constraints, and the people (and their skillsets) available to do the work.

I've always imagined a future where almost anyone can quickly assemble high quality applications (both software and hardware) to meet almost any human need. We're seeing this trend with all of the low-code/no-code tools popping up, but to take it up a notch, it will probably require some standardization of tooling and practices. I think this is the next phase of our technological evolution and would be a great solution to the author's request for "more better web apps".

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#77

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:59 AM UTC

croes wrote: post #54

omarhaneef wrote: post #28

The author complains that developers argue about their tools and methods, insist on their favorite techniques, but produce (more) worse apps. Particularly for the amount of time and effort expended on developing the apps. The thing is: the debates aren’t naive. They’re exactly trying to workout the details. When someone says, hey forget postgresql and just use SQLite, and someone else says good luck if you hit n rows…

I disagree. Web devs aren't discussing characters and plots but instead argue which typewriter to use. Better tools don't make better apps just like word processors don't make better books. The best web dev tools are worthless if the UX is bad.

What makes you say that better tools don't make better apps? A screwdriver changes removing a screw task from "extremely hard" to "extremely easy". Same way, a web framework makes writing a secure web server substantially easier than starting from scratch.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#78

Post by xwolfi » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:05 AM UTC

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #77

croes wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Web devs aren't discussing characters and plots but instead argue which typewriter to use. Better tools don't make better apps just like word processors don't make better books. The best web dev tools are worthless if the UX is bad.

What makes you say that better tools don't make better apps? A screwdriver changes removing a screw task from "extremely hard" to "extremely easy". Same way, a web framework makes writing a secure web server substantially easier than starting from scratch.

This is surprisingly not true, have you tried ? When you start from scratch you realize you have a tiny minuscule surface and securing that very small hole is much easier than say... fixing the log4j 20th level transitive dependency of your giant Spring Framework that was secretly able to interpret random input from logs or someth.

Especially if all you wanted was to show a quick html output. It's incredibly common to see giant dynamic web stuff used for tiny static output that could have done without.

I've done both in large volume websites and I find now that using as little "framework" as possible and a limited number of "libraries" works better in terms of cost, bugs, dev attrition, business desire implementation and user speed of render.

Picture a giant mess of node dependencies surrounding a central giant quirky framework like VueJS. 5 years of dev, all devs left. You need to maintain that, is that going to be easy ? Wasn't for me.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#79

Post by shreyshnaccount » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:09 AM UTC

chefandy wrote: post #70

iratewizard wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a strong suspicion that there would be more productivity if the bottom half of developer (or more) left the industry. Control for seniority, of course. The majority of 1Xers produce outright bad code, contribute disproportionately to tech debt, don't read user stories thoroughly, don't test their code properly, and generally get in everyone else's way. The most productive thing our industry could do is creat…

Really? I think the most productive thing the industry could do is get rid of developers who drastically overvalue their own work, methods, and ideas, haughtily dismiss the value of others’ contributions out of hand, and blame everyone else for a project’s shortcomings. You can usually ID them by their persistently rolled eyes, big fish in small pond mentality, and 1.9 septillion reputation on Stack Overflow.

you're both wrong. the most productive thing would be to grow up and help bring the better out in each other. create an environment thats about the skill. set aside ego and focus on building something wonderful. but doesn't seem that's gonna happen soon. (i dont really like bigtech, but the "blameless" culture seems like it could be very productive and save many a dramatic exits)

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#80

Post by belenos46 » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:14 AM UTC

na85 wrote: post #73

xwdv wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frameworks are not tools. You select technologies based on their fit for the requirements of the web app.

Frameworks have a direct impact on UX though. How many React monstrosities are snappy and responsive? Certainly none that I've used.

I can't tell you how many snappy, easy-to-use React sites I've used (I was busy using them, not reviewing their code), but every single time I've said "What the hell is going on, I'm just trying to [simple operation which is the only purpose of the website I'm on]" in the last five or so years, it's some React/Angular/SPAFrankenstein monstrosity.