141–150 of 245 posts
I hate web apps with a passion. Has anyone ever used the iOS YouTube app? This thing is hailed as a marvelous examples of web apps working "like native." Bollocks. It's an absolute mess. If one of the wealthiest companies in the world can't build a decent web app, there is no hope for anyone else. Web apps get the user 80% of what they want with 50% of the cost, so the business case is clear. That's why these apps ar…
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When someone says, hey forget postgresql and just use SQLite, and someone else says good luck if you hit n rows, and someone says it can easily handle n+m rows with x memory … This is a good example of how devs get things wrong. The argument between which database to use because you might hit the row limit has zero benefit to the user. It's devs wanting to avoid future work to migrate from one database to another; a…
Choosing to do nothing is still choosing to do something. In choosing to do something, one makes an informed choice . How informed that is is up to you. Row limit may be one, or performance or feature set may be another - say, choosing Postgres for some data types and easier indexing. Making informed choices are of benefit to the user. How much benefit depends on one's opportunity cost doing X instead of Y. Choosing…
The fact you're even aware that there's an alternative to choose means you're already slightly informed[1]. Being a bit more informed so that you know a solution will actually work is fine. I am not suggesting you shouldn't look at alternatives. I'm saying you should look at alternatives from the perspective of the solving the problem you have rather than arguing about pointless trivia that won't ever impact you or the app you're building (like row limits).
[1] Every web dev who used nothing but MySQL for 15 years should be crying now.
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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 t…
A large "ecosystem" is touted as a great advantage of some frameworks, but the reality is that it's mostly unmaintained low-quality libraries that could be replaced by a few lines of easier to understand code. "The Ecosystem" is about quantity over quality, all the way down. And when those unmaintained libraries break, you're also in the hook for fixing them, but it takes way more time and coordination than fixing it if it were your own code.
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.
Let's do the music one: how an instrument feels (to you) is intricately linked with how well you can express yourself musically.
I guess there are two different view points here, those who think the things used to create something have no bearing on the essence of the thing that is being created and those who think that you cannot divorce the two.
Isn't that just a discussion about platonism in disguise?
I hate web apps with a passion. Has anyone ever used the iOS YouTube app? This thing is hailed as a marvelous examples of web apps working "like native." Bollocks. It's an absolute mess. If one of the wealthiest companies in the world can't build a decent web app, there is no hope for anyone else. Web apps get the user 80% of what they want with 50% of the cost, so the business case is clear. That's why these apps ar…
The trillion-dollar company is often less able to produce quality products than a small shop, because of bureaucracy and hubris and dead weight. So while I agree that the business case for web apps incentivizes mediocrity, there is still plenty of hope for everyone else. If your startup has a really great web app with awesome UX, you will have a pretty big advantage.
>I’m hard-pressed to name more than a handful of web apps that I would say are genuinely good with no major flaw. >Content websites are a different matter. A static or server-rendered content website with adequate typography and semantic markup is generally going to do its job pretty well. I feel the exact opposite. Most web-based applications are pretty incredible these days. It's the "content websites" that are ins…
And as you rightly point out, visit a recipe site, especially on mobile, in comparison.
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Frameworks are tools
No. They aren't. Frameworks are the scaffolding, the skeleton. They dictate the shape. It's literally in the name. > : a skeletal, openwork, or structural frame Tools are the things you use to build within that skeleton. More pragmatic: Rails is a framework that dictates an MVC shape, with an RDS, that produces server side rendered HTML or data in a RESTfull manner. The tools you use for Rails development are your ID…
Your toolset also dictates the shape like a screwdriver dictates the shape of the usable screws.
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I'm in complete agreement with you. At this point, I also endorse threats of flogging for someone who tries to introduce a new framework to a project after the actual work has started. And actual flogging for the management team if they accept that framework.
As a data point I've just joined a small project which already has a JS framework (Vue) and 2 build systems (1 broken) and the developer has just added React and a third build system. No talk of migration - they're going to run in parallel.
There's nothing wrong with neither Vue or React, but adding a second one of those for no reason deserves the flogging thing that the grandparent poster is talking about.
Build systems... well they're a dime a dozen and in Javascript all build tools kinda suck (yes, including Vite), but still no excuse for having two.
Web dev community should just acknowledge the simple fact that typesetting engine from 80s (HTML) and legacy hacks built around it (css and js) is not a good foundation for making modern apps. It's like trying to build apps with a spreadsheet cells (it's actually possible, but we don't do it, thankfully) by throwing a lot of abstractions and frameworks on top of it that would hide the ugliness of the foundation layer…
Web dev community should just acknowledge the simple fact that typesetting engine from 80s (HTML) and legacy hacks built around it (css and js) is not a good foundation for making modern apps. It's like trying to build apps with a spreadsheet cells (it's actually possible, but we don't do it, thankfully) by throwing a lot of abstractions and frameworks on top of it that would hide the ugliness of the foundation layer…
It's not like most desktop apps are these great beacons of perfection either, most desktop apps are just as bad as most web apps. Just think of all the ridiculous enterprise applications that people had work with in the past. And the same applies to mobile apps from the respective app stores.
Also since a lot of the applications that you HAVE to use on a daily basis have moved to the web, you might have this feeling that desktop applications are great because the only exposure you have are applications that you choose to install yourself. But if all these apps were desktop applications you might have a different opinion.