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

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

#161

Post by krapp »

capableweb wrote: post #160
Existenceblinks wrote: post #158

If we ended javascript, 3/4 of these crazy disagreement will be gone. And no one will be seen as anti-react / anti-js anymore.

Better yet, end the web and the internet and there would be no disagreements at all about anything web related. The only for disagreements you'll have will be with the people in your immediately vicinity. And to solve that, I propose another solution: End all human life, and then we've solved every single problem of the world. No racism, no sexism, no bigotry and no problems for as far as the eye can see.

If the solution to your problem isn't "kill all humans," you haven't considered it deeply enough.

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

#162

Post by adamauckland »

onion2k wrote: post #93
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…

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…

Long time ago we ran several large insurance websites, fairly standard SQL Server backend.

Once day I got into work and a slightly panicky dev said "We need to change the primary key on all the tables"

It was using an int and at the current rate of data entry, was going to blow the maximum record number in a couple of days.

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

#163

Post by Tade0 »

kimi wrote: post #71
rektide wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> When the internet came through a modem and bandwidth was very expensive,

That effectively ended in the mid 00s. Otherwise we wouldn't have had services like YouTube.

Between those times and around 2012 there was an explosion of script bloat because back then it was more important to have an interactive page than a fast page.

Bandwidth resurfaced as a concern only with the proliferation of mobile devices.

The whole premise of tree shaking, introduced in 2012 was to reduce bloat.

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

#164

Post by mkl »

carapace wrote: post #66

Web dev is solved: Elm. Just use Elm. https://elm-lang.org/ Javascript is going to be more expensive and more hassle to use than Elm for 99.999% of web apps.

I don't think so. The webpage of this language that "solves" web dev is so spectacularly broken that it managed to crash Chrome for me completely. I have literally thousands of tabs open and it trucks along fine for weeks on end ... unless one of the tabs is elm-lang.org. 15 minutes later and every Chrome window and tab was still unresponsive, so I resorted to killing the process, then quickly closed that tab before it fully loaded on restart. Maybe it works for you? That's kind of even worse as it's not even consistent.

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

#165

Post by noir_lord »

christkv wrote: post #136
onion2k wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely possible, but the limit is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 rows, or 281 terabytes, whichever the database hits first, so you probably could put the discussion off until year 2 or 3 if you really had to. Kind of like maybe the 'Send your friends money, divide the restaurant bill easily!' app founders first think will change the world could get really popular if it gets on the frontpage of HN..

I have a feeling you will long before experience other problems that makes likely you have to migrate to a different storage system before you hit that limit.

Given it's ~2 billion rows for every person the planet I reckon so.

Other than Facebook who has 2 billion rows for every person the planet (tongue in cheek).

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

#166

Post by hungryforcodes »

adamauckland wrote: post #162
onion2k wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Long time ago we ran several large insurance websites, fairly standard SQL Server backend. Once day I got into work and a slightly panicky dev said "We need to change the primary key on all the tables" It was using an int and at the current rate of data entry, was going to blow the maximum record number in a couple of days.

Must have been in the Jerassic period of MS SQL Server primary keys...

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

#167

Post by strken »

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 think the argument is different.

Let's say you use a basic HTML Golang app backed by SQLite and replicated to a secondary with Litestream, all running on cheap bare metal ARM servers, and therefore your website is simple, usable, never goes down, and costs $20/month to run. I have no idea if this is actually good, but let's agree that there's some idealised system out there that would be a lot better than what we have now, even if it doesn't look like this one.

Let's also say I use React and Redux backed by a CQRS Express app running on MongoDB and Kafka, all hosted on AWS, and (for the sake of the argument) let's say this causes my website to be broken in bizarre ways, down all the time, and costs $2000/month to run. This is definitely an exaggeration and some of these technologies are great, but let's agree that there are some hellishly over-engineered systems out there, even if they don't look like this one.

I think the argument is that what matters here is having an example of a $20/month uncomplicated beautiful system to point to. Discussing the technologies or patterns involved without building anything and especially without building a complete working product with your favourite elegant tool means everyone will use the broken $2000/month system as an exemplar in your field, because they have nothing better to point to.

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

#168

Post by gherkinnn »

I usually like Baldur's writing but this is all over the place.

> What we end up with is an industry plagued with cost and time overruns. Projects go way over budget and get delivered much too late, if ever.

I was there pre-Angular and pre-React and cost and time overruns were a thing. They always were and always will be. Unsatisfying software is a broad and complex problem and no matter your views, you will find confirmation. Agile coaches will see it in waterfall, Baldur sees it in SPAs, and somebody else will see it in tracking and metrics.

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

#169

Post by noir_lord »

noahtallen wrote: post #68
layer8 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until or unless something equivalent to those platform frameworks becomes part of the browser, the situation won’t change significantly. The fact is that the current interface between web app and browser, that is, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (and WASM), is highly inadequate for productivity applications.

I think “highly inadequate” is a big exaggeration. As an example, many people are fairly productive on slack. (Arguably more productive than email.) Native slack is nearly equivalent to web. Another example is google sheets or google docs. I do agree native had some big benefits. Probably the biggest hindrance to web is that you’re basically downloading the binary from the server and then executing it in line. That l…

The primitives required by slack happen to correlate well with the primitives that the "web" platform provides.

That certainly helps.

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

#170

Post by martin_a »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #111
croes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just because you can remove screws more easily you build better shelves? You can build bad apps with good tools and good apps with bad tools. Just because it gets easier for the web dev doesn't makes it easier for the user and vice versa.

Have you even tried building a shelf without a screw driver? It literally falls apart after one day of usage

Ever heard about dowels and glue and whatnot?
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