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The silent majority in software

vadimkravcenko.com

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Re: The silent majority in software

#201

Post by chrischattin »

progrus wrote: post #193
chrischattin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but front end JavaScript frameworks are the first thing that comes to mind as an inefficient antipattern that was forced into the dev mindshare by (effective) mega-cap marketing and jr devs who didn’t know any better.

I’ve been programming ~15 years, and from my perspective, those frameworks helped us move on from a world riddled with XSS, “better than fail whale”-level reliability expectations, and software ossification (Gmail, Facebook, etc). Today, the frameworks bite me in the ass about once a week, but I think it’s worth it to get safe React with strict TypeScript, and plenty besides. Caveat: All infrastructure requires a lot…

???

XSS has long been a solved problem.

Security is definitely not an argument for using front end JS frameworks as they add attack vectors and complication to the stack.

Re: The silent majority in software

#202

Post by fezfight »

ericwooley wrote: post #192
chrischattin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but front end JavaScript frameworks are the first thing that comes to mind as an inefficient antipattern that was forced into the dev mindshare by (effective) mega-cap marketing and jr devs who didn’t know any better.

The entire concept of fronted frameworks is an anti pattern? This might be the oldest, grumpiest man on the front lawn yelling at childreniest take we on web dev, that I’ve ever heard

You have to at least admit that there's an awful lot of stuff done these days to render what used to be done with html.

Re: The silent majority in software

#203

Post by striking »

danielvaughn wrote: post #182
jongjong wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Also, back end tends to have fewer mega-trends. You usually have the option to stick to your old tools. There are still plenty of C/C++ back end jobs for example. The community keeps branching off. On the front end, the trends tend to be more extreme; people will not take you seriously unless you give up on whatever tools you use and go straight for React or VueJS... Then when TypeScript comes along, everyon…

As someone who really appreciates strong typing, I will die on this hill - I hate Typescript. Introducing a transpiled typing system on top of a dynamically typed language is a recipe for all sorts of insane complexity, which is what I experience whenever I try to use TS. If you consider all the time and effort it took to introduce types for every NPM project out there, all the development of the language itself, the…

> might it have been the same amount of effort just to introduce some strong types into Javascript itself?

TypeScript exists as a first step to adding types to JS. Some folks are currently trying to figure out a way to add type annotations that the JS engine will just ignore for now based on what we've learned from TS.

Re: The silent majority in software

#204

Post by kefir »

orwin wrote: post #141
gettingitdone wrote: post #65

I am probably part of the silent majority, at least until this comment. Be aware that my comment is focused on business. What you do as a hobby or a side project is out of scope. The debate around languages often focus on syntax differences, as if they alone would make a huge difference. We need to consider the eco system as a whole. Many have probably read the "blub paradox". The context of that article is his exper…

I disagree only on your last paragraph. It heavily depends on what the startup is selling and it's customers. I would only take Java for a B2B onprem app. For anything else, I'd go with other languages.

> only take Java for a B2B onprem app

What's your reasoning?

Java has one of the best ecosystems with lots of libraries and frameworks, especially for high-perf distributed applications (see Hadoop, Kafka, Ignite, Cassandra, etc). And there are plenty of developers to hire. So it is a good choice for most backends.

As a developer I prefer C# (IMO the best general purpose language these days), but from the business perspective Java may be a better choice in some cases.

Re: The silent majority in software

#205

Post by falcolas »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #196
camgunz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I admit to enjoying some of the debate aerobics on HN, this is the prime reason I try and give my voice to some of the discussion here. I kind of view it similarly to voting: you have to make your opinions known. It's had the pleasant side effect of also educating me on quite a lot--mixing in with people with different experiences and values has enriched my life, so I think it's a win-win. I just try and be car…

One of the [few] advantages of becoming a crusty old fart™, is that we tend to waste a lot less time, worrying about what others think of us, and just do what we need to do, to get the job done. I was just talking about this, to someone, yesterday. I'm often accused of being a "killjoy," or a "dreamkiller," by today's yutes. This is because I say 'orrible things, like "Have you considered what happens if..?" or "We t…

> and my work is generally focused around the endless practicalities and compromises, necessary to get products out the door.

This hits too hard. I’m still in the “acceptance” phase of grief over the death of my ideal that there’s a “right” technical solution for every problem. And I’m in my 40’s.

Re: The silent majority in software

#206

Post by TheCoelacanth »

fezfight wrote: post #202
ericwooley wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire concept of fronted frameworks is an anti pattern? This might be the oldest, grumpiest man on the front lawn yelling at childreniest take we on web dev, that I’ve ever heard

You have to at least admit that there's an awful lot of stuff done these days to render what used to be done with html.

It's not what used to be done with HTML. It's what used to be done with desktop GUI toolkits.

Web apps were never this complex before the creation of frontend web frameworks.

Re: The silent majority in software

#207

Post by chrischattin »

ericwooley wrote: post #192
chrischattin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but front end JavaScript frameworks are the first thing that comes to mind as an inefficient antipattern that was forced into the dev mindshare by (effective) mega-cap marketing and jr devs who didn’t know any better.

The entire concept of fronted frameworks is an anti pattern? This might be the oldest, grumpiest man on the front lawn yelling at childreniest take we on web dev, that I’ve ever heard

Yep. Duplicating the data model on the client and server is just one example of the insanity. I could go on, but that’s for another day.

Re: The silent majority in software

#208

Post by sgarland »

webmobdev wrote: post #33
hot_gril wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I expected. It used to be niche.

It still is - it has just moved to the sub-reddit's now.

The only niche tech subreddit I know of that's anywhere near the level of discourse on HN is r/zfs, and even then, it's mostly people asking for help because they broke their zpool; it's just that the answers are often quite detailed in their explanation. r/sysadmin is Windows-centric but isn't awful in terms of depth of knowledge. r/kubernetes is mostly blog spam and "can you troubleshoot for me," and r/devops is mostly "how do I get a job in devops."

Re: The silent majority in software

#209

Post by noirbot »

trasz wrote: post #130
ttpphd wrote: post #7

There's nothing quite like an author getting basic history completely wrong at the very beginning. Really builds confidence.

Nixon’s internal politics isn’t “basic history” anywhere except US.

Sure, but if your premise for the article is "This thing in my field is a lot like Nixon's politics", I'd expect you to not get Nixon's politics wrong, specifically because a lot of people may not know it enough to tell if your comparison is correct.

Re: The silent majority in software

#210

Post by fezfight »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #206
fezfight wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to at least admit that there's an awful lot of stuff done these days to render what used to be done with html.

It's not what used to be done with HTML. It's what used to be done with desktop GUI toolkits. Web apps were never this complex before the creation of frontend web frameworks.

Yes, that's the point I'm trying to make. At the end of the incredibly complex and long modern road, you end up looking at text, images, etc, in a browser.
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