Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them • Hacker News Board

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#31

Post by bombolo » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #18

My experience is pretty similar for my projects but I think generally we shouldn’t point too many fingers. When it comes to public projects, I’ve found a lot of trouble regardless of its JavaScript-proximity. I think we’ve been blessed by a growing ecosystem of projects that are clean to build, and eschew problematic dependencies. Try building anything Linux and C related and you’re worse than JS because now you need…

> I gave up on building on my mac altogether

osx is not linux. It has a gazillion of incompatibilities and most developers never test for it, so even if the code compiles, it's no guarantee it will work.

> Try building anything Linux and C related

"apt install libwhatever-dev" does it in most cases.

> docker-packaged projects

You mean completely insecure projects that most likely run an old and vulnerable openssl?

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#32

Post by royletron » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

Meh, I feel a little like this is dunking on Javascript for the sake of dunking on Javascript. Ever done the same with a PHP app? Go? Python?! They all have issues with versioning and this is why there are a good set of tools to deal with it - pyenv/nvm etc. It's like they've listed all the good reasons to use JS and then kicked it because it's cool to hate on JS.

Hi, I am Darren, and I love JS - I will no longer be ashamed by it.

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#33

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

ianai wrote: post #14

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #3

> During the past 5–6 years of my JavaScript experience, every time I wanted to go back to any of my projects—from tiny to big, server-side or front-end—there was always a challenge, a problem to tackle or an obstacle to overcome before I can update or sometimes even just run my program. why i moved mostly from writing node cmd tools to using bash. don't need to go on a bunch of side missions every time i run npm ins…

Web has always been about the hot new thing. It was part of why I left-in 2001.

I left for a couple of years for Windows desktop and Android native development, turns out that the GUI civil wars at Microsoft, and the whole Java vs Kotlin vs AndroidX vs JetPack vs NDK being like a 10% project, are even worse than dealing with Web quirks.

So even though I rather do native development, here we are back at the Web and distributed computing.

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#34

Post by bombolo » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

ozim wrote: post #26

I have a bit different view. If some app is not updating - there is not much use for it. Just like houses - yeah you can have 100 years old house but if you did not invest in it and expect to be just as good as new you are in world of pain. Same with cars - 10 years and you really have to change quite some parts. Applications are ideas - we expect that ideas don't "wear out" - well most of ideas wear out rather quick…

Updating is fine… bash for example keeps having new versions and new features.

However this doesn't mean that we must fix every bash script every 6 months because of a bash update.

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#35

Post by bombolo » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

royletron wrote: post #32

Meh, I feel a little like this is dunking on Javascript for the sake of dunking on Javascript. Ever done the same with a PHP app? Go? Python?! They all have issues with versioning and this is why there are a good set of tools to deal with it - pyenv/nvm etc. It's like they've listed all the good reasons to use JS and then kicked it because it's cool to hate on JS. Hi, I am Darren, and I love JS - I will no longer be…

most python modules do not have so many dependencies, and tend to have a stable api.

Bugs happen but it's by no means a constant thing.

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#36

Post by yakshaving_jgt » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:34 AM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #17

Gibbon1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A month ago I found a bug in command line utility I wrote in C# and hadn't touched in 8 years. I checked out the project and opened it in Visual Studio. And it compiled. I fixed the bug and it just worked. End to end it took half an hour. I feel like there is an advantage to libraries and tools managed by adults with long term skin in the game.

As a counter point: I have simple node scripts, that serve the same purpose to me. And there was also the need to fix something 2 days ago in an 8 year old script. Opened the file, changed the code and running it again. Took 5 minutes and it just worked. I don't use js because it is the hot new thing, but rather because it is simple. (But I avoid messy and obscure npm repositories wherever possible for example.)

> I don't use js because it is the hot new thing, but rather because it is simple.

It infamously isn't.

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#37

Post by candu » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:35 AM UTC

To be fair: the reference to `node-gyp` gets at a general problem with most high-level languages. I've seen very similar issues in Python - once you start to deal with native bindings, your nice high-level language abstractions become leaky, and you can no longer guarantee that building on new hardware won't fail in mysterious ways. (This is, incidentally, one of the benefits of VMs / containers / anything designed to remove or mitigate the "new hardware" part of that risk.)

If you look deep enough, or do anything low-level enough, or need to work with high-performance native libraries enough, you will find these leaky abstractions in every high-level language. Maybe it's at the "I want to do awesome Cormack-style invsqrt() pointer punning hacks" level, maybe it's at the "eep I'm dealing with raw binary data over a network and now the order of bits matters" level, maybe it's at the "argh I'm using a package that has native architecture-specific implementations" level.

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#38

Post by amoe_ » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:35 AM UTC

ozim wrote: post #26

I have a bit different view. If some app is not updating - there is not much use for it. Just like houses - yeah you can have 100 years old house but if you did not invest in it and expect to be just as good as new you are in world of pain. Same with cars - 10 years and you really have to change quite some parts. Applications are ideas - we expect that ideas don't "wear out" - well most of ideas wear out rather quick…

You have low expectations; I have Racket programs that have worked for over 10 years essentially untouched. More or less the same with Perl. We should be aspiring to Plato's cave (while accepting that we won't reach that).

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#39

Post by trarmp » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:35 AM UTC

royletron wrote: post #32

Meh, I feel a little like this is dunking on Javascript for the sake of dunking on Javascript. Ever done the same with a PHP app? Go? Python?! They all have issues with versioning and this is why there are a good set of tools to deal with it - pyenv/nvm etc. It's like they've listed all the good reasons to use JS and then kicked it because it's cool to hate on JS. Hi, I am Darren, and I love JS - I will no longer be…

> They all have issues with versioning

Not on this scale. Let's leave out the versions of the NodeJS for clarity's sake (nvm is not for managing packages, afaik), and focus on packages. You could argue that the complexity is because of JavaScript's popularity, but it's hard to deny that running a seemingly simple `npm install` will net you tons of dependencies, and that's typical regardless of what you're installing.

Re: Programs are dead, and JavaScript has killed them

#40

Post by causi » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:35 AM UTC

ozim wrote: post #26

I have a bit different view. If some app is not updating - there is not much use for it. Just like houses - yeah you can have 100 years old house but if you did not invest in it and expect to be just as good as new you are in world of pain. Same with cars - 10 years and you really have to change quite some parts. Applications are ideas - we expect that ideas don't "wear out" - well most of ideas wear out rather quick…

If some app is not updating - there is not much use for it.

That depends entirely on the program. My CD ripper/burner is going on twenty years old and it works flawlessly. Same with my audio recorder and the sensor viewer for my phone. On the occasion I need to make a slideshow or write a document, Office 2007 works just fine with no bullshit, granted I don't view third-party files in it. ES File Explorer Pro is still by far the best Android file manager despite not being updated in three and a half years. I wouldn't be particularly upset if I had to use a version of VLC that was ten years out of date.