Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 61 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#41

Post by javcasas »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #29

Unpopular opinion: there hasn't been advancements in web app development for the last ~15-20 years. People are creating new tools/frameworks because they can, not because there is an actual need for yet another new shiny thing to build HTML+JS+CSS pages that do CRUD on database rows via HTTP verbs. To put it another way, some people thrive on solving problems that already have solutions with nuanced solutions because…

CRUD on database rows via HTTP verbs is solved. See Postgrest/postgraphile. Most backend programmers are obsessed with constructing lousy versions of those two programs.

With this said, I know I just made a few extra enemies.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#43

Post by great_psy »

actinium226 wrote: post #13
kbrannigan wrote: post #6

A lot of the complexity you see in code, tool or project are Job-Security sub projects. At first you have a bright eyes junior dev who wants to do the right thing, change the world they said. Little by little he realizes that documenting everything, writing easy to follow and bug free code is a great way to be out of a job. Complex code is what gets you promoted because you have fire to put out, bugs to fix, getting…

I imagine there are people who face a decision like this at some point in their career, and maybe it seems like the right one at the time, but it feels like optimizing for a local maximum as opposed to a global one. This may work to keep your current job, but should you need to find another job for any reason, how will you sell yourself to the next company, other than trying to bullshit your way in?

What is the alternative to bullshitting your way in ?

“I worked on this project, I did the right things, wrote all the documentation, there were no bugs, etc” Everyone will say that, how is an interviewer going to tell who’s honest and who isn’t ?

The things that make the difference between an ok and great engineer are things that never get published along with the product.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#44

Post by tkiolp4 »

Software design is subjective. After years of professional work, I cannot stand anymore getting entangled in architecture/design discussions. Any competent software engineer (most of us are) can come with a reasonable working solution to common problems 99% tech companies face. So, it doesn’t matter if you use Date or DateTime, REST or gRPC, Postgres or MySQL, Go or Rust… In a commercial context, good software is software that brings money. Period.

In a more personal context, I do care about software quality… but this only applies to personal projects.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#45

Post by schoubey »

mikewarot wrote: post #26
kens wrote: post #7

My unpopular opinion is that computing is stuck in a local maximum based on technology from the 1970s. In particular, typing into an 80x25 terminal window with unformatted fixed-width characters should be obsolete; we don't need compatibility with punch cards any more. There was a thread a week ago about displaying graphs in your terminal using ASCII graphics. This shouldn't be necessary! Also, code shouldn't be a se…

Win32 was a great step forward. A stable interface that has lasted for decades, despite Microsoft's best efforts to move on. Programs written using the Win32 GUI and forms still work decades later. Its a shame there isn't an equivalent in the Linux world. --- We should have rich source text by now. You should be able to freely time comments, include notes, links, images, etc. in the source code of a program, and stil…

Arent Jupyter notebooks the rich source text, are you looking for something similar to be natively supported by the compiler instead of the overhead of a Jupyter process.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#46

Post by actinium226 »

kbrannigan wrote: post #10
actinium226 wrote: post #4

Docker doesn't actually save time. The thinking is that with docker you can manage your dependencies in one place, and so you don't need to spend time and headache dealing with issues like incompatible packages. In reality, you trade that time and headache for the time and headache of dealing with docker: did you mount all the files you needed? Did you start the container with the proper command to enable debugging?…

My understanding is that the lower layer will outlive docker. Some new dev with no understanding of how bare metal OS operates will be stuck within the limits of docker. Like a goat who spent all it's life inside a fenced yard.

> the lower layer will outlive docker.

That's a good way to put it, I like it.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#47

Post by kens »

ttctciyf wrote: post #36
kens wrote: post #7

My unpopular opinion is that computing is stuck in a local maximum based on technology from the 1970s. In particular, typing into an 80x25 terminal window with unformatted fixed-width characters should be obsolete; we don't need compatibility with punch cards any more. There was a thread a week ago about displaying graphs in your terminal using ASCII graphics. This shouldn't be necessary! Also, code shouldn't be a se…

Your "unpopular rant" (or one pretty much like it) has 376k views and 12k likes on youtube![1] (Recommended watch, not least for demystifying the origin of vi's navigation keys and the choice of ~/ for /home/you.) 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ab3ArE8W3s&t=1012s (link jumps to 16:52)

Wow, that video is exactly my thoughts, but expressed much better!

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#48

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

javcasas wrote: post #41
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #29

Unpopular opinion: there hasn't been advancements in web app development for the last ~15-20 years. People are creating new tools/frameworks because they can, not because there is an actual need for yet another new shiny thing to build HTML+JS+CSS pages that do CRUD on database rows via HTTP verbs. To put it another way, some people thrive on solving problems that already have solutions with nuanced solutions because…

CRUD on database rows via HTTP verbs is solved. See Postgrest/postgraphile. Most backend programmers are obsessed with constructing lousy versions of those two programs. With this said, I know I just made a few extra enemies.

Some backend programmers have been solving this problem since before postgraphile existed and before graphql became a solution. This is an example of what I mean, no offense, there are hundreds of example frameworks/libraries with ways to solve this.

I will counter my own unpopular opinion in that many of the newer ways are better or easier to use (if I used postgres this looks interesting) but as an industry we certainly don't need the countless variations that are out there.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#49

Post by zozbot234 »

kens wrote: post #7

My unpopular opinion is that computing is stuck in a local maximum based on technology from the 1970s. In particular, typing into an 80x25 terminal window with unformatted fixed-width characters should be obsolete; we don't need compatibility with punch cards any more. There was a thread a week ago about displaying graphs in your terminal using ASCII graphics. This shouldn't be necessary! Also, code shouldn't be a se…

80 character lines are a near-optimum for readability. And command line interfaces are convenient to use via keyboard over remote, possibly high-latency connections, where a more direct interaction becomes clunky. It's also easy to extend: you don't have to change anything in the UX, just add a new command. Moreover a CLI allows for the expression of complex behaviors that are all but impossible to render in a "user-friendly", interaction-based UX.

Re: Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion

#50

Post by dizhn »

mikewarot wrote: post #22

Minority Opinion: Computer security is a solved issue, and most people don't know about the solutions. We need operating systems that enforce file selection, instead of deferring to the applications. This is known as capability based security, and most people think of "allow access to X" on their phone, which is NOT what I mean. When you want to open a file, an application shows a system supplied dialog box, then goe…

Flatpak does something that looks like this with various xdg-open portals but the permission is implicit (hitting open is the user confirmation itself) which I don't get why it was implemented that way.
Post reply on HN