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Changing times for web developers

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Re: Changing times for web developers

#71

Post by ZoFreX »

johnyzee wrote: post #54

This is against the grain, but it is obvious to me that the way forward for web development is to rise above Javascript and simple DOM mangling, which is what most of these popular tools assist with. Javascript does not scale complexity and manipulating DOM elements directly is both error-prone and a lousy programming paradigm. We need something in between that offers a sane development model and deals with the compl…

I think there's quite a wide gulf between "direct DOM manipulation" and "use GWT". I've been using Backbone's views to make my JS more manageable, for example, and there are some nice MVVM frameworks out there that really help you build complex JS applications without it turning into spaghetti.

Re: Changing times for web developers

#72

Post by camus »

cdent wrote: post #60
johnyzee wrote: post #54

This is against the grain, but it is obvious to me that the way forward for web development is to rise above Javascript and simple DOM mangling, which is what most of these popular tools assist with. Javascript does not scale complexity and manipulating DOM elements directly is both error-prone and a lousy programming paradigm. We need something in between that offers a sane development model and deals with the compl…

I _hate_ web apps/sites/services created with GWT. They result in a) overcomplicated UIs b) assets which are completely opaque. Which runs contrary to the promise of the web: simple stuff that anyone can learn from. I realize this is an old saw that the young turks of HN probably don't care much about, but it is damn sad.

the promise of the web is "build once , run everywhere" , not "read the source code, ripoff that work". Nobody cares how it is done. the web is a plateform , the only things that matters is that the software runs on that plateform, without the need of going native.

Re: Changing times for web developers

#73

Post by lopatin »

johnyzee wrote: post #54

This is against the grain, but it is obvious to me that the way forward for web development is to rise above Javascript and simple DOM mangling, which is what most of these popular tools assist with. Javascript does not scale complexity and manipulating DOM elements directly is both error-prone and a lousy programming paradigm. We need something in between that offers a sane development model and deals with the compl…

Ragarding your edit: A startup called famo.us(http://famo.us) is focusing on exactly this (canvas based UIs) however I'm not completely sold that this is the future. It's an awful lot of wheel reinventing.

They're doing it in the name of solving performance for HTML5 apps and for creating apps with rich UIs which would be more similar to interfaces we see today in games rather than traditional DOM based UIs. However, I don't think there's a need for that, and ditching all HTML standards in order to reimplement them in the canvas sounds like a step backward for me.

Re: Changing times for web developers

#74

Post by rimantas »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #6
Swizec wrote: post #3

Is CoffeeScript a higher abstraction level from JavaScript? Whenever I've taken a casual look at coffeescript I came away with the impression it was just syntax sugar.

It is. For one thing, classes (or objects you 'new') are much cleaner in CS than any trivial implementation in vanilla JS. Splats, loops, string interpolation and comprehensions are like added bonus (they are technically syntactic sugar, but make thing so much easier, cleaner and more readable that it's worth using CS for these features alone). True, CS makes debugging a bit harder (though SourceMaps might make that…

In my experience (I wrote substantial amount of CS code during last year) overhead for CS debugging is so small it is not even worth mentioning. In theory it looks much more serious than appears in practice.

Re: Changing times for web developers

#75

Post by pimentel »

gexla wrote: post #46

Pretty good list. Some comments here mention this is obvious or dated, but I think that in the wild a lot of devs aren't doing these things. I think there are still a lot of back-end devs which this very much applies to. If you are a back-end dev who has been able to get away with not knowing CSS (and possibly even JS) well, then you need to fix that deficiency. For example, I typically work with a team of developers…

I've wondered about client-side MVC. What level of UI complexity justifies it's use?

Re: Changing times for web developers

#76

Post by Benferhat »

speg wrote: post #7

#1 has a bunch of links for JS but none for the CSS part of its title. What are some good CSS resources for a developer who typically isn't suited for design.

Check out Zurb Foundation or Bootstrap, they'll make all your projects look snazzy right out of the box.

Re: Changing times for web developers

#78

Post by camus »

ceautery wrote: post #49

A couple of reactions: You guys seem to hate each other a lot, and love javascript frameworks. Me, I've tried to snipe at my fellows a lot less on sites like this, which has improved my online experience, and I prefer to learn standards over frameworks. The kind of discussion going on here is reminiscent of old timey C vs. java vs. perl, or maybe vi vs. emacs slashdot discussions from the late 90s: pointless. Focus o…

dogmatism : A statement of a point of view as if it were an established fact.

Re: Changing times for web developers

#79

Post by rimantas »

jfaucett wrote: post #29
jasonlotito wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> jQuery has had pretty significant traction for 4 or so years now. One could probably assume you already know it. Right? =) > Minifying JavaScript and CSS files isn't new, nor are REST and HTML5. Being new and being widely practiced are two different things. Also, REST is something people still struggle with today, because they assumed they knew it because it's deceptively easy. And HTML5? Really? It takes just 10 s…

agree wholeheartedly about HTML5. Its a broad API with lots of loose parts, and frankly its not ready in the sense that I can take the specs, program an app in HTML5 and be confident that its gonna work. I'm pretty confident in saying no browser supports HTML5 100% - though I'd be happy if someone could prove me wrong :)

And it won't be ready, ever. It is like building the skyscraper on the swamp without proper foundation, or trying to convert your truck to a race car. HTML was born and evolved around hyperlinked content. Using it for apps was an afterthought and it shows and there is no escape from that. You cannot start from scratch and you cannot keep pilling on without breaking the thing. That's why I don't subscribe to the optimism of those claiming that HTML will soon win everything. Really, just try to implement anything moderately complex in web technologies, and then the same thing using any of the native sdk's and compare the level of pain.

Re: Changing times for web developers

#80

Post by edanm »

smharris65 wrote: post #66
edanm wrote: post #15

Does anyone have any recommendations for good REST books? For example, the book cited in the article - is it good? I understand the basics of REST, but I want to get a deeper understanding. Also, I still regularly encounter situations where I'm not sure what the "best" thing to do is (collections of items, linked items, etc. - how to represent this with REST?).

Try the REST cookbook: http://www.amazon.com/RESTful-Web-Services-Cookbook-Scalabil...

I've been working through it. It's pretty interesting, although it's definitely arranged around the "Cookbook" concept - specific questions and answers. I feel it's missing a "let's show an example REST api - here's the resources, here's how you do things, here's why we built it this way and not another".

Of course I'm still on the 3rd chapter, so it might be heading in that direction. An interesting book in any case.

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