I tend to pick the environment/framework/library that has the functionality already written that I happen to need at the time.
Web Development: A Crazy World
181–190 of 206 posts
Re: Web Development: A Crazy World
#182While some might complain or worry, this is what makes this field so fascinating. A myriad of options, toolsets and methodologies means that it is alive, open and thriving. Imagine is Adobe, Oracle or MS had won the Flash/Flex, Java or ActiveX battles, where would we have been today? As much as I use Chrome (and love it), I can't help but admire the work done by Mozilla to rescue the Netscape codebase and mould it in…
> Imagine is Adobe, Oracle or MS had won the Flash/Flex, Java or ActiveX battles, where would we have been today? I don't know what 'would have been', but I know that we would not be where we are today (in a positive sense) without those companies and the many many technologies and products they have provided us with (even though some of them can only serve as bad examples).
I'm not bashing them as a whole, just some of their technology decisions. To be honest, I've always felt that MS gets a bad rap. As much as it was anti-competitive, bundling IE in Windows enabled users to download alternative browsers. Obviously, there are other ways to do it but I doubt many users would have gone down that road with higher technical obstacles.
As for Oracle, not much can redeem them. Flash had it's day, but I wish Adobe would let it die already.
Re: Web Development: A Crazy World
#183I don't agree with this rant. Just becuase 50 libraries exist doesn't mean you have to be an expert in all of them or even use all of them. I think it's great that so many frameworks are sprouting up, and once you've been around long enough, it shouldn't take more than a weekend to try one, see the benefits, and use it or learn from it and move on. Since when is having more choice bad? I've been out of web developmen…
> Since when is having more choice bad?
http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...
Re: Web Development: A Crazy World
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine is Adobe, Oracle or MS had won the Flash/Flex, Java or ActiveX battles, where would we have been today? I don't know what 'would have been', but I know that we would not be where we are today (in a positive sense) without those companies and the many many technologies and products they have provided us with (even though some of them can only serve as bad examples).
I'm not bashing them as a whole, just some of their technology decisions. To be honest, I've always felt that MS gets a bad rap. As much as it was anti-competitive, bundling IE in Windows enabled users to download alternative browsers. Obviously, there are other ways to do it but I doubt many users would have gone down that road with higher technical obstacles. As for Oracle, not much can redeem them. Flash had it's…
> As for Oracle, not much can redeem them.
If anything. :)
> I wish Adobe would let it die already.
I know many here can't accept the truth that Flash had, has and will have its place on the Internet. There was a need for such a technology and there still is. I will be here for another 5-15 years or so, so we should make the best out of it instead of screaming 'DIE ALREADY'. But as always, there is plenty of room for improvements. :)
FYI: Adobe donated Flex to the ASF a while ago and the mailing list is already the most active on ASF. It is actively developed and people are quite motivated.
Re: Web Development: A Crazy World
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree 1000% - very good point. The best tools (for you) are the ones that solve the problems that bug you the most and feel the most "right". It's a personal thing. For example: In my case, I used to write a lot of plain HTML. I found it got annoying to type brackets and keep track of all the closing tags. So I tried ZenCoding, and it helped, but only on creation, not on editing. I finally settled on haml, because…
Haml is soo 2012. :) Try Jade ( http://jade-lang.com/ ), it has a much cleaner syntax and integrated markdown support. You can even use it as a preprocessor for other templating languages.
Totally agree plus Haml is slow like shit.
Re: Web Development: A Crazy World
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Let's argue about whether Haskell or Clojure is better while somebody else ships products using PHP and duct tape." @agentdero https://twitter.com/agentdero/status/174965036928868352
If one bothers to learn about tools and why they are useful, they can think a little bit deeper and understand why some intellectual argument do result in software that ships. We write Scala at my company because we've found that with the right developers who seek to understand type systems and fp we can ship fast as fuck. I'm dozens of times faster working in Scala than I ever would be in php. We want to beat the av…
I've programmed large projects in 6 or 7 different languages now and I simply don't believe your statement "I'm dozens of times faster working in Scala than I ever would be in php." That's like saying "I would write that essay dozens of times faster in Spanish than I would in English."
The tough problems that take most of the time are the design and theoretical understanding of the problem. The actual tools used to implement the solution, while not trivial in their differences, are never as important as fully understanding the problem and having a good architectural design.
Or put differently, if you found me the fastest, most knowledgable person in the world with PHP web development, and then found the same guy for Scala, my assumption is they would both build a particular project in the same amount of time, all other things equal. And I could guarantee that one of the two wouldn't be "dozens of times faster" than the other.
Re: Web Development: A Crazy World
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that's exactly the problem. The promise has been there for _years_, it just never has been made up to. Sure, cross-platform development is cool, you can do that in Java. I can also do it in Ruby, Go, Rust, Clojure, Erlang or Haskell. And those solutions don't feel like a duct tape on a drainpipe. It's still the same as it was 10 years ago, we can't wrap our head around a solution that works for all browsers, henc…
I'm not sure I'm understanding. I develop web applications that run well on all major platforms and it's not nearly as hard to do as people make it out to be. And the difference between Javascript and Java, Ruby, Go, Rust, etc. is that it runs in an environment that literally everybody already has installed when they buy a computer - the web browser. No mucking around with installing the JVM, or downloading an applic…
Ubiquitous does not imply concise across. Which is not the case.
Re: Web Development: A Crazy World
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
The absolute worst is SOA (the "enterprisey" buzzword for lots of small services) architectures in which every service is written in a different language ! "Oh, our payment processor is in Node, but our site's in Ruby. Our file caching layer is in Python with bits of C for high performance and our crypto stuff is in C++ with Boost and libcryptopp but it talks to a Java app that uses Cassandra..." (Runs outside, sets…
What's wrong with that if every service is using the right tool for the job and provides a sane API? Maybe maintenance?
Read the article the original rant was posted as a comment on. It discusses exactly that.
Re: Web Development: A Crazy World
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is scary, we are loosing diversity at an incredible rate.
Heh, not surprising that comment isn't popular among the group of people who are currently exporting their worldview. Harder to see the harm in it when it's your culture that's becoming the monoculture. That's the "good one"!
I don't think that's entirely fair - we can safely assume the Chinese tech forum techsmth has a techie culture, because to the relevance of the rant.
That does not mean they do not have heavy influences from their own (and from a quick surf-by Japanese) culture - lots of threads on photos from the 70s and what was it like then.
They will export back. Just because all the money in Hollywood is forcing young pretty WASP vampires at us does not mean its the only way to express oneself
Re: Web Development: A Crazy World
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few things: (1) Code reuse, or lack thereof. (2) Multiplication of surface area for things like security bugs... now you have five different stacks to keep track of security updates for instead of just one. (3) Multiplication of deployment resources-- now you need multiple VMs, maybe multiple instances with different stacks to run them on, etc. (4) Developers can't pinch-hit for each other unless they know every da…
(5) If you sell, God help whoever has to support that stuff in your new organization. It would be interesting to know if an acquisition fell through because due diligence revealed something like this and the purchasing entity didn't want to deal with that mess or it conflicted with their culture.
Absolutely not - no it manager worth their salt will pass up the opportunity to say - well we can do it but we will need more cash - we have to hire a ruby team a node team a ...
:-)