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Web Development: A Crazy World

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Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#191

Post by mephju »

Yeah, lots of technologies out there.

Personally I consider learning a technology as an investment. And with my investments I prefer them to be low risk. That's why I only choose technologies which are definitely going to last a while. Sometimes it's hard to decide if a particular technology will persist. I usually look for support and endorsement of big players in the industry and sufficient user adoption.

Right now I am contemplating using angular.js. I think it would be low risk to learn since it will probably last a while because of Google's involvement and already wide usage.

Other safe options include Twitter Bootstrap, Node.js, Android and jQuery and ?

I would like to read a blog post about what Hacker News considers to be safe options to learn. Anyone interested in writing one?

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#192

Post by EnderMB »

RyanZAG wrote: post #141
EnderMB wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your definition of "know". I'm a .NET developer by day, and I've met numerous Java developers that have crawled into a .NET role, either as a contractor/freelancer or into a entry/mid-level role at a company, claiming that because they are fantastic Java developers they can pick up C# in no time at all. Yes, if you have been programming for a number of years then the syntax will come quickly, and you'll…

This is generally solved with a 1 week onboarding processing into company culture/dev tools. Normally done by assigning an experienced engineer a week of priority time with the newcomer with the focus on showing company tools and techniques. This really shouldn't be an issue if managed even slightly. LINQ or VS.net compiler features are not difficult to grasp. So if your 'huge difference' translates into a week of on…

Regardless of how good a developer is, there is simply no way that a single week will get a developer proficient in a different language to write sufficient code. Yes, any sane dev team will dedicate senior developer time towards getting a new member up to speed with the code base, but any transitioning developer working on a non-trivial project will not just pick up everything within a week. It might work like that in a beginning startup with a small code base, but it just doesn't work like that in your typical business., to truly understand how they work within .NET, and to conform to the current standard of how code is written within the company.

That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how long the transitioning developer has been an employee. It's very likely that this developer is brand new to the team, and even new lead developers or team managers take longer than a week to be proficient at a company.

Yes, LINQ, lambda expressions and many of the other constructs within C# are easy to understand. What takes time is learning where to use these things.

A transitioning developer needs a week of time with a senior dev and the code-base at minimum. They need at least a month to write code to the same speed and standard of another team member, and that is if they really try and adapt to their new tools and environment.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#193

Post by raverbashing »

dubcanada wrote: post #169
raverbashing wrote: post #26

Yes, this The amount of 'meetoo.js' is amazing(ly bad) Because of course everybody has to have "MVC responsive html5 cascading containers with chocolate covering" Not to mention most of these are underdocumented, bug-ridden, too specific, etc Need a js library? JQuery. period (and don't get me started with mootools, I need to ship, not swim around their docs figuring out how to do what in jquery is easy ) And focus o…

mootools documentation is fine. It's just different and therefore "harder". Has nothing to do with your ability to "ship" it's you're lack of knowledge of the library that's the problem. Not the library. If you can't work a saw it doesn't mean the saw sucks and scissors work better. It means you can't work a saw. that was probably a bad analogy but I can't think of any better one atm.

'mootools documentation is fine. It's just different and therefore "harder"'

I think I know what you mean, the docs are mostly a reference documentation from what it seems.

But the learning curve is steeper, especially with lack of documentation focused on the beginner.

I know, Django docs are similar (but less worse in this aspect). Still, when you finish the tutorial you don't know where to head.

That's where jQuery shines, it takes you through every step, not to mention it's easier to understand. Hence, more plugins and more users.

"It means you can't work a saw". At this day and age, "saw manufacturers" have to be concerned about the easy of use of the saw.

Of course this is an analogy, because js tools are "free", but it's still a nice idea to go for the better cost x benefit in terms of capabilities/community/libraries etc.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#195

Post by lifeisstillgood »

davidw wrote: post #165
metaphorm wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Separation of concerns is a very good design pattern. MVC server frameworks (like Rails and Django) have already separated out the concern of displaying data to the user with their template systems. its a very reasonable next step to just migrate the entire template system off the server and let the client do it. This has gigantic performance increases for servers under heavy load, and it puts the display lo…

Templates... ok - that's fairly convincing. I'm less convinced about keeping the model and controller client side, because they end up replicating stuff that still has to live on the server anyway, to some degree. That just seems to make things harrier than they were to begin with.

I think if you are trying to replicate the same functions you are right. But if I have, say, a User model then it is merely a conveniently name for two groupings of functions.

My client side user should know nothing about Dbase lookups or persona verification - just as server model should not care about displaying addresses. Overall I think getting the crap out of the server makes it much much easier to reason and architect

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#196

Post by klibertp »

tbrownaw wrote: post #147
aditya wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with that if every service is using the right tool for the job and provides a sane API? Maybe maintenance?

Yes. The more different languages (and frameworks) someone has to know, the harder it is to hire them. If you hire people who only know the language of one small part of your system, they can't help out on other parts during emergencies and there will be difficulties adding new parts (which language do you use, or which existing part do you steal developers from). If you hire people who know one language and train th…

And it's rather a good thing, no? I mean, for me, as a developer who happens to know at least a dozen of languages quite well and has a basic grasp on a dozen more, I like it that way. Namely, I like being a harder to find good with limited supply, this means that I will be paid more.

Otherwise what would be the point of learning all these languages, frameworks, libs and environments? Of course the learning experience can "make you a better developer", but is it supposed to be only that?

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#197

Post by SergeyHack »

ludflu wrote: post #63
sramsay wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Does Backbone help you solve your problems?" This really bears repeating over and over again, and I think it's a corollary of "start by writing the dumbest thing that can possibly work." If you start with dumb, simple things, the problems become more obvious. Dumb simple things tend to shake out the parts that are tedious to build, or non-conformant, or confusing to read, or hard to maintain. It may be that Backbone…

I hear what you're saying, and I basically agree. However, I still see some shops building new product with Jakarta Struts, hand coded javascript, and no continuous integration. They spend way too much time doing things that could be automated, which would allow them to spend more time on quality, or more features. (Say, if you want to use a java webstack, have you heard of spring & jquery, and maybe you should try h…

Exactly. Unfortunately this kind of discussions often leads to "black"/ "white" suggestions instead of the looking for a good balance between poles.

I wish all the energy of these polarized discussions would go into learning of the ways to find a good balance.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#198

Post by corresation »

artursapek wrote: post #75

1. Go to Home Depot. 2. Pick the tools you like. Get a good hammer, saw, adjustable square. 3. Leave Home Depot and go get good with them. 4. If something breaks or doesn't perform a task you need, go back to Home Depot to supplement your toolbox.

The "tool" analogy breaks down somewhat in that what we're really talking about are building standards and frameworks. If you build your home as an insulated concrete form to European green standards, you can't simply start building the rest as a stick and plaster home if you find that your needs change or your understanding of ICF wasn't complete. If you did you would end up with a mishmashed hodgepodge that ends up being the worst of both.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#199

Post by purephase »

dgesang wrote: post #184
purephase wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If it wasn't the security issue laden monstrosity that it is, I could see it living on.

But the facts are that the only real "secure" version is the PPAPI implementation in Chrome (which has it's own limitations), Adobe has dropped future development for embedded systems and that it is almost non-existent on mobile does not speak to the longevity that you predict.

Flex is cool, but it's dependency on Flash will be it's noose.

Re: Web Development: A Crazy World

#200

Post by amercade »

31reasons wrote: post #120
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am amazed a rant can go English -> Mandarin -> English via half the world's tech forums, and still be recognised by its original author. But what really blows my socks off is how a tech forum in Beijing follows rants from Slovenian blog to a Californian forum and back again. And it actually matters to the Chinese because they liked it as much as we did. Welcome to the new global culture, sharing the same memepool.

This is scary, we are loosing diversity at an incredible rate.

I don't think this implies we are losing diversity. Internet makes easy to connect with like minded people and share information. That sounds good. Like minded people around the globe becomes more alike? Maybe. But just in the field they share. And they started with similar interests anyway.
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