I’m done with the web • Hacker News Board

Re: I’m done with the web

#81

Post by npsimons » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:42 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #29

jacquesm wrote: post #2

> The community has tossed out everything we’ve learned from the last 30 years of building applications in favor of being able to put something together quickly with complete disregard for maintainability or extendability. That's spot on. You can add in to that that all the lessons of the process of developing software have also been discarded and are slowly being re-learned. It is as if with the birth of the web the…

It's more like the ease of Web programming opened up programming to an entire new slice of the population that would never have had the opportunity to become programmers before. These people don't have computer science degrees, so they spend a lot of time reinventing wheels. But lots of it works well enough despite all that, and as time passes, they learn and get better. The messiness is a good sign, not a bad one. T…

Being an egalitarian, I have to keep reminding myself of this, even if I recoil at how messy some of the results are. Still, it behooves us to pause and reflect, and maybe consider if there is a better way? The first comment I read in this thread said that Obj-J and Cappuccino were hell to deal with, and much as I scoff at the idea, some people (read: a whole lot of web developers) aren't willing to spend a couple of days learning a new toolset. What we need to do is take the good stuff, the optimized, polished debugged and proven software and move it beyond merely libraries, toolkits and frameworks: we have to make it easier to use. This same dichotomy exist(s|ed) between PHP and everything else (eg, Perl, Python, Ruby), and inroads are being made there; why not try to make the same inroads with our web frameworks?

Re: I’m done with the web

#82

Post by corresation » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:43 PM UTC

pifflesnort wrote: post #62

corresation wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is as if with the birth of the web there was a complete reboot of the IT industry The web won. It fought a battle against many foes, and it came out on top. Re-read that again and seriously think about it, because comments such as yours don't accept that simple reality. Do you contest it? Do you argue that the web somehow circumvented the competition? For 15 years I've been promoting the web with groups that I've…

> The web won. It fought a battle against many foes, and it came out on top. It won what , exactly? The war against Gopher for presentation of hypertext documents and information display? There's more to heaven and earth than data presentation and consumption. The examples of genuinely great web applications are few and far between, if not near non-existent. Are Google Apps really the best the web has to offer? Cappu…

There's more to heaven and earth than data presentation and consumption.

I do my banking in a browser. I do my email in a browser. I manage photos in a browser. I manage relationships in a browser. I do my taxes in a browser. I order goods in a browser. I ship goods in a browser. I reserve items at the library in a browser. I watch movies in a browser. I listen to music in a browser. I push apps to my smartphone in a browser. I get directions in a browser. I find phone numbers in a browser. I phone people in a browser. I video conference in a browser...

I can go on and on all day. If you really want to argue that the web is a surrogate for Gopher, this conversation is futile.

Re: I’m done with the web

#83

Post by hpguy » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:43 PM UTC

Why would I prefer to plug and play (and toss away) micro, modular libraries/frameworks designed to interop or to be independently used instead of using a monolithic technology that pushes to my throat ObjJ, Cocoa and a other contraints that follow (like IE8+ only)? That needs an explanation?

Re: I’m done with the web

#84

Post by lucian1900 » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

martinced wrote: post #34

I'm sorry about the harsh tone of my other comment (most upvoted comment so far) but the tone of the author is aggressive so... Now on Cappucino's website I read this: "Cappuccino is an open source application framework for developing applications that look and feel like the desktop software users are familiar with." and I can't help but think this is all wrong. There are many (most ?) users who are now familiar with…

Swing is a particularly bad example of UI toolkit. Look at things like Qt, Gtk or Cocoa instead.

Re: I’m done with the web

#85

Post by jbigelow76 » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

vyrotek wrote: post #46

corresation wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is as if with the birth of the web there was a complete reboot of the IT industry The web won. It fought a battle against many foes, and it came out on top. Re-read that again and seriously think about it, because comments such as yours don't accept that simple reality. Do you contest it? Do you argue that the web somehow circumvented the competition? For 15 years I've been promoting the web with groups that I've…

I feel the true 'reboot' and memory loss happened with native mobile apps. How did we ever think this would be a good idea? As you mentioned, the unique inputs seemed to have temporarily blinded us to real progress we've made with the web. Why can't web-based apps accept all these inputs as well? The other big problem we have is that we're stuck with this idea of having cute little icons to launch things. Why can't w…

    >I feel the true 'reboot' and memory loss happened with native mobile apps. How did we ever think this would be a good idea?

Native apps weren't a good idea for innovative reasons or to push boundaries of what's achievable, they were a good idea for business reasons: vendor and platform lock in.

Re: I’m done with the web

#86

Post by danielweber » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

Your day job is to build a piece of web software and you can’t take a few days to learn the ins and outs?

Do you know how many frameworks people are pushing out there? It's a mountain. And everyone thinks the secret to success is to be behind the latest greatest framework. Which the world doesn't need.

I know why they do it: because being behind a framework is an excellent point on the resume and will help you find employment, and so many employers really suck at evaluating people. But in the wake are a whole bunch of frameworks that some other employer is going to say "oh, you don't know CaffeineInjecterrr? Sorry, we need someone with 2 years of experience with it."

One reason founders complain that older people don't seem to know about the latest framework is that we've seen dozens of these things come and go like flashes in the pan.

I'm sorry if this comes off as a rant against this guy's framework.

Re: I’m done with the web

#87

Post by norswap » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:47 PM UTC

My on topic, but only slightly, comment is that there is too much of an emphasis on framework these days. Why not libraries I can call at my discretion? It is me who is master of the code, and not the reverse.

Re: I’m done with the web

#88

Post by imissmyjuno » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:47 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #65

corresation wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is as if with the birth of the web there was a complete reboot of the IT industry The web won. It fought a battle against many foes, and it came out on top. Re-read that again and seriously think about it, because comments such as yours don't accept that simple reality. Do you contest it? Do you argue that the web somehow circumvented the competition? For 15 years I've been promoting the web with groups that I've…

It's almost as if you've drunk your own kool-aid. >And they all fell by the wayside. They lacked in features. They lacked in agility. No, no and no. The web "won" because its simple and the lowest common denominator was good enough for most people. The web has always been far behind in terms of features and agility (depending on what you're trying to optimize when it comes to agility). The web won solely because it w…

But it has won nevertheless. The question then is what we are to do to move the web into the realm of applications. I don't have an answer, but one advantage mobile apps hold is UI standardization.

There is no one right way to build an app for the web the way there is for Android or iOS. That's a problem for both the applications authors and users. Cappuccino attempted to solve that problem in a way that did not appeal to programmers, it seems. jQuery UI succeeded to a point, and now Bootstrap seems to be the framework of choice. Perhaps a widget-based UI framework that can target the desktop and mobile devices would make sense.

Re: I’m done with the web

#89

Post by mattgreenrocks » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:49 PM UTC

pifflesnort wrote: post #62

corresation wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is as if with the birth of the web there was a complete reboot of the IT industry The web won. It fought a battle against many foes, and it came out on top. Re-read that again and seriously think about it, because comments such as yours don't accept that simple reality. Do you contest it? Do you argue that the web somehow circumvented the competition? For 15 years I've been promoting the web with groups that I've…

> The web won. It fought a battle against many foes, and it came out on top. It won what , exactly? The war against Gopher for presentation of hypertext documents and information display? There's more to heaven and earth than data presentation and consumption. The examples of genuinely great web applications are few and far between, if not near non-existent. Are Google Apps really the best the web has to offer? Cappu…

It's like there's a culture of cultivated ignorance around web apps.

The pop culture of web development strikes me as a spastic, young programmer who flits from framework to framework, always in search of some magic elixir to make application development more pleasant. They know it isn't quite right, but they don't want to give up the hard-earned, arcane JS knowledge they've used. Nor are they willing to sit down and admit that, maybe they need to sit down and learn a thing or two about how to structure programs better (as we all do)!

Instead, it's emotional blog posts and bikeshedding over inane topics (vim, Coffeescript), rather than looking at the deeper issue - the utter mediocrity of the tools they're using.

Re: I’m done with the web

#90

Post by undoware » Thu, Mar 21, 2013, 4:50 PM UTC

The mistake made here is the assumption that we know what the web is evolving towards: (ostensibly) something like the desktop. Hence the eagerness to do it all again but on the web this time. (Isn't that the essence of Cappuccino?) It would be absurd even if mobile hadn't happened. So why are we clinging to the same default assumptions?

Think again.