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

I’m done with the web

randyluecke.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 291 posts

Re: I’m done with the web

#111

Post by zoul »

johnbender wrote: post #40
jonsterling wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, so much. Randy's probably right about how silly all the tiny reinventions of UI frameworks are. And, though I'm generally unsympathetic to claims that a project is a failure because people don't want to learn the tools, I think it's safe to say here that asking people to use a language that's only marginally less horrible than JavaScript is not going to be a win from any perspective. But he fails to realize tha…

I read the post differently. I think he was simply pointing out the fact that we've stagnated at the same level of abstraction in the web space for a long time. Cappuccino is just the example he's using to point out where we were relative to where we are and in that light it's almost a regression. For the purposes of his larger argument, the way that Cappuccino delivered its abstractions (Objective-J) isn't as import…

This is my feeling, too. I do iOS development for living and whenever I have to do some web programming, I feel like writing in assembly, having to micro-manage things I should not care about.

It pains me that Cappuccino has received so little interest, for despite all its possible drawbacks it represents a very interesting path for future web programming.

Re: I’m done with the web

#112

Post by bmcmahen »

freehunter wrote: post #66
marknutter wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so relieved to hear that there are no amateur native developers. Gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

The point seems to be that the web is cool and hip, which attracts people without computer science backgrounds. Without a solid footing in software design fundamentals, "hack it until it works" seems like a perfectly valid way to run a development cycle. The desktop is not cool or hip, so the people doing it tend to be people who really want to be there, not chasing trends. It's a vast oversimplification of the situa…

I think a fair number of us non-cs-ers end up in web development primarily because html/css is more accessible. I, myself, was more interested in design than coding, and I only learned the basics as a means to creating the designs I wanted. From there you might start learning some JavaScript, you might start learning some frameworks (like Backbone, or ember), and you might get fairly proficient with them... but I don't think the web attracts non cs people because it's "cool" or "hip".

Re: I’m done with the web

#113

Post by njharman »

crazygringo wrote: post #44
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…

I disagree. Web programming can be fundamentally different from application programming. Application programming tends to be far more complex, far more planned, and far slower. Applications last for years and years, and new releases might take multiple years. Whereas web programming can be extremely experimental, prototype-y, with multiple releases a day . It's also vastly faster to program. This isn't an argument ag…

The believe expressed in first three paragraphs proves

> all the lessons of the process of developing software have also been discarded and are slowly being re-learned.

Re: I’m done with the web

#115

Post by ebiester »

npsimons wrote: post #96
pifflesnort wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another related example, I recently learned of H2 ( http://www.h2database.com/html/main.html ) and I honestly had to ask myself, why is this needed? If you want an embedded SQL DB why not just use SQLite? SQLite is native C, H2 is Java. There are significant deployment and potential stability advantages to not using native binaries in your Java software. There have been some neat hacks to get sqlite running under J…

I noticed that the fully native Java was a big selling point on H2. Admittedly, I'm not doing much Java these days (slight understatement), but I was under the impression that the Java interfaces to SQLite were fairly mature? Top two links in Google go to a very informative SO answer with lots of options and SQLJet. Bad sign though that "apt-cache search sqlite | grep -i java" gives no results on Debian stable. I'll…

H2, more than anything else, is great for testing. It can emulate oracle and DB2 syntax, among others, to allow us to reasonably approximate a running system on our own machines, then test against the big database (which is much slower) at a later stage.

Fully native java and an in-memory implementation mean that we can very quickly implement it in our systems.

Re: I’m done with the web

#116

Post by jacquesc »

I share his frustration with the JS community. There is a rampant wave of a sort of "Ludditism" where people fight tooth and nail against innovations trying to make things better. The argument always comes down to "what we have is good enough, and OMG file size!!!".

I'm a bit more optimistic though. Randy and the Cappucino team blazed a new trail, and although he burnt out there are others who are continuing on and reinventing client side dev. Backbone was just a start. Ember, Angular, CoffeeScript, tons of other great tools/libraries are advancing things at a now exponential pace. Thankfully there are plenty of other early adopters willing to wade through the early buggy code to build projects on top of them.

Re: I’m done with the web

#117

Post by demian »

martinced wrote: post #11

There's no way yet another webapp framework, no matter how close it emulates the desktop, is going to gain lots of traction when it mandates users to use... Objective-J and JavaScript. Seriously: being on your high horses and all is fine and well but your article is an oversimplification as to how the web works and as to what devs need and want. For example lately I've been very interested in flapjax (FRP UI) and web…

He can blame the technicians for being lazy or stupid, and he does it, but the fact remains, they didn't wanted to use his tech.

Some front-end devs are technicians that need to generate value quickly, and most can't afford investing time in a new complex system that may disappear tomorrow. If there are no clear advantages on the business side that justifies the investment, then there is no pressure to the front-end devs to do it.

Good engineering also means optimizing technical designs for the usage of the technology in order to reduce costs. That includes factoring in the skills of the technicians that are going to use the tech (and the cost of training them).

Re: I’m done with the web

#118

Post by MatthewPhillips »

tantaman wrote: post #97
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 not that there was a complete reboot of IT. It's that web solutions are just now being applied to problems we already solved years ago in other industries (telco, defense). The web wasn't originally intended to be used to provide native like experiences and so the foundations for that just weren't there. So yes, people had to re-invent and re-discover all those desktop frameworks but this time in a javascript &…

Good news! Many of these very problems are being worked on right now. The component issue you raised is being fixed with web components: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webcomponents/shadowd... which should be making its way into stable browsers in a matter of months. The module system is being fixed by ES6 modules which should be appearing in Firefox and Chrome within the year. I haven't heard anything about namespaced CSS and I agree that's something that we need.

Re: I’m done with the web

#119

Post by laumars »

johnbender wrote: post #40
jonsterling wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, so much. Randy's probably right about how silly all the tiny reinventions of UI frameworks are. And, though I'm generally unsympathetic to claims that a project is a failure because people don't want to learn the tools, I think it's safe to say here that asking people to use a language that's only marginally less horrible than JavaScript is not going to be a win from any perspective. But he fails to realize tha…

I read the post differently. I think he was simply pointing out the fact that we've stagnated at the same level of abstraction in the web space for a long time. Cappuccino is just the example he's using to point out where we were relative to where we are and in that light it's almost a regression. For the purposes of his larger argument, the way that Cappuccino delivered its abstractions (Objective-J) isn't as import…

Have we stagnated? Or has the rise of lower powered web-enabled devices forced us to re-think the classic rule of programming (ie that applications can progressively increase their system requirements as PCs are progressively becoming more powerful to handle the load).

Let's remember that even as recently as 2-3 years ago, top end phones and tablets were single core ARM processors clocked at ~1GHz. And devices of that spec are still in wide spread use even now.

The point of the HTML is that it's an open standard which should work on any internet device regardless of platform, patents and what not. While I admire the ambition of the guys who push the envelope of what the web can do, they often forget that everyday sites also need to cater for low end devices used by everyday folk.

Re: I’m done with the web

#120

Post by jchrisa »

pifflesnort wrote: post #99
corresation wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 brow…

You don't have to install the browser based ones. Also, if they are decent at all, you can link to them.
Post reply on HN