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Software in 2014

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Re: Software in 2014

#211

Post by pistle »

weland wrote: post #62

I think this paints a rather meagre picture of software development in 2014: > More or less everything is expected to talk HTTP, and it’s really easy to make things talk HTTP. A lot of things that shouldn't talk HTTP are expected to just because there's an army of programmers who don't know better. Also, it's actually hard to make things talk HTTP, partly due to HTTP itself. However, much of this complexity is hidden…

These little devices are also running applications built with tools that have heavy runtime and library dependencies along with sandboxing, etc. etc. etc. We used to write closer to the metal with the responsibility to not take out the whole thing.

Now, we write features first, as "elegantly" as possible, THEN we optimize as required. Look at what 3D games are doing on little devices vs. how poorly long lists perform during scrolling.

There's plenty of power there, but code will bloat to fill all resources. You said it. "...complexity is hidden"

Re: Software in 2014

#212

Post by Joeri »

xd wrote: post #5

"It’s a pity some people still build important apps in PHP..." Getting real tired of seeing these baseless statements from so called software professionals. Here is an off-the-top-of-my-head list of features of modern day PHP: * yield * event * pthreads - yeap, real threads. * closures (including support for $this) * consistent hashing api * "finally" added to try-catch * empty() now supports expressions, rather than…

Speaking as someone who has written hundreds of thousands of lines of php over the years, i think php's main problem is not that it lacks features, but rather that it doesn't have a sane subset, a javascript-like 'good parts' if you will. PHP added OO api's for date and database handling in the 4 to 5 transition, but it never got around to doing the same for strings and arrays. So frameworkless php is by necessity a mixture of procedural and OO code (unless you go pure procedural), and always looks ugly. PHP's stewards could solve this by bringing all the API's into the OO fold, and I have experimented [0] with what PHP could look like if strings and arrays were objects, but so far this hasn't happened.

You do have some really nice frameworks that hide the procedural stuff, like laravel, and that code looks nice, but it is really slow. And this is the inherent conflict of the php developer. If you write raw php, it is ugly but fast. If you use a framework it is pretty but slow. The techempower benchmarks [1] demonstrate this, where raw php performs at near-native speeds, but frameworks like symfony and laravel are embarassingly slow in comparison.

So, php's scorn is well deserved. It's productive, yes, but it is impossible to build a world-class top-performing app in it and still get clean and consistent code without jumping through some sizeable hoops (like facebook did by building their own php engine and php-like language called Hack, in addition to their own frameworks).

[0] https://github.com/jsebrech/php-o

[1] http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r8&hw=i7...

Re: Software in 2014

#213

Post by krapp »

abvdasker wrote: post #166
xd wrote: post #5

"It’s a pity some people still build important apps in PHP..." Getting real tired of seeing these baseless statements from so called software professionals. Here is an off-the-top-of-my-head list of features of modern day PHP: * yield * event * pthreads - yeap, real threads. * closures (including support for $this) * consistent hashing api * "finally" added to try-catch * empty() now supports expressions, rather than…

Call me crazy, but PHP JSON manipulation is maybe second to node.

Node as javascript does handle the object notation natively, which is an advantage over PHP in terms of handling JSON. Which, coupled with the (recently corrected) awkward syntax for arrays, unfortunately makes PHP's most common pattern (conversion of SQL data into arrays and maybe into JSON) more of a hassle than it should be.

Re: Software in 2014

#214

Post by krapp »

Joeri wrote: post #212
xd wrote: post #5

"It’s a pity some people still build important apps in PHP..." Getting real tired of seeing these baseless statements from so called software professionals. Here is an off-the-top-of-my-head list of features of modern day PHP: * yield * event * pthreads - yeap, real threads. * closures (including support for $this) * consistent hashing api * "finally" added to try-catch * empty() now supports expressions, rather than…

Speaking as someone who has written hundreds of thousands of lines of php over the years, i think php's main problem is not that it lacks features, but rather that it doesn't have a sane subset, a javascript-like 'good parts' if you will. PHP added OO api's for date and database handling in the 4 to 5 transition, but it never got around to doing the same for strings and arrays. So frameworkless php is by necessity a…

This was a competent and accurate criticism of PHP. Backed up with references, neither of which were veekun's rant. Thank you for adding some signal to the noise which usually accompanies threads where PHP is mentioned.

Re: Software in 2014

#215

Post by zfran »

dscrd wrote: post #186
qwerta wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this would apply to early Ruby On Rails. PHP libs and interpreter are actually fairly good.

Can you have a long-running process on PHP these days? I thought it still wasn't an option.

yeah. I know of a startup doing significant data analysis with long-running (months without restarting) php processes.

Re: Software in 2014

#216

Post by coldtea »

BlackDeath3 wrote: post #174
coldtea wrote: post #19

Notice how everything he writes about mobile development is wrong? > First of all, you have to do your mobile development twice Nope, there are plenty of frameworks with large user bases, both OSS and with corporate backend to do it once. From Xamarin to PhoneGap. Especially 2D game developers are spoiled for choice. > The devices are memory-starved, CPU-starved, and battery-starved. The devices have never been bette…

>the battery lasts the whole day In my pocket, maybe. I get to practically watch my battery indicator drain before my eyes trying to do any sort intensive activity, or (god forbid) watch video.

Well, compare apples to apples though. Were you watching much 720/1080p video on those old featurephones the guy yearns for?

Re: Software in 2014

#217

Post by ThomPete »

aaronem wrote: post #202
ThomPete wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think you are more like an ex-smoker who after you managed to quit tells everyone who awful smoking is :)

Not really a parallel; you'll never meet a long-time cigarette smoker who doesn't know how awful a habit it is, although you'll probably meet some who will lie about it. On the other hand -- and I say this as a smoker, albeit as one who's cut back his habit to almost nothing over the last couple years -- smoking is an awful habit, which is both severely addictive and without meaningful benefit for the person with the…

In other words. The parallel is perfect.

Re: Software in 2014

#220

Post by sjwright »

gaius wrote: post #31
coldtea wrote: post #19

Notice how everything he writes about mobile development is wrong? > First of all, you have to do your mobile development twice Nope, there are plenty of frameworks with large user bases, both OSS and with corporate backend to do it once. From Xamarin to PhoneGap. Especially 2D game developers are spoiled for choice. > The devices are memory-starved, CPU-starved, and battery-starved. The devices have never been bette…

The best phone I ever owned was a Nokia 6310i, and I had to charge it only once, occasionally twice a week. Now with all the advances in battery technology, phones barely last a day and there's a thriving market in external batteries and portable chargers. If I am not using any of the "smart" features on my smartphone, just calls and texts, I would expect it to last longer than that old Nokia, but I might get at best…

> The best phone I ever owned was a Nokia 6310i

Which is nice and everything, but for me nowadays the phone part of a mobile device tends to be among the least used of its core features. For every call I make, I'm probably sending dozens of long text messages, taking dozens of high resolution photographs, reading dozens of web pages, listening to dozens of songs, investigating maps, writing notes and playing games.

We're no longer even talking about the same product segment. A modern smartphone is more of an iPod than a phone. More of a Palm Pilot than a phone. More of a GameBoy than a phone. More of a handheld GPS than a phone. More of a laptop than a phone. More of a camera than a phone.

These aren't inefficient phones, they're not phones.

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