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Software in 2014

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Re: Software in 2014

#251

Post by xyzzyz »

10098 wrote: post #180
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…

> 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. Agree with this. Actually, I'd love it if Google released some kind of an RPC library for passing around protocol buffers between applications. It would be so much better than the crazy pseudo-REST mess we have.

You can use Apache Thrift for that (developed by Facebook).

Re: Software in 2014

#252

Post by xd »

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.

I've been running long running process's with PHP for well over 8 years now.

Re: Software in 2014

#253

Post by fit2rule »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #235
fit2rule wrote: post #29

The client-side mess? I just use MOAI. Lua is a lovely language, and the MOAI engine itself is so well thought out, that I can manage to build our client apps for Windows, Linux, MacOSX, Android, iOS, Chrome NaCL, and even HTML5+JS target platforms. With the exact same code. At this point I just don't see any point to doing things natively. Actually, the tools that MOAI provides (and some of the other community frame…

As an aside: Moai is great, but it has a problem with lack of developer activity, to the point that a cynical person could (especially with the abrupt shutdown of Moai Cloud) consider it to be abandoned. For example, the current official Moai site's link to the downloadable SDK is broken, and there is currently nowhere to download the SDK; you have to build it yourself. There isn't even a proper official release beyo…

> you have to build it yourself

With great power comes great responsibility.

Also, you are wrong about the lack of developer activity - unless you meant Zipline themselves, but we MOAI heads all know that Zipline are too busy making real products with MOAI at this point. Besides Zipline, the MOAI-using community is flourishing .. there is a de-facto effort to address the issues you mention (Binary SDK releases being one of the most important ones), and there has been a lot of progress in the last 6 months towards merging everyones' branches.

>At the very least some of them could get together to coordinate stewardship of the project, something which seems completely lacking right now.

Pay more attention to the forums at getmoai.com if you think this is the situation at the moment, because actually there is stewardship occurring by some of the core MOAI guys. The effort to pull all requests into a new branch and prepare for a community-release is definitely well under way, and you may indeed see the issues you brought up, addressed properly in a few weeks. MOAI is in the transition stages from being a proprietary (yet open) software stack developed by a single company, towards a proper community-supported effort like we all know and love. This will happen.

Re: Software in 2014

#254

Post by mwcampbell »

fit2rule wrote: post #29

The client-side mess? I just use MOAI. Lua is a lovely language, and the MOAI engine itself is so well thought out, that I can manage to build our client apps for Windows, Linux, MacOSX, Android, iOS, Chrome NaCL, and even HTML5+JS target platforms. With the exact same code. At this point I just don't see any point to doing things natively. Actually, the tools that MOAI provides (and some of the other community frame…

What kind of apps are you writing in Moai? Games or something else?

I ask because there's a huge problem with rolling your own UI that you might not be aware of: accessibility for people with disabbilities, especially blind people. All of the major desktop and mobile platforms have accessibility APIs, which their native GUI toolkits (or dominant ones, in the case of desktop GNU/Linux) implement. These APIs are very tricky to get right in custom implementations; I've seen many projects get them wrong, especially on Windows, where I have the most experience with this stuff. If your app isn't something like a game that really can't be accessible to blind people unless it's specifically designed for them, then it pays to use the native UI toolkits.

Re: Software in 2014

#255

Post by raiph »

memracom wrote: post #151
zxcdw wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did explain why PHP is disgusting mess. And hell, the fact that people have that opinion stems from somewhere. And that is a fact we should all take a note of -- to build better tools. You see, PHP is nothing but a tool, and as a tool, it's not very liked one due to it's flaws. Solution? Abandon it! Build new, better tools instead of feeling threathened. Le PHP sink and die it's well deserved death and make way fo…

And that is precisely what Tim is saying. He happens to work mostly with the new tool named Go but he does recognize that there are others like Rust and Dart that are also trying to do things better. But we need to actually move away from using bad tools (and this has happened with PERL) and start using the newer, better tools more often. Every software developer should learn some Erlang (or Elixir), some Clojure, so…

Hi memracom,

Where will Perl 6 sit when/if it becomes something you could realistically use? Would you classify it as one of the bad tools or a newer, better one?

Re: Software in 2014

#256

Post by lobster_johnson »

fit2rule wrote: post #253
lobster_johnson wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside: Moai is great, but it has a problem with lack of developer activity, to the point that a cynical person could (especially with the abrupt shutdown of Moai Cloud) consider it to be abandoned. For example, the current official Moai site's link to the downloadable SDK is broken, and there is currently nowhere to download the SDK; you have to build it yourself. There isn't even a proper official release beyo…

> you have to build it yourself With great power comes great responsibility. Also, you are wrong about the lack of developer activity - unless you meant Zipline themselves, but we MOAI heads all know that Zipline are too busy making real products with MOAI at this point. Besides Zipline, the MOAI-using community is flourishing .. there is a de-facto effort to address the issues you mention (Binary SDK releases being…

I'm glad that things are better than they seem.

I had a bad experience years ago with the Genesis3D engine, which was similar to Moai -- open source, really easy to get productive with, an enthusiastic community. Then the company changed its strategy, abandoned the open source version, and the whole thing just collapsed. I wouldn't want to see the same thing happen with Moai.

Re: Software in 2014

#257

Post by mortyseinfeld »

aryastark wrote: post #236
memracom wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is precisely what Tim is saying. He happens to work mostly with the new tool named Go but he does recognize that there are others like Rust and Dart that are also trying to do things better. But we need to actually move away from using bad tools (and this has happened with PERL) and start using the newer, better tools more often. Every software developer should learn some Erlang (or Elixir), some Clojure, so…

Oh god. It's Perl. And no need to drag it through the mud here. It's pretty much the only language that gets Unicode right. It has nothing in common with the abject misery that is PHP. Perl came out in '87. Erlang came out in '86. I don't know what you're high on, other than trends and trendwhores. Clojure isn't new. Not to take a dig at Rich Hickey, but everything he is doing with immutable objects was done more tha…

Clojure isn't new. Not to take a dig at Rich Hickey, but everything he is doing with immutable objects was done more than a decade ago by the likes of Henry Baker (http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/home.html). Of course, everything that has ever been tried at all has been tried in some variant of Lisp/Scheme at one point in time.

Stop while you're behind. Nobody believes that Henry Baker's papers are equal to what Rich Hickey has done with immutable objects. Geez, get a grip on reality man.

Re: Software in 2014

#258

Post by kayoone »

codygman wrote: post #231
kayoone wrote: post #142

"More or less everything is built with an MVC-or-equivalent level of abstraction, and there are good frameworks to help us work sanely and cleanly. It’s a pity some people still build important apps in PHP and Spring, but those aren’t choices anyone is forcing them to make." Lost me right there. PHP in 2014 has some awesome frameworks and a huge open source community, never enjoyed working with it more than today.

I'll conceded that PHP in 2014 has some awesome frameworks but argue it doesn't matter because PHP was designed (very) badly from the beginning. BTW, PHP was my first language ;)

Every languages has its strenghts and weaknesses. I worked a lot with C# lately and love it, but i still enjoy modern PHP and Javascript.

Re: Software in 2014

#259

Post by dscrd »

xd wrote: post #252
dscrd wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've been running long running process's with PHP for well over 8 years now.

How did you deal with the resource leaks before PHP 5.3, which was released in 2009?

Re: Software in 2014

#260

Post by ksk »

72deluxe wrote: post #249
ksk wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use any definition you like. 50-ish employees? >Do we need to have thousands of companies listed in order for their software to qualify as "software" in your eyes? No, I just asked a simple question because I didn't know. I have no idea what you think you're replying to. But from your reply I get that you don't have the answer to my question. >I am not sure what your point is or why the size of the business i…

Apologies for the assumptions! I think you're right that the number of items being shipped on a platform is a good indication, but there's no real way to tell outside the walled gardens. There doesn't appear to be a massive take-up of the Metro app store, so I wonder if people are just ignoring it and still shipping native Win32 apps still? Or just nobody is writing anything? You're right though - I haven't the answe…

Heh, no need for any apologies.

My view is that the Metro app store will eventually take off. IMO Microsoft usually rushes to ship not-yet-finished products and which are then refined across successive versions/updates till people eventually accept them.

But as far as native apps go, I have not seen many SMEs pop up to ship commercial software on that. In contrast small businesses pop up all the time to ship iOS/Android apps.

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