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How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

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Re: How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

#31

Post by jiggy2011 »

onion2k wrote: post #28
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the alternative is working for days / weeks on a feature that the end-user may not even use (is the message I'm getting from this article). Being able to create and alter a feature quickly is important in an agile environment.

There are better ways to discover whether a feature is wanted than hacking up a test version and seeing if the users use it. The idea is to test whether people want it before that stage. You can ask them, but often they'll say yes regardless because things often sound great. On the most basic level, adding a UI element that responds with nothing more than a "Coming soon!" message and measuring if anyone clicks it wor…

That has to be one of the most frustrating UI patterns out there, clicking a button and not knowing whether it will do what it says or say "haha, nope!". It's bad enough when apps do this to try and persuade you to upgrade to the pro version.

What you want to know is not just whether people click the button , but whether having a certain feature available changes the way that people actually use your application.

Re: How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

#32

Post by steve_barham »

There's a certain irony in the poster dismissing Java with one hand:

    "In effect, to the developer it 'feels like writing Java,' which as we all know, is a terrible feeling"
While professing the benefits of something which looks rather similar to Java tag libraries.
"If you’re thinking, “that’s not HTML anymore! What are these graph, line, and axis elements?”—well, that’s the point, Angular allows us to “extend HTML” to create those elements!"
That's from a tag library released in June, 2002.

Lest angry Java-haters accuse me of trying to extol the virtues of JSPs, taglibs et al, this is not the point of my post. I'm indicating the commonalities between two modes of development separated by more than a decade, which in the churnful world of technology might as well be separate geologic eras.

It's interesting to compare these two things (particularly when a prior effort has fallen by the wayside) to determine if you are implementing the same concept in a new guise, or if you are removing the issues that people had with prior models which led to their lack of use.

Re: How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

#33

Post by dagw »

onion2k wrote: post #28
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the alternative is working for days / weeks on a feature that the end-user may not even use (is the message I'm getting from this article). Being able to create and alter a feature quickly is important in an agile environment.

There are better ways to discover whether a feature is wanted than hacking up a test version and seeing if the users use it. The idea is to test whether people want it before that stage. You can ask them, but often they'll say yes regardless because things often sound great. On the most basic level, adding a UI element that responds with nothing more than a "Coming soon!" message and measuring if anyone clicks it wor…

Doesn't that have essentially the same problem as asking? If is see a new UI element after an update to an app I use, of course I'm going to click it to see what it is, even if it looks like something I don't actually need.

Re: How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

#34

Post by lewispollard »

benpbenp wrote: post #23
marquis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the english language requires a gender-specific pronoun (I grew up saying "They" to the chagrin of my teacher) it always makes me a little bit happy to see She in texts. As a woman it makes you realise how much you don't see it. So it stops being a gimmick once the powers that be let us use a non-gendered pronoun ("they" is perfectly fine to me). Or we see a 50/50 split and rewrite the history books accordingly…

When I see "she" it makes me reflexively stop and look back to make sure I haven't missed something, wondering, "who is this 'she', I must have skipped the paragraph introducing the subject." This is definitely bad for readability, the user, and all that. Please, anyone reading this who complains about line-heights and font-sizes, pay attention to grammar as well.

Maybe the problem is with you, and not with the text?

Re: How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

#35

Post by aaronem »

abrons wrote: post #26
benpbenp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see "she" it makes me reflexively stop and look back to make sure I haven't missed something, wondering, "who is this 'she', I must have skipped the paragraph introducing the subject." This is definitely bad for readability, the user, and all that. Please, anyone reading this who complains about line-heights and font-sizes, pay attention to grammar as well.

When I see a comment like this, it makes me reflexively stop and look back to see if the commenter is trying to make a joke, or is really so dense and petty that they're trying to make this an issue.

On HN? Do you really have to ask?

Re: How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

#36

Post by taude »

steve_barham wrote: post #32

There's a certain irony in the poster dismissing Java with one hand: "In effect, to the developer it 'feels like writing Java,' which as we all know, is a terrible feeling" While professing the benefits of something which looks rather similar to Java tag libraries. "If you’re thinking, “that’s not HTML anymore! What are these graph, line, and axis elements?”—well, that’s the point, Angular allows us to “extend HTML”…

Don't forget the dependency injection pattern that Angular uses all over the place. That smells like Java, too. :)

Re: How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

#38

Post by coldtea »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #30
benpbenp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see "she" it makes me reflexively stop and look back to make sure I haven't missed something, wondering, "who is this 'she', I must have skipped the paragraph introducing the subject." This is definitely bad for readability, the user, and all that. Please, anyone reading this who complains about line-heights and font-sizes, pay attention to grammar as well.

From the article (the first time "she" is used): "The developer refuses. She’s worked too hard on Feature X, and dammit, you’ll have to pry it from her cold dead hands!!!" With the exception of the unnecessary extra !! I don't see what is wrong with the grammer, it's clear in this context that "she" is the developer.

"Let's artificially use the statistically unlikely case that the developer is a woman, in order to inspire more women to be programmers"...

What kind of BS magic thinking is that?

If you want to inspire women, teach them about the technology as girls and encourage those who like to work with it.

Pronouns ain't where it's at.

Re: How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

#39

Post by heavi5ide »

steve_barham wrote: post #32

There's a certain irony in the poster dismissing Java with one hand: "In effect, to the developer it 'feels like writing Java,' which as we all know, is a terrible feeling" While professing the benefits of something which looks rather similar to Java tag libraries. "If you’re thinking, “that’s not HTML anymore! What are these graph, line, and axis elements?”—well, that’s the point, Angular allows us to “extend HTML”…

Hi, article author here. This was more a comment on the verbosity of Google Closure's syntax. If you're not familiar with it, to get the most out of the closure compiler, you have to add type annotations in javascript comments for pretty much every function parameter, return value, constant, etc. Otherwise the compiler's static analysis doesn't really have much to work with. This makes it kind of a pain to javascript devs who are not used to this sort of thing.

Coming from Java, I probably found it a little less annoying than most javascript devs. Although in Java (as I mentioned in a footnote) you have really powerful and mature tooling like Eclipse, which--whatever else you think of it--does really help with Java's general verbosity. You're not going to find the same sort of tool help for dealing with Closure javascript.

Re: How Angular Lets Us Iterate Like Crazy

#40

Post by heavi5ide »

taude wrote: post #36
steve_barham wrote: post #32

There's a certain irony in the poster dismissing Java with one hand: "In effect, to the developer it 'feels like writing Java,' which as we all know, is a terrible feeling" While professing the benefits of something which looks rather similar to Java tag libraries. "If you’re thinking, “that’s not HTML anymore! What are these graph, line, and axis elements?”—well, that’s the point, Angular allows us to “extend HTML”…

Don't forget the dependency injection pattern that Angular uses all over the place. That smells like Java, too. :)

Definitely! I've used Spring's DI container before and while I wasn't a huge fan of the (at the time) XML config, I found the experience to be pretty nice.
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