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If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

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Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#171

Post by lstamour »

davidjnelson wrote: post #161
lstamour wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah but then you get http://www.100percentjs.com/just-like-grunt-gulp-browserify-... (and HN discussion) ... of course, despite this, I'm in your camp. Even as I'm doing mobile and now learning modern/ISO C++ for cross-platform development, the strengths that originally got me hired were in web programming and you can always pick up enough to work with views in one of the big technologies, be it Wordpress/Drupal (sigh…

Angular. Seriously.

Today that makes sense. But the react guys (at Facebook) have a point, Angular (developed for LOB apps at Google) can be slow unless you write optimizations for update looping, etc. Eventually Angular directives might be better supported natively as polymer-style components (those are slower still now, and lack IE support), or Dart might rise in popularity, at least beyond that of Angular. And then you've Google Closure, which, like any company-sponsored project/library will get the job done but at the expense of some amount of lock-in, since these projects tend to already have lots of internal code to build with. I'm not sure the answer's that simple. That said, I agree that for today's mix of browsers, Angular has the best compatibility if you want more than React.js. Ember just took too long to settle down and still has oddities in data handling.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#172

Post by dankoss »

FigBug wrote: post #100

If I could do it all again, I'd study a lot more math in University and probably end up focusing on something like Audio DSP. I think it's a pretty safe career choice since it's hard self learn compared to a lot of other fields, meaning competition is less. And if you are good, companies will happily pay you to learn tech of the week.

Less competition, but also less demand and less career options.

Source: This is what I do.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#173

Post by grey-area »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #73
grey-area wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, this is only possible by web apps not being web apps. I'm not sure I agree with that, though it might never happen because the owners of the major platforms have absolutely no interest in being turned into a dumb foundation by the web (or a badly debugged set of device drivers, as Andreesen put it in 1995). The reasons for the ascendance of mobile are political and corporate though, not technical. There's li…

> Native apps are currently superior in: performance, accessible APIs, 3D And data security. Web apps don't to my knowledge have a great deal to offer in that area.

Almost every device connects to the internet now, not just web servers. I'm not sure the mobile or desktop story is any better - there are known and unknown exploits for all the main platforms, the DRM is broken frequently, and once the OS is exploited it's very hard for an app to stay secure individually.

So I'd say the web is at least equal to that in security, and perhaps better as you can quickly push out fixes and are in control of the entire infrastructure, whereas app developers are at the mercy of their platform creator to roll out fixes or allow them to roll out fixes, which can take days or weeks for approval.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#174

Post by eliasmacpherson »

grey-area wrote: post #173
eliasmacpherson wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Native apps are currently superior in: performance, accessible APIs, 3D And data security. Web apps don't to my knowledge have a great deal to offer in that area.

Almost every device connects to the internet now, not just web servers. I'm not sure the mobile or desktop story is any better - there are known and unknown exploits for all the main platforms, the DRM is broken frequently, and once the OS is exploited it's very hard for an app to stay secure individually. So I'd say the web is at least equal to that in security, and perhaps better as you can quickly push out fixes a…

Really have to disagree. You start on a false premise that almost every device is connected to the internet.

In banking, insurance, governmental, education and medical spheres, there are hard privacy and secrecy requirements. Same goes for military - look what happens when they slip up. If you want to think about it - what percentage of the economy do these interests represent? I would say a large portion. So to my mind a large portion of the economy has a data security requirement that don't seem to be met by web apps.

In the consumer sphere, sure you can replace some programs with javascript, but can you see apple employee's using google docs at work? Why is that?

Also in corporate networks, they may be connected but through a proxy - which would reduce the attack surface.

There are air gaps and network gaps for data security. So your conclusion is based on a false premise.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#175

Post by grey-area »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #174
grey-area wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every device connects to the internet now, not just web servers. I'm not sure the mobile or desktop story is any better - there are known and unknown exploits for all the main platforms, the DRM is broken frequently, and once the OS is exploited it's very hard for an app to stay secure individually. So I'd say the web is at least equal to that in security, and perhaps better as you can quickly push out fixes a…

Really have to disagree. You start on a false premise that almost every device is connected to the internet. In banking, insurance, governmental, education and medical spheres, there are hard privacy and secrecy requirements. Same goes for military - look what happens when they slip up. If you want to think about it - what percentage of the economy do these interests represent? I would say a large portion. So to my m…

If you're relying on air-gaps or proxies for security, the same applies to web apps, so I don't think this advances your argument that native apps are more secure than web apps - Intranets can host web apps too.

Apologies for side-tracking you with this irrelevant argument about connection to the internet - I was thinking of mobile devices specifically, which are almost all exposed directly, but you're right, there is a whole class of apps/devices which are deliberately kept off the public internet.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#176

Post by room271 »

I would learn (as someone who is interested in backend stuff - scalability, high-performance systems, apis) related to web-work:

- HTTP - C (because it teaches you how computers work a bit) - One of the new JVM languages (either Clojure or Scala, preferably the first) - some bash (for scripting)

Realistically that is a lot to learn in a year.

On top of that I'd start dabbling with Javascript but not expect to learn it this year (that's for next year).

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#177

Post by eliasmacpherson »

grey-area wrote: post #175
eliasmacpherson wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really have to disagree. You start on a false premise that almost every device is connected to the internet. In banking, insurance, governmental, education and medical spheres, there are hard privacy and secrecy requirements. Same goes for military - look what happens when they slip up. If you want to think about it - what percentage of the economy do these interests represent? I would say a large portion. So to my m…

If you're relying on air-gaps or proxies for security, the same applies to web apps, so I don't think this advances your argument that native apps are more secure than web apps - Intranets can host web apps too. Apologies for side-tracking you with this irrelevant argument about connection to the internet - I was thinking of mobile devices specifically, which are almost all exposed directly, but you're right, there i…

http://fcw.com/articles/2013/03/18/amazon-cia-cloud.aspx

I can see how these intranet apps can be secure, but not when on the internet. When I hear web app, I think internet.

You're right that there's no real reason why an intranet app can't be secure.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#178

Post by collyw »

edwinnathaniel wrote: post #65
collyw wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the type of web app you are making, there are generally better (more productive) tools for the job than Java.

In general, the productivity gap has dimnished signficantly. Unless if we are discussing prototype/quick throwaway/very small web app. In that segment, Rails is still the king.

I was under the impression that you could build pretty decent robust apps with Rails / Django. OK, you wouldn't want to run the size of Amazon on those, but the majority websites are orders of magnitude smaller.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#179

Post by pjmlp »

erichocean wrote: post #49
ardfard wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed too for your opinion about how to do a startup. But I want to add C to your full stack suggestion. Sometimes it pays off to know low-level details about your choice of technologies. Almost every important technologies that I know is implemented in C.

I'm rewriting our Node.js based server in a combination of C and LuaJIT as we speak. The performance difference is absolutely astounding, in part because our Node.js app relies heavily on compiled modules, and the cost to cross from JavaScript to C++ and back is obscene. The straight C implementation looks like it'll be over 1000 times faster for our use case, which involves tons of buffer manipulation and usage of c…

Funny, I was doing Tcl + C + Apache back in 1999, what is old becomes new.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#180

Post by pjmlp »

badman_ting wrote: post #121
stiff wrote: post #105

This idea that a software engineer picks a language as his "favourite" and becomes a "Ruby developer" or a "JavaScript developer" ever since is completely misguided, and I'm sad to see it cherished further in this article. Languages are tools, and tools should be picked depending on the project: its application domain, performance requirements, availability of libraries for important subproblems that have been identi…

If you want to point out that the way the world works is crazy - well, alright. But the rest of us have to make a living, and the way hiring works is that organizations hire in part based on your experience with a certain language or platform. "Well, they're doing it wrong". Okay, let's say I agree. Then what? "Right tool for the job" is getting to be a very tiring orthodoxy. It seems to come around whenever people d…

No it is standard way to work in the consulting world.

Every project I work on tends to have a complete different technology stack.

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