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Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

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Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#3

Post by habitue »

I think I subconsciously had the same opinion as Michael, but reading it out loud makes you consider how dumb the idea really is. Do I think python developers are stupid just because it's easier to program in than C? No of course not. Elitism is rarely justified based on the tools or platforms people use.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#4

Post by steveklabnik »

I, for one, get really annoyed with our "lol web programmers are teh suxxors" overlords.

As it turns out, Jeff says exactly what I'm thinking. I _am_ into compilers. I'm writing an OS as a side project. I code in Haskell for fun. But I love web programming, and these two quotes are the most succinct way I've seen it written:

> The web is the most efficient, most pervasive, most immediate distribution network for software ever created.

> As a software developer, I am happiest writing software that gets used.

As Jeff says, yeah, there's a lot of bad web apps. But there are also a lot of bad desktop apps. The "web programmers suck" crowd seems to ignore that fun little fact.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#5

Post by shin_lao »

I think Jeff's post lacks humility and perspective. Generally you try not to name laws after yourself, but let's say it was some sort of humour.

I truly think he should put web programming aside for a while, and realize someone has got to write the operating systems, web servers, middle wares, compilers, tools that make everything possible.

If things are simple it's because other people solved the hard problems for him, and sorry, but it's more challenging and requires some "traits" not found in every engineer.

Of course writing a complex, working and reliable web application is far from trivial, but please, realize that the world is rich and vast and there is always a bigger mountain out there.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#6

Post by nudded »

The problems that can happen with a webapp:

* your account gets compromised, your password is saved in plaintext, etc...

* their servers are down, you want to work on a Word doc, edit an image. To bad, you can't because the app itself is down

* not everybody has constant internet connectivity.

* Webapps can never be as powerful as a desktop application.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#7

Post by wwalker3 »

Once technologies like Google's Native Client take off, the web browser becomes merely the installer and updater for my native app.

And it'll be none too soon -- then we can abandon the doomed effort to somehow cobble together huge, powerful apps like Maya and Photoshop out of a mess of JavaScript and XML.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#8

Post by far33d »

I love the "I like using tools like this because they are hard and it makes me feel smarter than everyone else" attitude. I understand everything on the little laundry list, including things I wish I'd never had to do (UML diagrams, for instance), but choose to work on the web. Why? Because I prefer my "hard problems" to be customer problems, not technical ones. I'm happy to work on hard technical problems when products require it, but there's plenty of difficulty just figuring out what people want and how to get it to them quickly. There's no glory in doing hard things for the sake of it. I don't need to purposely handicap myself just to prove that I'm smarter than other people.

I'm fully confident in my intelligence without playing stupid games.

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