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Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

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Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#31

Post by nickelplate »

People like to say that the web is replacing the desktop, but is this really the case? When I look at the web applications I use on a regular basis (Amazon, craigslist, LinkedIn...) I cannot think of a desktop app they have displaced. I cannot say, for example, that "I stopped using desktop application X because Amazon is so much better". On the other hand, my trips to the book store are less frequent because of Amazon. So I would argue that web applications are popular today because they are a convenient way for people to use a range of services traditionally offered by brick and mortar businesses.

Edit: I also don't understand why people bother building Photoshop "clones" for the web. If the goal is to clone an existing application and just move it to the web, what actual problem is being solved?

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#32

Post by teppefall »

wwalker3 wrote: post #7

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.

That makes no sense to me. Google Native Client is just a desperate attempt to hide expensive code from other companies. How many nuclear power plants, switches, routers, undersea pipelines, servers and UPS systems are needed to run a Facebook turd-app connected to Google DRM anyway ? Talking about the slowness of Javascript is amusing when 856 sub-systems needs to be operational for a Web 2.0 "Hello World".

Give me a break. Americans have no cash and live on credit, thereby creating a marked for AT/T, McDonald's and Google.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#33

Post by gizmo »

wreel wrote: post #15
habitue wrote: post #3

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.

I think that both remarkably miss the point that the true measure of software is actualized value to the end user. Who cares about platform or depth of technical knowledge? If some PHP hobbyist who knows nothing about mmap(3) delivers a site that works for people then he is a successful programmer. But assertions like "You hope everything doesn't "move to the web"? Wake the hell up! It's already happened!" irk me. Th…

> Who cares about platform or depth of technical knowledge?

The programmer does. There are a lot of really smart programmers that just want to work on interesting challenges. And if you're the kind of programmer that enjoys solving difficult problems, you're not going to find many when building web 2.0 apps.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#34

Post by donaq »

far33d wrote: post #8

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 produ…

Doing hard things for the sake of it, or for no other reason than to find out if you can do it, is the very essence of hacking. It is also precisely that attitude which fuels research, discovery and invention. So while I can respect your preference for solving customer issues rather than technical ones, I don't think you should diss people who prefer working on technical ones either. Are you saying there's no glory for the people who wrote the JS engines running in your customers' browsers? What about the people who wrote the operating systems on which the web server pushing out your code runs? What about the people who wrote that web server? What about the people who wrote interpreters for whichever language you're using to code your web apps?

Those people deserve more respect than being dismissed as playing "stupid games", I'm sure. Lastly, I think if you're not feeling stupid 90% of the time, you're probably not working hard enough.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#35

Post by graywh »

cjbos wrote: post #26
michael_dorfman wrote: post #12

Jeff is completely out to lunch here. "All Programming is Web Programming" only where "All Programming" is short-hand for "all programming that Jeff Atwood comes in direct contact with," and even then it's not really true. Does he really think that the hospitals and banks and oil companies, etc., are run largely off web apps? It's clearly nonsense, and part of me is beginning to suspect that this "Jeff Atwood" person…

I worked on a contract for Petronas in Malaysia (Retail Oil Division). We built a pay at pump system, with a centralized processing server to the different major cc providers (Am Ex, Visa, Mastercard). The server was built using Java on a BEA Weblogic App server with Oracle Backend. Each station had a mini station controller (To manage the different pumps and manage the queue and messaging to the central server). Thi…

Web programming generally means stuff that runs in the browser; not networking/sockets, etc.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#36

Post by jkuria »

nickelplate wrote: post #31

People like to say that the web is replacing the desktop, but is this really the case? When I look at the web applications I use on a regular basis (Amazon, craigslist, LinkedIn...) I cannot think of a desktop app they have displaced. I cannot say, for example, that "I stopped using desktop application X because Amazon is so much better". On the other hand, my trips to the book store are less frequent because of Amaz…

There is a photoshop clone for the web that is really successful: www.picnik.com

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#37

Post by jerf »

habitue wrote: post #3

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.

Just because a language is easier doesn't make it actually easier to program in. When you make it easier to build a larger structure, you naturally end up taking on larger tasks. Poor programmers can get sucked into building a gold-plated hacked up version of something they wouldn't have gold-plated in a "harder" language. (And you have not seen the depths to which a program can sink until you've seen someone create a total hack of a Python program!) Good programmers take on tougher tasks to bring more value to the user. But either way, problems in the real world are and will remain complicated enough to suck up any "easy" we can bring to a task.

Where a C programmer may be stuck in a codebase debugging memory leaks, a Python programmer may get stuck walking through a 20-level stack trace to figure out which things are blowing away some attribute on some value that he thought he set and causing the web page to fault.

When we make things "easier", we just take on bigger tasks. Programmer skill will still be the dominant factor in quality of the resulting system. In some ways the "easier" tasks are harder, as there is a lot more opportunity to make bad cost/benefit analysis due to the larger scope of the world of possibilities.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#38

Post by ErrantX »

A really great Coding Horror post (whats going on: TC has been pretty good this week, Jeff is ranting about good stuff... ;)). Anyway:

Writing Photoshop, Word, or Excel in JavaScript makes zero engineering sense, but it's inevitable. It will happen. In fact, it's already happening. Just look around you.

With that (very astute) comment in mind - is it time to look at Javascript as a client side egine.

By which I mean if the future is going to be web based (and with Office Online and Chome OS it is hard to argue that is not the overall "plan") then is JS a sufficient engine to work with. Do we need something a little mor powerful - with tighter bindings to the browser, filesystem (sanboxed obviously) and the web?

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#39

Post by todrules »

nickelplate wrote: post #31

People like to say that the web is replacing the desktop, but is this really the case? When I look at the web applications I use on a regular basis (Amazon, craigslist, LinkedIn...) I cannot think of a desktop app they have displaced. I cannot say, for example, that "I stopped using desktop application X because Amazon is so much better". On the other hand, my trips to the book store are less frequent because of Amaz…

So, you don't bank online or pay bills online? I know I do. This is taking X desktop application away from a CSR and providing this functionality directly to customers over the web. And pretty much any ordering system done on the web has replaced the traditional desktop application that a rep would have had to use previously as you called/faxed/mailed in your order.

Also, there's mail and Office-type apps that are solely web-based as well.

Further, (and this is just in my company so take it FWIW) but our ticekting system has moved to a web-based system. Same with our Leave/Absence tracking system (with a SAP backend). I could go on and on.

Re: Coding Horror: All Programming is Web Programming

#40

Post by jimbokun »

wreel wrote: post #15
habitue wrote: post #3

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.

I think that both remarkably miss the point that the true measure of software is actualized value to the end user. Who cares about platform or depth of technical knowledge? If some PHP hobbyist who knows nothing about mmap(3) delivers a site that works for people then he is a successful programmer. But assertions like "You hope everything doesn't "move to the web"? Wake the hell up! It's already happened!" irk me. Th…

"There will always be a requirement for people to know the ins and outs of desktop programming."

Always is a very long time.

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