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Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

jacquesmattheij.com

61–70 of 228 posts

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#61

To me, the most interesting thing about this post is that there is no clear answer. We're mired in, frankly, a lot of junk. There's no winner because nothing is really very good.

If you arbitrarily reject everything unfamiliar then filter the remainder for stability you wind up with unremarkable stuff that will get the job done. There are better ways to write web apps but you're not going to find them following the process outlined in the post.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#62
> TCL is not really web suitable (though it’s been done)

I don't use Tcl (not TCL!) anymore myself, but it'd be more honest to say that it's not that popular these days or not a language you happen to like. This is built with Tcl just fine:

http://flightaware.com/

With that out of the way, I think that was a good read, and a reasonable process. It's fair to be a bit subjective about some things, because... we're humans, and that's the way we are.

Personally, I use Rails as my go-to framework because while it's not super fast, it's very, very full of useful things to get up and running quickly, and keep iterating once things are built.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#63
post #17

I (naturally) think that the article's summarily dismissing Haskell is unfortunate. It's probably just the result of poor PR on Haskell's part. Haskell is not only for surpassingly intelligent people, or even optimized for them. If anything, it's the opposite: one of its core tenants is that we're not smart enough to reason about our programs in most languages. Much of the design work focuses on unloading complexity…

Many of the brightest programmers I've ever met have struggled to get their heads around Haskell. Enough of them that I don't think it's really a PR issue or a lack of good introductory materials. I'm wiling to take the claims on faith that Haskell's design eliminates a lot of common programming errors but I've been listening to predictions of Haskell's emergence into the mainstream for almost 15 years now and, from…

> I used to be a bench chemist in a pharmaceutical company and the tools we used to develop new drug candidates and the tools we used to put them into mass production were radically different. I don't see why software should be any different. Let Haskell be the proving ground for new ideas and we can cherry pick the best ones for simpler languages later.

This is a very interesting observation. I would hazard a guess that Phil Wadler developed (or at least significantly contributed to proving type-theoretic soundness of) Java Generics and Collections after they sort of proved their worth in Haskell world.

Same with Lambda which made its way to Java 8. STM is perhaps next.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#64
post #41
post #17

I (naturally) think that the article's summarily dismissing Haskell is unfortunate. It's probably just the result of poor PR on Haskell's part. Haskell is not only for surpassingly intelligent people, or even optimized for them. If anything, it's the opposite: one of its core tenants is that we're not smart enough to reason about our programs in most languages. Much of the design work focuses on unloading complexity…

I think Haskell underestimates people's intelligence when it comes to things like mind-simulating state change in simple subroutines, and overestimates it when it comes to understanding lazy evaluation and monads. Humans had built useful structures long before they've been capable of rigorous abstract thought. How? By trial and error. Most people find it easier to learn how to catch a ball by practicing rather than b…

Pass in requests. Get responses back. Same input, same output, except for potentially dirtied DB hits. This is somewhat of a good fit for a functional language program that just handles request after request. For API's Haskell might be a great fit.

For server-side rendering of fat web clients, I don't see any way around node.js and my resentment of javascript without doing some impressive design of the client to be able to reinitialize itself from a JSON that pops out of the client state in the host language. It's possible, but I'm too busy with Kivy to mess with web development atm.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#66
post #57

Spring is included in the end shortlist, but I thought you excluded it due to licensing? What do you mean about Laravel's "bus factor"?

Good catch. Laravel seems to be pushed forward by a single individual. Elsewhere in this thread that is disputed.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#67
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Haskell underestimates people's intelligence when it comes to things like mind-simulating state change in simple subroutines, and overestimates it when it comes to understanding lazy evaluation and monads. Humans had built useful structures long before they've been capable of rigorous abstract thought. How? By trial and error. Most people find it easier to learn how to catch a ball by practicing rather than b…

Pass in requests. Get responses back. Same input, same output, except for potentially dirtied DB hits. This is somewhat of a good fit for a functional language program that just handles request after request. For API's Haskell might be a great fit. For server-side rendering of fat web clients, I don't see any way around node.js and my resentment of javascript without doing some impressive design of the client to be a…

Whoops. MySQL. Nevermind. Everything is happy, everyone. I'll be going on my way now. Nice chat.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#68
FWIW, I'd remove GWT from consideration. I heard that it's shortlisted for end-of-life at Google because it's a hassle to work with.

Anecdotally, I agree with that. I once built a product on GWT because it impressed me so much on paper. Static typing, compiling permutations of your app and loading only what's needed, optimization of stylesheets, rendering only on the client etc. It seemed perfect. IIRC the two main issues at the time, a few years ago, were a) terribly slow tooling for any decent sized app and b) the usual interface-hell of Java. This may not be a problem if you're used to it, but for me it was an issue.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#69

Choosing a framework/language for the next ten years sounds like a fools errand to me. Both because what "best" is changes much, much more rapidly than that - and because I'd pick different frameworks depending on the team and project. Starting at the framework end doesn't help me much. Instead I go with the people I have for the project and the things I want to do/validate - and start looking for what gets me progre…

Indeed. Picking a framework/language for the next ten years at this particular time feels a bit like picking the best horse and cart just as the automobile is getting popular.

It's an exaggeration, of course, but the fact that we're undergoing some big changes in web development (more on the client-side with server-side api) makes me thing this might not be the best moment to think of picking something for the next ten years.

Re: Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade

#70
post #17

I (naturally) think that the article's summarily dismissing Haskell is unfortunate. It's probably just the result of poor PR on Haskell's part. Haskell is not only for surpassingly intelligent people, or even optimized for them. If anything, it's the opposite: one of its core tenants is that we're not smart enough to reason about our programs in most languages. Much of the design work focuses on unloading complexity…

Out of interest, what would you say are the kinds of bugs that using something like Haskell helps you avoid? I've had a look at Haskell before and while all the individual parts looked reasonable I struggled to understand both what an application would look like at a high level and what the inherent advantages are (not saying there aren't any - just that they didn't jump out to me).

In most languages I have learned I've generally reached a point fairly quickly (without hours) where I've thought "wow - this is cool!" and this is generally because of enabling me to do something more easily than in other languages - I've never got to that point with Haskell.

Note - this is just my own observation, not a criticism of Haskell or any of the resources I have used to try and learn it!

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