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WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

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Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#121

Post by thegeomaster »

yeukhon wrote: post #81
thegeomaster wrote: post #15

This should be a separate tool. An add-on, or whatever, but it shouldn't be bundled with the browser. If you think about it, it doesn't make much sense. Do you see audio mixing/mastering or video editing software being bundled with media players? Or do you see word processors/TeX IDEs bundled with PDF viewers? No, because you wanted to play your Black Sabbath .mp3, or read a .pdf scientific paper. If you wanted to re…

Modularity is a great idea, but modularity isn't always a solution. Sometimes, tight, monolithic integration is better, for both developers and end user. As an example, some companies have a single source tree with every project. Why the hell would they do that? Make 100 repos on github is better - you know which repo is which repo. Maintenance and usage headache. > A vast, vast majority of people downloading Firefox…

>No this is not bullshit, because developers are users and some users turn into developers BECAUSE they poke around tools available to them.

And by moving the web IDE to a separate add-on, we make it unavailable to them?

It's just more easily available. That's a huge difference. You have a web browser, you ask yourself, "how do I create webpages?" Then you maybe Google how to do it, and the answer says "it's in Firefox, just press F12", or "get this Firefox add-on, and then press F12". The difference is negligible.

If someone was to stumble across some HTML via "View Source", the result would be essentially the same as above. If someone opened the web IDE out of curiosity, she would still need to know how to use it. Tinkering only gets you so far, it's a combination of tinkering and researching that makes you learn new stuff. And if you do even a modicum of research on that, you'd learn that there's an IDE in Firefox, or that there's an add-on for Firefox.

Talents show up, one way or another. How likely is it that this particular decomposition of a monolithic application into a core application and an add-on would make some talented kid never discover their passion? I'd say it's highly unlikely. But how likely it is that a huge amount of users would need to download bigger archives of the browser, or bigger updates, or suffer from some form of bloat if the IDE was included? I'd say more likely.

New developers have been emerging since the dawn of computing, without any thought given to whether or not including something would allow some kid to poke around and discover that he likes to do it. Why would it stop now?

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#122

Post by thegeomaster »

mercer wrote: post #101
thegeomaster wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The curious won't be perplexed by such a simple barrier. They'd find this Web IDE, had it been an add-on, and happily continue exploring. Is that little convenience enough to justify bloating an executable millions of people use daily with a lot of code that only 5% of them (a very generous estimate) will ever use? We should be splitting software into smaller components, and let the user choose what they need. There'…

That's a solid point, assuming that it actually does create bloat (which I don't know much about, I admit). Could another advantage of coupling browsers with development tools be that it makes it logistically easier to maintain 'parity' between the browser and its development tools? Or is that not how these things are done? Edit: I see my question has been addressed elsewhere ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=79…

We shouldn't really be asking if some excess software (and an IDE is pretty heavy) is causing bloat or not. If it's not needed by most of the people, it is bloat. If not so much for the user, then also for the development team.

I like when software is doing one single thing, and is great at doing that one single thing. With Firefox needing to address a lot of problems to stay on par with Chrome, the last thing it needs is more cruft to worry about in the browser itself.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#123

Post by jkrems »

Sephr wrote: post #37
kibwen wrote: post #24

> We’re working on a protocol adapter that will allow > clients using the Firefox Remote Debugging Protocol – > including the Developer Tools and WebIDE – talk to all > mobile browsers, regardless of rendering engine or > runtime. Our first targets are Chrome for Android and > Safari on iOS. My company expects all of our internal web applications to function on the executives' iPads, but they refuse to purchase Macs…

Mozilla didn't have to reverse engineer anything. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all aim to support http://remotedebug.org/

Actually this article points to the reverse happening - they build bridges to be able to connect to each others protocol to work around having to use a common protocol.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#125

Post by gress »

thegeomaster wrote: post #40
gress wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. Just because economics have temporarily separated the means of creation from the means of consumption in some domains, there is no reason that they should not be recombined now that it can be done freely. Why shouldn't all systems be programmable?

Sorry, but this looks like you're attacking a straw man. I never said that "not all systems should be programmable". My actual belief is, as a matter of fact, completely opposed to that. What I'm saying is that you do and will for a long time need a degree of technical expertise to develop webpages. The gap is shrinking, but will exist for at least quite some time. I'm not being an elitist, just real. The technical e…

Your argument seems to be that this makes it harder to engineer the browser, and yet you don't explain that at all.

You simply assert that it would be easier for Mozilla if they split it into a separate piece of software.

I see no specific reason to accept this as true, and you have not provided any.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#126

Post by gress »

bergerjac wrote: post #112
stebemops wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a crazy idea: what if we stop buying apple products until they stop pulling this walled garden crap and we are free to use the overpriced hardware we paid for as we damn please?

most customers don't realize the garden is walled.

Most customers have a better experience because it is walled. Those who care, should indeed not buy Apple products.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#127

Post by malandrew »

blueicelt2004 wrote: post #87
smacktoward wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never underestimate the ability of managers to be penny wise and pound foolish.

...or the inability of developers to properly demonstrate to their managers why something is needed. simply saying it makes it easier is not enough, learn to sell and spin in a way that does not make you seem lazy and you will be surprised what you can convince people to do.

Which is why I'm increasingly bullish on the idea that the best managers in the future are going to be engineers that learned management skills.

Historically, software engineers have been the minority of the worker bees in a company. As companies trend towards more and more technical folk at the bottom of the work pyramid (not just software engineers, but anyone doing highly technical work that increasingly incorporates ways of working that have been the status quo among developers), managers are going to need to be able to understand the technical side more and more.

We'll eventually reach the point where it will no longer be enough for a developer to spend inordinate amounts of time convincing the manager what the right thing is. That works for the low hanging fruit that most developers can argue for. Once most if not all of the low hanging fruit has been picked, not picking the higher hanging fruit will be as much the fault of the manager as the engineers that need to convince the manager of their importance.

There will come a time where technically competent managers become a requirement, not just a luxury.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#128

Post by daxelrod »

mercer wrote: post #95
kibwen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, and not get paid to spend half my time on HN while the ravages of Sarbanes-Oxley grind productivity to a halt? (The funniest thing is that we're not even a public company, and have no shareholders to defraud. That's right, we opt in to Sox-compliance.)

That's interesting. Can you tell us why your company opted in?

I've seen companies adopt stricter compliance rules than required by law when their customers demand it. I have no particular knowledge of this specific case.

Re: WebIDE lands in Firefox Nightly

#129

Post by coldtea »

cbhl wrote: post #75
simonsarris wrote: post #54

This is fantastic and I'm really glad it's being bundled with Firefox and not as a separate download. As I've said elsewhere, a lot of kids still assume that programming is essentially "magic" done by professionals and they implicitly assume there is no way to getting started at their education level (This is especially true if their parents are non-technical, as mine were). All the resources in the world may exist,…

> the computers are the very same. What do you do when you run into a kid holding an iPad?

Point it to one of the tens of programming environments for the iPad that also run on the iPad? Like this, for example:

http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/

And then I'll tell him that with just a Mac (which he might already own) and a $100 dollar subscription, he can program and even sell iPad apps worldwide, to a market of half a billion people.

People seem to forget how, in those 80s computers, to get a compiler (besides the built-in BASIC one) you usually paid lots of money. And that a worldwide distribution network for your apps, with automatic payment handling et al was also out of the question. As was an SDK even 10% as complete as Cocoa Touch or the Android one.

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