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A Broken Heart

allenpike.com

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11–20 of 53 posts

Re: A Broken Heart

#11

Post by kitd »

cousin_it wrote: post #10

Maybe off topic, but I couldn't help thinking that "we need to show a heart icon" -> "let's use a heart emoji because it's easy" -> "let's use a specific emoji font for consistency across platforms" -> "let's import it from Google Fonts every time" seems like a problematic developer mindset. A better heuristic is always keep in mind not only developer efficiency, but also program efficiency. I'm not saying optimize e…

I would say just reusing widely-used emojis you have already downloaded would be less error prone

... assuming it all works ofc (though you could say that about serving svgs too)

Re: A Broken Heart

#12

Post by nananana9 »

> And despite being the least-bad approach for web frontends today, the React ecosystem...

As if anyone has seriously tried anything other than the "reactive UI hacked together with callbacks or proxies, with weird XML-like syntax in the JS code" paradigm for the last 10 years.

At this point I just have to conclude that anyone who believes this stuff is good is either too indoctrinated into this workflow or just lacks ability to do even the tiniest amount of cost/benefit analysis.

Re: A Broken Heart

#13

Post by riwsky »

cousin_it wrote: post #10

Maybe off topic, but I couldn't help thinking that "we need to show a heart icon" -> "let's use a heart emoji because it's easy" -> "let's use a specific emoji font for consistency across platforms" -> "let's import it from Google Fonts every time" seems like a problematic developer mindset. A better heuristic is always keep in mind not only developer efficiency, but also program efficiency. I'm not saying optimize e…

I agree that the font and emoji hops aren’t great for complexity or performance, but the problem in the post was in the rendering of a tiny SVG; serving it directly would not have avoided the problem.

Re: A Broken Heart

#14

Post by andra_nl »

stavros wrote: post #6

The conclusion of "yes, Claude helped fix this, but it also caused it by recommending an emoji font" seems a bit disingenuous to me. Using an emoji font is a good suggestion, it's not like Claude (or anyone) could have known there's an SVG but that will cause this slowness.

Still, I'm going to quote the living daylights out of "These coding agents are very much like a power saw. Profoundly useful, and proportionately dangerous."

Even though this particular case may not be fair, the comparison feels like a very fair one to me. The notion that these things can be very valuable in capable hands, but costly in others.

Re: A Broken Heart

#15

Post by exogen »

nananana9 wrote: post #12

> And despite being the least-bad approach for web frontends today, the React ecosystem... As if anyone has seriously tried anything other than the "reactive UI hacked together with callbacks or proxies, with weird XML-like syntax in the JS code" paradigm for the last 10 years. At this point I just have to conclude that anyone who believes this stuff is good is either too indoctrinated into this workflow or just lack…

I'd give people the benefit of the doubt. Personally, having built UI with Win32, WinForms, VisualBasic, Cocoa/Interface Builder, Qt, Tcl/Tk, XSLT, vanilla HTML/JS, jQuery, Backbone, Ember, Knockout, Bootstrap, MooTools, YUI, ExtJS, Svelte, Web Components, and React (including Preact, SolidJS…)… I'll happily choose the React approach. The only other one I would even describe as "good" was Qt.

I also don't get why "XML-like syntax in the JS code" is even a point worth complaining about. If anything, we should be encouraging people to experiment with more DSLs for building UIs. Make your tools suit the task. Who the fuck cares, if it's clear and productive?

Re: A Broken Heart

#16

Post by layer8 »

> Noto Color Emoji is a Google font that is helpful in that it gives you consistent emoji rendering across platforms.

I’m not sure how that is helpful if users are used to the emoji look of their respective platform.

Re: A Broken Heart

#17

Post by conartist6 »

Mostly read like a normal article if you skip over the parts about using agents, which I did.

There could not possibly be a single thing in the world more boring than listening to someone describe using an AI agent. Might as well describe in arduous detail how you use a gas pump or a grocery store checkout.

Re: A Broken Heart

#18

Post by nine_k »

nananana9 wrote: post #12

> And despite being the least-bad approach for web frontends today, the React ecosystem... As if anyone has seriously tried anything other than the "reactive UI hacked together with callbacks or proxies, with weird XML-like syntax in the JS code" paradigm for the last 10 years. At this point I just have to conclude that anyone who believes this stuff is good is either too indoctrinated into this workflow or just lack…

Reactive UIs with unidirectional data binding (very important) seem to be the sweet spot. Spreadshees, which pioneered it in consumer software, still reign supreme.

React is quite fast, and is very compact (preact is half the sizef htmx). It seems to be the sweet spot for making rich web UIs.

In the end, this all was a red herring. The problem was in CoreSVG taking 1400ms to render an emoji, clearly a regression. A tweet would suffice to communicate this nugget, but for some reason the author wrote a long and winding piece.

Re: A Broken Heart

#19

Post by bambax »

cousin_it wrote: post #10

Maybe off topic, but I couldn't help thinking that "we need to show a heart icon" -> "let's use a heart emoji because it's easy" -> "let's use a specific emoji font for consistency across platforms" -> "let's import it from Google Fonts every time" seems like a problematic developer mindset. A better heuristic is always keep in mind not only developer efficiency, but also program efficiency. I'm not saying optimize e…

Not OT at all. Emojis everywere are ridiculous. And coding agents love them! They put emojis in Python log lines which inevitably break the console, and of course in web pages. Logs don't need emojis. Not sure if anything does.

Re: A Broken Heart

#20

Post by throwaway243123 »

exogen wrote: post #15
nananana9 wrote: post #12

> And despite being the least-bad approach for web frontends today, the React ecosystem... As if anyone has seriously tried anything other than the "reactive UI hacked together with callbacks or proxies, with weird XML-like syntax in the JS code" paradigm for the last 10 years. At this point I just have to conclude that anyone who believes this stuff is good is either too indoctrinated into this workflow or just lack…

I'd give people the benefit of the doubt. Personally, having built UI with Win32, WinForms, VisualBasic, Cocoa/Interface Builder, Qt, Tcl/Tk, XSLT, vanilla HTML/JS, jQuery, Backbone, Ember, Knockout, Bootstrap, MooTools, YUI, ExtJS, Svelte, Web Components, and React (including Preact, SolidJS…)… I'll happily choose the React approach. The only other one I would even describe as "good" was Qt. I also don't get why "XM…

Whoa backbone, ember, knockout, what throwbacks right there.
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