Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

hanselman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 182 posts

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#11

Post by bsaul »

um304 wrote: post #4

I would really like to know other folks opinions on this point mentioned by the author: "The web will persist and the web will win."

There was a very recent post here on HN about the way chrome guys wanted to add support for shadow dom features so fast that people in the w3c asked them to at least write some specification first. That post made me think that the web isn't going to win over native for mobile before at least two years, if not more. The specification process is both compulsory for the web to simply "work", but it's also very cumbersome.

Another aspect is that mobile / tablette apps are moving from a "mostly read" to a "read/edit" usage, thanks to the exponential power gains inmobile CPU. That means what the web will have to compete against on mobile isn't facebook stream but rather full blown photoshop.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#12

Post by gonehome »

skrebbel wrote: post #6

Folks, the big point of this article is not that Hanselman likes C#, it's that his list of options does not include Objective-C or Java. It's that he thinks that the web will win (over app stores). I strongly believe that he's right there. At some point, app stores had "discoverability" as an advantage over the web. This has been one of the strongholds of native app proponents. These days however, with the enormous a…

I don't think it's just discoverability though.

I think the main question is if mobile web applications will be able to match native on both quality and performance.

Facebook attempted this and failed badly, but that doesn't mean it can't happen or that native will always have an edge. If native does continue to have an edge though then I think web has an uphill battle.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#13

Post by skrebbel »

juu4 wrote: post #9
skrebbel wrote: post #6

Folks, the big point of this article is not that Hanselman likes C#, it's that his list of options does not include Objective-C or Java. It's that he thinks that the web will win (over app stores). I strongly believe that he's right there. At some point, app stores had "discoverability" as an advantage over the web. This has been one of the strongholds of native app proponents. These days however, with the enormous a…

> his list of options does not include Objective-C or Java He mentions Java, twice. There is nothing wrong with making web-apps in Java, and there are some nice web frameworks to help doing that.

Hmyeah, you're right, he does. But I doubt he would've included Vala if Android apps were typically programmed in it.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#14

Post by shanselman »

gizmo wrote: post #2

It depends on your goals. If your goal is to do a startup, then the obvious choice is to really master an entire web stack. For instance linux / nginx / python / html / css / javascript. If you want to do research in computer graphics, then you better learn OpenGL and C++ or .NET. Want to work in embedded systems? C. Scott's recommendation of C# & Javascript is a solid and pragmatic choice, good for those looking for…

Agreed and well-said.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#15

Post by duncanawoods »

cmdkeen wrote: post #3

I'd actually recommend a slight variation on the C# javascript combo - Typescript instead. There are all sorts of tools coming out that allow you to generate Typescript interfaces from your C# giving you really nice compile time safety through your entire stack. If you're writing C# then Typescript feels more natural, especially in Visual Studio it removes much of the painful context switching between a typed intelli…

I liked the idea of typescript but after frustration from fundamental issues I was very happy to bin it.

i) Wrapper libraries - Sure you can download them from definitelytyped but in practice I quickly found all sort of incompatibilities and things not working when used on real versions of the wrapped libraries. I had to edit them based on suggestions from forums. They are unversioned community efforts - poor versioning and no package manager is just a nightmare given the dozens of libraries we have to use for modern JS.

ii) Tooling - I thought this was the benefit and tried using it from WebStorm which claimed Typescript support. I found no meaningful intellisense only that it shelled out to the TS compiler in the background with some flakey syntax highlighting. The worst issue was that the compiler could regularly produce totally opaque error messages that were poorly located to the code issue and probably in the wrapper somewhere.

iii) Arbitrary apis - this is what I thought I wouldn't face but it was. Just a single line of code trying to the most basic task of creating an express server took hours of googling for the magic incantation. Most advice referred to the wrong version. It appears there are javascript patterns that typescript wrappers struggle to represent so the authors have to invent new ways of offering an interface. Wrappers don't come with documentation... even if they did, you now have to read both the original and the wrapper documentation. Not cool.

I hope some of this is now fixed but to have unreliable wrappers, no versioning and bad error messages means I am not hurrying back anytime soon.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#16

Post by drdiablo »

My opinion on "the web will persist and the web will win" is that it's not a won battle. Native apps have always been smoother, giving users a better experience overall. On the contrary, mobile web apps have been bad, and haven't much evolved since we started having mobile devices (laptops don't count :p). I'm pretty sure that the future resides in mobile devices, and they can't rub the web, we'll have to use the alternative: native. At that point nothing stops Apple or facebook to go entirely native and therefore abandoning the web ideology (and the physical web). So I think that the web is a possible future, but nothing is settled yet, we need more groundbreaking ideas from the web to make it a desirable choice of future.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#17

Post by Joeri »

gonehome wrote: post #12
skrebbel wrote: post #6

Folks, the big point of this article is not that Hanselman likes C#, it's that his list of options does not include Objective-C or Java. It's that he thinks that the web will win (over app stores). I strongly believe that he's right there. At some point, app stores had "discoverability" as an advantage over the web. This has been one of the strongholds of native app proponents. These days however, with the enormous a…

I don't think it's just discoverability though. I think the main question is if mobile web applications will be able to match native on both quality and performance. Facebook attempted this and failed badly, but that doesn't mean it can't happen or that native will always have an edge. If native does continue to have an edge though then I think web has an uphill battle.

You can remove the word mobile. Web apps are still heavily inferior to native desktop apps. The answer to 'why mobile web apps?' is the same answer as to 'why desktop web apps?'

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#18

Post by rimantas »

skrebbel wrote: post #6

Folks, the big point of this article is not that Hanselman likes C#, it's that his list of options does not include Objective-C or Java. It's that he thinks that the web will win (over app stores). I strongly believe that he's right there. At some point, app stores had "discoverability" as an advantage over the web. This has been one of the strongholds of native app proponents. These days however, with the enormous a…

  > hide the difference between apps and web apps
Frankly, this is only possible by web apps not being web apps. Do you have any experience working with eiterh native SDK? Because I cannot imagine any one having experience (not just cursory hello-world glance) thinking that web apps are somehow superrior. I also don't get how web apps are better (or will be better) discoveralbility-wise. Or why it matters.

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#19

Post by binocarlos »

skrebbel wrote: post #6

Folks, the big point of this article is not that Hanselman likes C#, it's that his list of options does not include Objective-C or Java. It's that he thinks that the web will win (over app stores). I strongly believe that he's right there. At some point, app stores had "discoverability" as an advantage over the web. This has been one of the strongholds of native app proponents. These days however, with the enormous a…

It is also performance - I think Facebook scared a lot of people into hiring Java + ObjC programmers when they announced 'HTML5 is too slow'.

Web applications had this problem circa 1998 - i.e. a perception of slowness - look at SalesForce now!

Re: If you had to start over, what technologies would you learn in 2014?

#20

Post by rimantas »

um304 wrote: post #4

I would really like to know other folks opinions on this point mentioned by the author: "The web will persist and the web will win."

The web will persist. But it won't win anything. Nor will native apps win anything. With time we will finally accept "the right tool for the job" stance and stop forcing round pegs into square holes.
Post reply on HN