I try to keep my comments nice on HN but in this case I can't, I've met this kind of person many times now and I just can't hold back. The author is lazy, and is channeling his energy into complaining rather than learning. He believes he is by default an expert on the 'user friendliness' of programming. His comments don't really make much sense, and come across as whining that should be ignored. "People hate command…
The author is 100% correct on everything. Programming is massively over-complicated for no useful reason. Programmers tend to get very proud of the completely pointless knowledge they have to acquire to use the pointlessly complicated tools they do, and they confuse that with being clever. It's not. It's really not. Nothing has to be this esoteric and annoying. We've just chosen to keep things like this because we th…
Why can't I write code inside my browser?
111–120 of 624 posts
Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is 100% correct on everything. Programming is massively over-complicated for no useful reason. Programmers tend to get very proud of the completely pointless knowledge they have to acquire to use the pointlessly complicated tools they do, and they confuse that with being clever. It's not. It's really not. Nothing has to be this esoteric and annoying. We've just chosen to keep things like this because we th…
Please explain how the command-line is pointless. If investing time into learning the ins and outs of a complicated system does not make you clever then please explain to me what does make someone clever?
Dismissing other people’s work as awful, pointless on the Internet. Well, at least it makes you look clever, in certain eyes.
Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Contemporary professional web development (as practiced by members of "the code club") is madness In what way is it madness?
For beginners who've started with HTML, React or Rails is a huge cliff to climb. Yet that is the expectation we've set as professional web developers, when in fact we're often over-engineering our projects. There's no need for build tools in development when we can use module CDNs. There's no need for frameworks in many use cases (unless you need state management but that's not for beginners anyway).
These are highly orthogonal concerns. html is markup, React and Rails are client/server side ways of generating that markup.
> Yet that is the expectation we've set as professional web developers
This is so weird to read. Like yes, obviously it's an expectation that you need to know a way of generating html if you want to have any more than just a static page.
> There's no need for build tools in development when we can use module CDNs
Sure, if you want to write plain JS. But that means no Typescript. No tree shaking, or lazy load importing, so your application is going to be big, and slow. No code transpiling to backfill support for older browsers.
Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is 100% correct on everything. Programming is massively over-complicated for no useful reason. Programmers tend to get very proud of the completely pointless knowledge they have to acquire to use the pointlessly complicated tools they do, and they confuse that with being clever. It's not. It's really not. Nothing has to be this esoteric and annoying. We've just chosen to keep things like this because we th…
Please demonstrate your simple alternative and its acceptance testing on real users.
Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?
#115I take the "wtf is user/local/bin in $path?" to be a question from a non-tech person that is interested in learning to code. I can't be sure though since the author stated he has failed to install Node js. Should Chrome have Node JS loaded into it during install? I don't do web-dev so my answer is no. Should there be browsers made for those learning web-dev that come with these? By all means, sure. Go nuts. This also…
This was a real question FYI. I don't know what that means. Googling "Making sure /usr/local/bin is in my $PATH" leads me here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19202007/making-sure-usr... So I fire up the terminal and write echo $PATH and then go back to SO to see that it looks like it's all set up correctly. But why do I need to go to SO? Why do I need to fire up the terminal? It just feels too damn hard and too…
You shouldn't need one though. Environment variables are one of the core basics of any program, and you'll need to learn about them eventually. The same thing is true if you can't deal with the terminal; there's a few "magic" commands to learn but most of the terminal stuff is just "how does this computer thing even work".
Most programming tools and languages, as well as their documentation, assume you know how to manage your computer when you start programming them, as well as some basic knowledge of how an operating system works. These tools and their getting started guides are written for people who know the basics of their computer and programming, and want to try out a new language like JS. If they're too technical for you, you're not the target audience. You'd get much more out of a book explaining you the basics step by step.
The terminal is everything but opaque; you tell the computer exactly what you want rather than clicking the "just make it work" button. You're in control instead of letting some tool assume what's best for you. In my experience, the "one button to fix all" systems will work for a while but once they break (and they will) they're basically unrepairable without deep knowledge of the tooling and its configuration as well as the defaults the installer chose for you and why they're now messing up.
A problem with Javascript and Python development is that the setup is very complex and that guides become outdated (especially for web dev). There's loads of edge cases to deal with so there's loads of configurations and options most tooling supports. The magic install button would lead many to ruin their operating system configuration because they've already installed another tool that might also have had a magic install button. These tools don't operate in a vacuum, they influence each other.
If you just want to program code, grab a great big IDE like MS Visual Studio on Windows (the full one, not Code) or XCode on Mac (no experience there, but it's trivial to install at least). The experience of getting started programming in C# is very easy, just select the types of program you want to be able to make (or "all" if you don't care) during setup and your tool is set up. No fiddling with the command line, just a shortcut on your desktop. You won't be making any websites in them from the start, but they'll provide you with an environment that Just Works for writing your first program, moet likely a console window that says "hello world".
If you want to get started in web dev, you don't need node or any terminal work, just a good text editor to write your own HTML, CSS and JS files in. Sure, node is what people use in production, but it's only complicating things if you're just getting started. Guides from ten years ago on how to write HTML and Javascript are still perfectly functional if you're just starting out.
If that's still to much to grasp, there's kits out there for Raspberry Pis that come prepackaged with tutorials and with exercise books for programming in scratch and Python. Your only barrier to entry there is the money to buy the kit. You'll still have to learn everything and work through stackoverflow or technical documentation all the time, but you won't need to bother with any terminals at least.
Complaining that programming is too hard because there's no fancy GUI for every tool is like me complaining that finances are too hard because I can't walk into a bank and start making money without reading all kinds of boring books about finances. There's easy ways to get started if you know where to look, but in the end you'll always need some knowledge about the field you're entering to get started without paying someone to teach you directly.
Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is 100% correct on everything. Programming is massively over-complicated for no useful reason. Programmers tend to get very proud of the completely pointless knowledge they have to acquire to use the pointlessly complicated tools they do, and they confuse that with being clever. It's not. It's really not. Nothing has to be this esoteric and annoying. We've just chosen to keep things like this because we th…
Please explain how the command-line is pointless. If investing time into learning the ins and outs of a complicated system does not make you clever then please explain to me what does make someone clever?
Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is 100% correct on everything. Programming is massively over-complicated for no useful reason. Programmers tend to get very proud of the completely pointless knowledge they have to acquire to use the pointlessly complicated tools they do, and they confuse that with being clever. It's not. It's really not. Nothing has to be this esoteric and annoying. We've just chosen to keep things like this because we th…
Please explain how the command-line is pointless. If investing time into learning the ins and outs of a complicated system does not make you clever then please explain to me what does make someone clever?
Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?
#118click Help.
select Toggle Developer Tools.
Realize you're writing code in a browser.
Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?
#119I feel like the author is confused between server-side and client-side development, and proceeds to say that programming is hard. He even goes on to quote himself (sigh) as a proof of what he proposes. Look, maybe someone just explained it badly to you, and you should look it up for yourself. However, if the command line looks scary to you... wait until you read bad documentation :) My point is: yes, programming is a…
I spend a lot of my day working in a 'no code' visual programming environment and the difference between the solutions created by the people who know how to program and those who don't know how to program is massive. Those who don't know how to program tend to fail at coming up with non-trivial solutions and are not really able to debug the 'code' when it fails. They also always come up with the most 'brute force' solutions and can't really reason around performance.
Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?
#120I try to keep my comments nice on HN but in this case I can't, I've met this kind of person many times now and I just can't hold back. The author is lazy, and is channeling his energy into complaining rather than learning. He believes he is by default an expert on the 'user friendliness' of programming. His comments don't really make much sense, and come across as whining that should be ignored. "People hate command…
The author is 100% correct on everything. Programming is massively over-complicated for no useful reason. Programmers tend to get very proud of the completely pointless knowledge they have to acquire to use the pointlessly complicated tools they do, and they confuse that with being clever. It's not. It's really not. Nothing has to be this esoteric and annoying. We've just chosen to keep things like this because we th…
You can get low-level and write assembly on a 6505. Or you can write python programs in Python. Or you can break out a terminal & node.js and a browser and build an entire website.
But you'll need to put in different amounts of time, effort, and research to achieve these different things.