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

I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

baldurbjarnason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 245 posts

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#111

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

croes wrote: post #82
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you say that better tools don't make better apps? A screwdriver changes removing a screw task from "extremely hard" to "extremely easy". Same way, a web framework makes writing a secure web server substantially easier than starting from scratch.

So just because you can remove screws more easily you build better shelves? You can build bad apps with good tools and good apps with bad tools. Just because it gets easier for the web dev doesn't makes it easier for the user and vice versa.

Have you even tried building a shelf without a screw driver? It literally falls apart after one day of usage

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#112

Post by pprotas »

iratewizard wrote: post #74
chefandy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I think the most productive thing the industry could do is get rid of developers who drastically overvalue their own work, methods, and ideas, haughtily dismiss the value of others’ contributions out of hand, and blame everyone else for a project’s shortcomings. You can usually ID them by their persistently rolled eyes, big fish in small pond mentality, and 1.9 septillion reputation on Stack Overflow.

It sounds like I struck a nerve. Does it hurt you knowing there are a lot of developers out there that contribute more in a week than you do in several months?

And yet we both get paid the same!

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#113

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

moring wrote: post #105
croes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just because you can remove screws more easily you build better shelves? You can build bad apps with good tools and good apps with bad tools. Just because it gets easier for the web dev doesn't makes it easier for the user and vice versa.

> So just because you can remove screws more easily you build better shelves? Yes, with a high probability. Try to put all your screwdrivers away and then try to build a shelf without them. Not only will you need lots of time just for fastening the parts that you cannot spend on thinking on a more optimal layout of the shelf, making the result worse -- you will also judge every layout idea on how hard it will be to b…

Thank you for describing my thoughts way better than I did

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#114

Post by berkes »

croes wrote: post #95
xwdv wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frameworks are not tools. You select technologies based on their fit for the requirements of the web app.

Frameworks are tools

No. They aren't.

Frameworks are the scaffolding, the skeleton. They dictate the shape. It's literally in the name.

> : a skeletal, openwork, or structural frame

Tools are the things you use to build within that skeleton.

More pragmatic: Rails is a framework that dictates an MVC shape, with an RDS, that produces server side rendered HTML or data in a RESTfull manner.

The tools you use for Rails development are your IDE, a CI, revision control, a terminal, maybe even the IAAS provider.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#115

Post by gen_greyface »

divan wrote: post #110
gen_greyface wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.photopea.com/ this is a webapp

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/3d-engine-entirely-made... this is Doom engine in Excel

difference being its an esoteric experiment. and that webapp is used regularly used by thousands.

naive of you to even compare both.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#116

Post by onion2k »

adrianN wrote: post #103
onion2k wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone says, hey forget postgresql and just use SQLite, and someone else says good luck if you hit n rows, and someone says it can easily handle n+m rows with x memory … This is a good example of how devs get things wrong. The argument between which database to use because you might hit the row limit has zero benefit to the user. It's devs wanting to avoid future work to migrate from one database to another; a…

Maybe most apps never see the problem of hitting the row limit because the devs spend time beforehand thinking about which limitations they're likely to hit.

It's definitely possible, but the limit is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 rows, or 281 terabytes, whichever the database hits first, so you probably could put the discussion off until year 2 or 3 if you really had to.

Kind of like maybe the 'Send your friends money, divide the restaurant bill easily!' app founders first think will change the world could get really popular if it gets on the frontpage of HN..

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#117

Post by berkes »

patrick451 wrote: post #32
aranchelk wrote: post #29

> Everybody seems to have an opinion on how you do your web dev and how websites and web apps should be structured. It’s true and it leads to many annoying unproductive arguments, IMO the reason is a fundamental lack of a scientific mindset in evaluating techniques and tooling. We don’t have theories or testable hypotheses, we have opinions. On one level I like and agree with the author’s idea that results are what r…

It's shocking to me how little data there seems to be to support what many consider to be "best practice". About the only real data point I see thrown around is that bugs per LOC being fairly constant. Thus, you get people saying long, two-page functions are bad and should be broken up. But never have I seen someone backup such an exhortation with data. Let alone more nebulous rules like "objects should be open for e…

It is there. E.g. The book Accelerate! by Forsgren et.al. explains, scientific, what methods and concepts produce better and worse software. In an accessible way.

There are numerous papers on how TDD does X to your software or team. Numerous theses on how static typing causes more or less Y and so on.

Yet here we are, ignoring all that and discussing the pro's and cons of TDD based on a YouTube video, a blogpost, an anecdote and mostly a giant pile of ego and opinions.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#118

Post by divan »

gen_greyface wrote: post #115
divan wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/3d-engine-entirely-made... this is Doom engine in Excel

difference being its an esoteric experiment. and that webapp is used regularly used by thousands. naive of you to even compare both.

No ad hominem please. Both examples are cool apps built with the foundation layer not designed for the task.

- text markup language isn't a good choice for modern performant graphics editing apps.

- excel sheet isn't a good choice for 3d game engine.

The difference here lays only in the fact that for Doom 3D engine, authors had another choice.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#119

Post by myrryr »

Doesn't want to talk frameworks, but has this as a problem....

"The problem is that doing a Single-Page-App ‘properly’ is even more expensive than doing a mediocre Single-Page-App, which in turn is considerably more expensive than an old-style multi-page web service. If a lack of resources is the limiting factor for the project, any suggestion that involves more work or more resources makes the problem worse."

The point about the frameworks is that having single page, and multi page apps done properly isn't more expensive than even static stuff.

It looks like they have created their own problems here.

Re: I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps

#120

Post by Gazoche »

gen_greyface wrote: post #108
divan wrote: post #107

Web dev community should just acknowledge the simple fact that typesetting engine from 80s (HTML) and legacy hacks built around it (css and js) is not a good foundation for making modern apps. It's like trying to build apps with a spreadsheet cells (it's actually possible, but we don't do it, thankfully) by throwing a lot of abstractions and frameworks on top of it that would hide the ugliness of the foundation layer…

https://www.photopea.com/ this is a webapp

Yes, this is one of the best and fastest webapp out there, and yet dragging a selection in that app on my top-of-the-line computer feels more sluggish than doing the same thing in GIMP on a 2010 netbook.

Clearly a lot of effort went into making Photopea, but that performance gap doesn't feel like it's ever going to be plugged, no matter how clever we get at using HTML.

Post reply on HN