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Don't Roll Your Own

susam.net

121–128 of 128 posts

Re: Don't Roll Your Own

#121
Tempest in a teacup. Don’t roll your own UI? You’d be apoplectic in the age of Macromedia Flash. Failure is.

Let’s talk about the economics which permit bad webapps to continue in use. Illogical UI behaviors to be defended as “working as intended”. Or my favorite, UI redesign trend away from compact data dense UI towards open layouts with gobs of empty space (I guess it’s a touch UI compromise, because of “dashboards”). Or the financial incentives to remake the IP of excellent phone apps which end up looking and behaving worse. I suspect some must be tech debt, some reflect development job pool. But the rest? I blame MBAs

No. I don’t mind roll your own. I mind rolling your own crap and defending the indefensible.

Re: Don't Roll Your Own

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are HTML5/JS games so much laggier and buggier than Flash games? Maybe it's not due to differences in the technologies used. I can imagine it's because less people make these games and spend less time per game to optimize it. Years ago there were thousands of flash games of each genre, a lot of them very well made, likely optimized for speed, pure works of art. Now I see the same 100 HTML5 games on all the sites,…

Why are HTML5/JS games so much laggier and buggier than Flash games? I’m not sure that’s actually the case. Steve Jobs argued in his “thoughts on Flash” letter that Flash was too buggy, insecure and resource-hungry for mobile platforms. I worked on Chrome around that time and the Flash plugin was definitely one of the biggest sources of problems. I think all the stuff you’re complaining about is to do with business m…

I played Flash games 10-15 years ago on a 15 year old computer. I've tried HTML5 games on a 5 year old computer with a good CPU and lots of RAM, yet the experience doesn't compare at all. I doubt I'm looking through things with rose-colored glasses. I think I remember some games lagging, like if you'd spawned 1000s of enemies in a Tower Defense-type game, but that was very rare.

It's still likely that older games had more users so were optimized while newer games for Desktop don't have even 1% of that userbase since most people use a smartphone for simple games.

Re: Don't Roll Your Own

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no except. They all suck in some specific way.

Just let me type the date in the user's local format and put in the dashes/slashes with a regex (and remove them again before applying insert/Backspace/Delete). Almost always this is so messed up and broken. And slow. Sigh. You anonymous code authors are always working to bring the user down, even when there is a 1000000:1 ratio between them and you.

"Just"

Spoken like someone who's never had to work on a date picker.

Re: Don't Roll Your Own

#124

> Among software developers, and especially among those who work on security-sensitive systems, there is a well-known maxim: Don't roll your own crypto. This does not mean that nobody is allowed to write cryptographic code. Someone has to. It means that, for ordinary production software that protects sensitive data of users, we should not rely on a private, unreviewed implementation that has not been vetted by the wi…

Don't roll your own crypto, use what?

OpenSSL ?

LibreSSL, created as a response to the OpenSSL Heartbleed security vulnerability?

Any alternative SSL/TLS library?

Non-SSL/TLS cryptography? NaCL, Libsodium? Post-quantum crypto?

There are many libraries, with different applications, protocol, crypto algorithms. Some implement everything, some implement secure minimum.

Then the question is PKI, who do you trust your keys? Which SSL certificates do you trust?

Re: Don't Roll Your Own

#125

> Don't roll your own page scrolling. browser should not even let the page see this action > Don't roll your own link navigation. browser should not even let the page see this action > Don't roll your own text selection. browser should not even let the page see this action > Don't roll your own copy and paste. browser should not even let the page see this action I'm serious. WHY javascript code is even allowed to see…

> WHY javascript code is even allowed to see all these actions of the user? scrolling: used by games, maps, image viewers link navigation: used for client-side routing (youtube/twitch, any website with a chat window) text selection and copy/paste: word processors, spreadsheet editors, forum software, etc. I'm not sure if your question was sincere or if you were trying to say that the web should not support these use…

in my ideal world, the browser would ask to confirm "allow example.com to modify scroll behavior?" for all the potentially bad uses of javascript, like how current browsers ask you to allow microphone/multiple downloads/etc

does such a browser exist?

Re: Don't Roll Your Own

#126
post #31

I'd like to add: * Don't roll your own standard controls Seriously. Don't. You want a single-select box? Use a combo box or radio button group. Want an edit box? Use an edit box. Want a list that finds things as you type? That's in the standard too. Don't roll your own. This "roll our own controls for everything" bothers me to no end as a screen reader user, because practically nobody properly follows ARIA best pract…

Things wouldn't have gone this way if browser vendors and the working groups were not so lagging on adopting better UX for controls and had more built-in ways of customizing the looks. Take a look how long it took to be able to customize . A hamburger menu or an accordion with proper viewport scrolling should be a couple of lines of html css...

Yeah I could not agree more. I find myself wasting a lot of time building controls that really feel like they have probably been built ten thousand times before.

Re: Don't Roll Your Own

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The date range selector used in Google Flights is a near flawless control. The implementation can be done, it’s just hard.

From your perspective. Ask people using non-gregorian calendars.

The only countries which use non-gregorian in any official capacity are Ethiopia, Nepal, Iran, and Afghanistan, right?

Re: Don't Roll Your Own

#128
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of extortion is the coercion of money in "exchange for protection", where the threat to be protected against is typically perpetrated by the coercer. I'm not using the term in the literal sense, as if an antivirus software firm is producing computer viruses. Thus, this case "feels like extortion", not "we are being extorted". (It may as well be advertising firms selling ad blocking software because the…

> FWIW, I don't consider surgeons to be extortionists. Of course, that’s the point of the comparison . If I thought you thought surgeons were extortionists I wouldn’t have used the example because it wouldn’t have served to illustrate the point. > But this line of reasoning is off in the weeds, and I won't pursue it further. Indeed, that strayed completely away from the point. This has nothing to do with healthcare.…

> Making assumptions about strangers on the internet tends to be embarrassing, and this is no exception.

I was going to say the same of you.

> https://xkcd.com/610/

Touché.

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