I don't care how you web dev; I just need more better web apps • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by carapace » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

mkl wrote: post #164

carapace wrote: post #66

Web dev is solved: Elm. Just use Elm. https://elm-lang.org/ Javascript is going to be more expensive and more hassle to use than Elm for 99.999% of web apps.

I don't think so. The webpage of this language that "solves" web dev is so spectacularly broken that it managed to crash Chrome for me completely. I have literally thousands of tabs open and it trucks along fine for weeks on end ... unless one of the tabs is elm-lang.org. 15 minutes later and every Chrome window and tab was still unresponsive, so I resorted to killing the process, then quickly closed that tab before…

Oof, yeah, that's bad. But I doubt it could be very common or they would have noticed it and fixed it, eh?

Would you consider telling them about the issue? I realize that might be hard since their "community" links are on the bottom of the page that kills your browser, but no doubt they'd really appreciate hearing about it.

In any event, one regression (however painful) for one user doesn't invalidate the whole idea of Elm. It's still the right way to go even if it blows a tire from time to time.

Interestingly there is at least one effort to write an Elm-to-native compiler, so your Elm "web" app could also be compiled to native code & GUIs.

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

#222

Post by rektide » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

kimi wrote: post #71

rektide wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scope of problems being solved is much higher. Adding a two or three libraries- jquery and a plugin or two- and not giving a toss about performance was indeed easy. Few auxiliary tools were required. Back then, we all could have a pretty strong hand on the wheel of our websites & how they functioned, at a detailed level. It was feasible, for the scope was small. But now, we all use package managers, we all use bu…

> and not giving a toss about performance was indeed easy. Few auxiliary tools were required. When the internet came through a modem and bandwidth was very expensive, performance was concern #1. So pages were kilobytes, not multi-megabyte monstruosities.

which of the techniques that i listed that are common now dlwere possible then?

we did indeed squeeze a lot out of the code we wrote. and we were very aware of js performance issues- using array.join religiously instead of concatenation was a big one. but most of the modern techniques & concerns simply werent appplicable or possible.

the shift from writing it ourselves to loading dozens or hundreds of modules came quite late, all told. that lead to the explosion of performance tools & techniques.

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

#223

Post by ratww » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 3:31 PM UTC

wizofaus wrote: post #217

ratww wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Suck" doesn't mean "worse compared to others". It means it has problems by itself that I would prefer not having to deal with. Ideally we'd need no build tools for JS. Except for JSX, modern browsers are mature enough. Other languages build tools are often terrible too, the only one I actually enjoy is probably Cargo. As for the real answer: for trivial stuff, all build tools work fine. For anything beyond that they…

What's a language for which you don't think build tools "suck" then? Btw another data point is the C++ open source project I contribute to regularly, where I continually have all manner of problems with local debug builds (the CI builds are generally OK except for being unbearably slow, and it's a single desktop application!).

I said it in my reply. Rust/Cargo.

Amusingly, I'm using Cargo and CC for a large C++ project I have. It's unholy and certainly wrong, but works beautifully and is not as bad as every other C++ build tool I have to use.

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

#224

Post by lawgimenez » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 3:36 PM UTC

kiawe_fire wrote: post #220

lawgimenez wrote: post #39

I'm a little confused on the article. I remember developing web apps where I could just start a LAMP on my machine but times have changed and we should accept that everything is getting complicated. He should try mobile development, it's much more worse in my opinion. I'm a mobile dev fyi.

Honestly, I find it more than a little ironic that the author is arguing against single-page web apps and then praises native apps as “doing it right”. Native apps are built and run in a way FAR closer to how single page web apps work in that the browser becomes the runtime environment and the server becomes mostly just an API. And you are not likely to ever see the kind of fluid results from a traditional full page…

There’s more bickering on Android development in my opinion. There’s the Google way of Android Architecture Component, and now the up and coming Jetpack Compose. There’s huge mobile teams on Viper. Mid size companies on MVVM or RxJava. There’s the rest on MVP, MVC, etc.

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

#225

Post by berkes » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

wizofaus wrote: post #175

berkes wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do those papers all agree? And what's the right course of action if, for instance, everyone in your team hates using TDD and threatens to resign or switch teams if you attempt to enforce it? Though surely it's more likely that something like "TDD" isn't an either-or proposition, and even if the evidence clearly shows the effectiveness in particular scenarios or when done in a particular manner, its not a given that m…

Off course they don't agree. Though I have asked numerous times to come up with scientific research or arguments that prove the science in e.g. Accelerate! wrong, no-one, not even the strongest opponent of CI, TDD or such, ever has produced that.

Instead, people come with handwavy nonharguments that "in this particular scenario it is different". To which I neither agree nor disagree. I only have proof that it does apply, even to scenario X. It's up to "you" to then, scientifically prove that it doesn't apply.

Point being: again: we should have discussions about tabs, spaces, TDD, CI, lean, agile, microservices based on scientific research. In a scientific manner. Not based on anecdotes and personal feelings.

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

#226

Post by berkes » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #147

berkes wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ID…

A framework is a collection of tools to help you building web apps, just like a toolset for building shelves. Your toolset also dictates the shape like a screwdriver dictates the shape of the usable screws.

The framework becomes part of the house, or cupboard. A screwdriver does not become part of the house.

That is the semantic difference between tools and frameworks.

This doesn't mean one cannot ever use a framework as a tool, or a tool as a framework. But I'd argue in those cases one stops being resp. a framework or tool and starts being a tool or framework.

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

#227

Post by tinalumfoil » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #201

omarhaneef wrote: post #28

The author complains that developers argue about their tools and methods, insist on their favorite techniques, but produce (more) worse apps. Particularly for the amount of time and effort expended on developing the apps. The thing is: the debates aren’t naive. They’re exactly trying to workout the details. When someone says, hey forget postgresql and just use SQLite, and someone else says good luck if you hit n rows…

Everyone is going to miss the point here and go down rabbit holes about various technical bits and that is exactly the point: developers spend lots of time debating everything The limited resources really doesn't matter. The tech choices really don't matter. Pick a prominent MVC based web framework, a RDBMS, some front-end libraries and go build the thing. Lean towards picking stuff the team has experience using. The…

> Pick a prominent MVC based web framework, a RDBMS, some front-end libraries and go build the thing.

It's really not that easy. At very least the framework you use needs to be well thought-out so you don't run into roadblocks later, and your application may very well lend itself to certain technologies that won't be obvious if you don't spend some time thinking things through and understanding tradeoffs.

When constructing a building you don't just choose a material, a layout, etc and get to work. There's significant effort in understanding the environment you're building in so you can inform your choices. Buildings have collapsed because the soil conditions weren't well enough understood.

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

#228

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

martin_a wrote: post #170

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ever heard about dowels and glue and whatnot?

I specifically mentioned screws to highlight the fact that it's a shelf with holes for screws already there. Either way, using glue would remove the possibility of disassembling the shelf for moving, which is a downgrade from my perspective

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

#229

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #187

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.

In the history of construction, better tools have not improved quality of output. People in the ancient era made amazingly fine furniture. The finest furniture made today still uses techniques similar to the ones used 300 years ago. Similarly, I doubt that better web development tools improve the quality of apps. It likely just makes them cheaper.

There are good tools and bad tools, we just tend to forget the ones we depend on the most. Let's try to write a web page with concurrent access without a database, or let's try to write a web server using C or Assembly and no libraries, because we don't want to rely on tools.

Our industry is built on layers and layers, every layer is a tool to the next layer, how can we claim better tools don't make better applications?

Sure, it does not guarantee it, because what the tool does is raising the baseline, however raising the baseline gives you time to push the top higher.

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

#230

Post by iratewizard » Wed, Jul 06, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

pprotas wrote: post #112

iratewizard wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Software engineering has huge ranges of salary. Not only do I doubt you get paid the same, but I also doubt you get paid as much as my best performing lead engineers.