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All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

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Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#41

Post by anfilt »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #23
collyw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am trying to work out if you are being ironic in your reply or not. I am a software engineer. My job is to solve problems, not to "write code". It just happens that most of the solutions will involve code. The less code that can be written to solve a problem the better. More code is a liability not an asset.

> More code is a liability not an asset. Unfortunately not all managers agree on that point,

Generally, that less code means relying on someone else's code which depending on the circumstance could be a bigger liability.

Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#42

Post by pornel »

chakkepolja wrote: post #40
Byamarro wrote: post #38

What's worth nothing, nowadays most of the concepts "that are too hard for web developers" In the quote are already part of frontend programming. Concurrency - web workers Compilers - technically you can write compiler, but it's a very specific use case and I think that web is simply not a proper platform for writing them usually 3d - webgl Class inheritance - classes in js (they're not identical to i.e. Java classes…

> Pass by value vs pass by reference - something that js programmers had to always understand in the past for the sake of handling primitives and objects in js. Noob question. Aren't primitives immutable? Does it need distinguishing between Value & ref types?

Compare:

    function(x) { x += 1; }
    function(o) { o.x += 1; }
The first one behaves like passing by value, the second like passing by reference.

Under the hood the `Number` x may have been passed by reference and changed by creating a copy, or it may have been JITed to be an i32 actually passed by value, or optimized out of existence entirely. How it is actually passed ends up being an implementation detail that you can't observe from high-level perspective.

Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#43

Post by AnimalMuppet »

vince14 wrote: post #27

> Sorry Jeff, but your post from today is simply stupid. > Think only about the embedded programming… do you really think that you can create a web app to control your washer? > Or do you want a web interface to drive your car?!? > Get out of your cubicle and look around… you’ll see that there is something else running outside your server and browser. > By the way, are you planning to create a web app for the BIOS of…

Maybe yes, but really no.

Yes, your washer now has a web app to control it. But the embedded system that actually controls your washer is not a web app - not even close. Ditto with the computers in your car, or the BIOS in your computer.

Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#44

Post by pornel »

ascotan wrote: post #30

There was a time back not so long ago when there was a craze to rewrite every desktop app as a webapp because the web was going to eat everything. It was the hype cycle of web 2.0. Those days are gone imho. Instead it was mobile that ate everything. The OP that Jeff is commenting on isn't wrong. I see it everyday with junior devs that have very little practical experience with real engineering but they know a little…

It has happened. These days desktop apps are Electron. Even in the mobile apps the native UI parts are mostly navigation between various WebViews.

Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#45

Post by Byamarro »

chakkepolja wrote: post #40
Byamarro wrote: post #38

What's worth nothing, nowadays most of the concepts "that are too hard for web developers" In the quote are already part of frontend programming. Concurrency - web workers Compilers - technically you can write compiler, but it's a very specific use case and I think that web is simply not a proper platform for writing them usually 3d - webgl Class inheritance - classes in js (they're not identical to i.e. Java classes…

> Pass by value vs pass by reference - something that js programmers had to always understand in the past for the sake of handling primitives and objects in js. Noob question. Aren't primitives immutable? Does it need distinguishing between Value & ref types?

Objects are always treated as a reference, primitives as a value. To say they're immutable requires a bit more of a context - immutable in what sense? You can reassign a different value to a variable that stores a primitive, so it's not like variables that store them are immutable.

I guess that the simpliest explanation would be by code:

let x = 4

let z = x

z = w

// x is still 4

let x = { b: 3 }

let z = x

z.b = 2

// x is { b: 2 }, because x and z hold reference to the same object

Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#46

Post by mattgreenrocks »

mattbee wrote: post #28
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #7

It's interesting. 12 years have passed, and I still prefer a native (not Electron) desktop app to its web equivalent for practically any task, from writing code to working with spreadsheets to PCB design. Even for such a basic task like word processing I prefer to use a local program rather than a web app.

Me too. But this rant still resonates and speaks to a snobbery that's still occasionally alive. I am surprised that high quality web apps still seem just as rare in 2021 as they did in 2009 despite the explosion of tools. i.e. apps that do something non-trivial, where the network usage disappears under "acceptable interaction time", where the UI toolkit is consistent & discoverable, where nothing is broken. But it's…

Yeah. It almost feels like there's a ceiling on quality imposed by the platform. 60fps is still seen as an aspirational goal for webapps, and most apps we use everyday are just...okay.

I've yet to use a webapp that I found truly inspiring in execution and design. I may just be a snob. It's possible, but most of the time it always feels like once you're starting to settle in and really use a webapp, the seams show themselves somehow: the browser hiccups, a server is slow, the React filler boxes linger for just too long. However, this doesn't really matter; the real goal of webapps is mostly to generate economic activity.

In the past, this caused me some existential grief. I deal with it by simply avoiding any dev work related to the web. For my own projects, I stick to native apps. I think it says something when I choose putting up with Xcode vs developing for the web. :)

Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#47

Post by true_religion »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #43
vince14 wrote: post #27

> Sorry Jeff, but your post from today is simply stupid. > Think only about the embedded programming… do you really think that you can create a web app to control your washer? > Or do you want a web interface to drive your car?!? > Get out of your cubicle and look around… you’ll see that there is something else running outside your server and browser. > By the way, are you planning to create a web app for the BIOS of…

Maybe yes, but really no. Yes, your washer now has a web app to control it. But the embedded system that actually controls your washer is not a web app - not even close. Ditto with the computers in your car, or the BIOS in your computer.

Well, web apps routinely interface with lower level systems like databases, and file systems. I don’t see why interacting with an embedded system is any different.

Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#48

Post by AnimalMuppet »

true_religion wrote: post #47
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe yes, but really no. Yes, your washer now has a web app to control it. But the embedded system that actually controls your washer is not a web app - not even close. Ditto with the computers in your car, or the BIOS in your computer.

Well, web apps routinely interface with lower level systems like databases, and file systems. I don’t see why interacting with an embedded system is any different.

OK, but what Oracle does in writing their database is not "web programming", by any reasonable definition. I don't care how many web programs use it as a lower level. Ditto Windows creating a file system. That's not web programming in the same way that it wasn't GUI programming 15 years ago.

And that's even if you have a web interface. There's plenty of embedded systems where you don't.

Here's an embedded system that run on a spin of an 8051 with some extra on-chip peripherals. (Why? Because lower hardware cost.) It's never going to support a web interface.

Over there, there's an embedded system that controls the wing surfaces on a jet fighter. It has to adjust the wing surfaces every 1/40 of a second. A web interface will never be allowed anywhere near that.

And so on.

Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#49

Post by collyw »

anfilt wrote: post #41
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More code is a liability not an asset. Unfortunately not all managers agree on that point,

Generally, that less code means relying on someone else's code which depending on the circumstance could be a bigger liability.

Using well tested libraries is likely more reliable than something I have written myself. Though in my personal experience Python (or Perl) libraries seem to be far higher quality than JavaScript libraries.

Re: All Programming Is Web Programming (2009)

#50

Post by IQunder130 »

danbruc wrote: post #17

The advantage of web applications is that you do not have to install and update them, that they are inherently sandboxed, and that they are not operating system depended. And even those are not universally good things - server down or no internet connection, no application, feature removed in new version, good luck trying to run an old version, and operating system dependencies give way to browser dependencies. And y…

>At some point you browser will just turn into another operating system running on top of your operating system.

Nowadays making calls to the browser API is hardly any different from making system calls, and provides about as much generality independent of the actual operating system. Might just be my new showing but I don't think I remember it being any other way.

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