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Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

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Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#531

Post by barefootcoder »

webXL wrote: post #455

Ah, yes. Another round of grumpy 'ol "why can't I pick/control every aspect of my application environment in the languages I love" developer whining. I swear some people just love saying "hacks on top of hacks". It's the new pejorative of our industry, despite the unparalleled success of what it's intended to dismiss. The hacky-ness we're observing is just an evolutionary byproduct of the "power vacuum" of software d…

Strange that you feel that's what I was saying given that my original post said that I've worked in a variety of different languages and environments.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#532

Post by alexbanks »

jinfiesto wrote: post #395
gr3yh47 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not, because Mongo has huge issues [0] and angular is generally a giant mess and a pain in the ass [1] [0] http://blog.runnable.com/post/149000201856/think-before-you-... [1] if you haven't used angular, ask someone who has

I work on a large (500000+ lines) of Angular daily. Maybe this represents some sort of Stockholm syndrome, but it's really not that bad?

Have you ever worked with a JS framework that wasn't angular? Ember, React, Vue, etc?

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#533

Post by barefootcoder »

ilaksh wrote: post #41

My take on this is that backend developers have always been at odds with frontend developers in terms of being given larger salaries than frontend while not having to keep up with new UI technologies and simultaneously downplaying the skills of the front end programmers. So now, when you have to learn about the web platform since you just cannot ignore it anymore, you are feeling pretty overwhelmed, and can't help yo…

Did you even read what I said?

"anywhere from UI down to the bare metal"

I've done a lot of frontend work, including iOS, Android, MFC, OpenGL, Qt (with and without QML), etc... My UI work has often been praised, and I've salvaged many failing projects, including fixing completely broken UIs. I'm not sure where you got "not having to keep up with new UI technologies" or "downplaying the skills of front end programmers" from anything I said.

If anything, the frontend developers get a lot of credit for what the backend developers do. I enjoy backend work more, and it is frustrating when a GUI developer spends a few days and slaps a few screens on that update in response to signals that took months to implement, but they get all of the credit for the feature. It goes both ways, you know?

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#535

Post by gjolund »

9point6 wrote: post #312
meredydd wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, this understates the problem. A modal web application today takes an absolute minimum of five programming languages and three frameworks: * HTML * CSS * JS * A server-side language (eg Python) * SQL And then come the (leaky) abstractions on top of them: * A framework to make JS bearable (eg Angular) * A framework to make server-side bearable (eg Django) * A framework to make CSS bearable (eg Bootstrap) .…

I think your use of "minimum" is wrong here. If you're using React running on Node and Webpack as your task-runner you just need Javascript and that's it. Node allows you to run isomorphic JavaScript that runs on both your server side and client side (to ensure you don't end up with the Angular-style skeleton pages coming from the server), You can pick a nice ORM (like sequelize) to abstract away SQL, and Webpack all…

"thats it"

250mb worth of dependecies later...

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#536

Post by gjolund »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #487
zeveb wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Node allows you to run isomorphic JavaScript that runs on both your server side and client side But then you're writing JavaScript on the server side, and I think I'd rather shove live weasels down my trousers than write one line more of JavaScript than I absolutely must.

You could of course write something that compiles to JavaScript. There's a ton of options, some are even pretty nice (I like ClojureScript; want to try out Elm).

Elm is client side only.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#537

Post by goatlover »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #513
goatlover wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about full on web components? Then the designers can just target components, and leave the programming to the component makers.

I don't know enough about them to say for sure, but they do sound like a good solution. Haven't they been just over the horizon for a number of years now?

Flying cars, cold fusion, and web components?

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#538

Post by fauigerzigerk »

Nadya wrote: post #436
kowdermeister wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The target environment is undefined. Nope, that target environment is a responsive, standards compliant software. Code for the standards and the displaying devices will catch up.

Something largely only possible in hobby projects unfortunately. On hobby projects I support only standards. Your browser not to spec? Not my problem. Well, it would be my problem, due to less traffic from people with broken browsers, but I don't monetize or track my traffic. Professionally, I'm over here supporting IE8 and Safari 5 (the last version available to Windows) still. Next year we'll finally be dropping IE…

All true, but imagine you didn't have these browsers sitting between your code and the native OS. Would that be any cleaner?

At least browser vendors do try to conform to some common specs and any deviation from the spec can be bridged using JavaScript libraries.

Without browsers as a target you might find yourself supporting ancient Android versions and Windows XP.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#539

Post by goatlover »

emodendroket wrote: post #354
flukus wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO react is a big step backwards. Adding an abstraction layer almost never produces a better result, it just makes things more complicated.

So I assume you write all your programs without the benefit of an operating system then.

Didn't HN have a thread where someone wrote a CMS site in assembly? It sounds crazy, but if it can be done, someone will do it.

Re: Ask HN: Is web programming a series of hacks on hacks?

#540

Post by cosinetau »

meredydd wrote: post #301
pixie_ wrote: post #24

Yes. I feel like we're in the dark ages right now. JavaScript - Dynamically typed, does not scale what so ever. Code written in it becomes 'read only' very quickly. Impossible to refactor. CSS - Also becomes impossible to manage. Who knows if the class you wrote is or isn't being used in HTML or JavaScript somewhere. Same problem, read-only, it only gets bigger and more unmanageable. HTML - At the heart of it, the fo…

If anything, this understates the problem. A modal web application today takes an absolute minimum of five programming languages and three frameworks: * HTML * CSS * JS * A server-side language (eg Python) * SQL And then come the (leaky) abstractions on top of them: * A framework to make JS bearable (eg Angular) * A framework to make server-side bearable (eg Django) * A framework to make CSS bearable (eg Bootstrap) .…

I remember being warned about engineers that get used to using frameworks too often. Their ability to work outside of it eventually suffers.

We might need less abstraction, and let the engineers work that out.

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