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Why can't I write code inside my browser?

tomcritchlow.com

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Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#531

Post by azinman2 »

aspaceman wrote: post #243
lionkor wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming COULD use a lot of simplification I disagree, actually. There are plenty of languages, and even visual programming (via flow-diagrams, like Unreal Engine's "Blueprint" and Blender's shader flow diagrams), for those who just want to play around. For people who want to write a quick and dirty script, languages like python make it very easy already (relative to what they actually do). > Programming COULD u…

Yeah like there's 20 years of programming language research that studies exactly what this person is talking about. Graphical programming languages, removing barriers to learning, etc. They've been chugging away for decades and visual programming, Blender, Blueprints, Scratch, etc are all we got out of it. Does the article writer just think research doesn't exist? That CS sprouted from existence fully formed as a web…

Nothing in the article said “why hasn’t this been researched by the CS community?” The author was complaining about the state of things, and I don’t disagree. Programming is too hard. Error messages are always funky and assume expertise. And perhaps the node folks should better understand that beginners are often a target of their product and should find ways to make it more accessible to them.

Blueprints and Scratch are widely used and are important tools. Your comment sounds very dismissive, and if you meant to be, then I think you’re unaware of their impact and reach.

That said I don’t fully buy the author’s exact argument:

- node.js local install IS for a traditional programming environment on the CLI - you don’t need node built in when you have the browser - plenty of web IDEs exist that do as the author wishes… run node code in the browser while also editing it.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#532

Post by 908B64B197 »

kichimi wrote: post #96

I try to keep my comments nice on HN but in this case I can't, I've met this kind of person many times now and I just can't hold back. The author is lazy, and is channeling his energy into complaining rather than learning. He believes he is by default an expert on the 'user friendliness' of programming. His comments don't really make much sense, and come across as whining that should be ignored. "People hate command…

The author can't seem to make a basic google search either.

What he's looking for is basically Anaconda for python or MatLab; Environments that are already pre-configured with packages so you can import whatever you want and start coding. But that's less clickbaity.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#533

Post by Shared404 »

cyrialize wrote: post #407
malux85 wrote: post #88

If the author has “been playing with the web and code for years” and is still “wtf” on /usr/local/bin in $PATH it shows a lack of discipline and structure in their learning. I see this in many in many of my apprentices - the desire for instant gratification and the lack of experience means they refuse to do anything that doesn’t immediately proceed them closer to their goal. Here’s the thing with programming - you ca…

Thank you for mentioning Linux Journey[1]! I never heard about it before - it looks like a great resource. Another thing I want to add on - it looks like the author is lacking curiosity. I didn't have much discipline and structure in the beginning of my programming journey. In fact, I've been trying to add more discipline and structure to my learning now. When I started though, I had a TON of curiosity. I fiddled all…

If you're looking for resources currently, Humble's got a Linux book bundle for the next 2-3 days that looks pretty good.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#534

Post by tomp »

Meh... The author might be pushing it a bit, but s/he has a point.

Recently, after a few days of trying to set up Scala to work with the latest JVM in Visual Studio Code I just gave up and installed IntelliJ IDEA instead. Works out of the box.

I'm a seasoned programmer with 15 years of experience in Python, Java, Scala, OCaml, C++, JavaScript, Linux, bash, ... (a.k.a. I can do or learn pretty much everything). Could I set up VS Code to work with Scala? Yeah, probably. But why would I bother?

UI matters. Programmers mostly suck at UI. Which is reasonable, really, because after you set it up once, you can easily forget about it...

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#535

Post by kaoD »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #517
robertlagrant wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are if they are nonspecific. Saying "X is bad" requires a counterexample, at least.

They gave counter examples, specifically "we didn't need this in the past, therefore it is not actually necessary". Which is entirely correct. We do things the way we do things largely for historical reasons and beginner users are right to point that out.

I was there in the past and the tools are really not comparable. I just inserted a floppy disk and did A: then TP.EXE (which was just as arcane as knowing $PATH) but do I really want to work on Turbo Pascal in MS-DOS? Of course complexity skyrocketed!

That's not a counterexample because beginners have contemporary expectations. There are simpler alternatives that just work. Why do beginners want to use Node.js locally then?

> We do things the way we do things largely for historical reasons

Nobody challenged that. The question is: is the alternative better or just a different (but equally arcane) set of quirks?

If you're not using $PATH you'd be using an analogue system to solve the same problem, and you'd lose portability with current OSes.

Sounds like NIH to me.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#536

Post by MauranKilom »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #53
shatteredspace wrote: post #8

I take the "wtf is user/local/bin in $path?" to be a question from a non-tech person that is interested in learning to code. I can't be sure though since the author stated he has failed to install Node js. Should Chrome have Node JS loaded into it during install? I don't do web-dev so my answer is no. Should there be browsers made for those learning web-dev that come with these? By all means, sure. Go nuts. This also…

My question is: why can’t the Node installer add /usr/local/bin to the path itself (if needed)? Why force me to do it? The Windows installer did it for me. I can just type `node` or `deno` into PowerShell and it loads up a REPL. I never had to add them to `PATH`.

node puts relevant binaries into /usr/local/bin because that's just how you do things. Whether or not that path is in $PATH is none of node's business, and if you (for whatever weird reason) work on a system where that's not the case, you probably wouldn't want the node installer to mess with that.

Note that the installer is not saying "please make sure /lib/node.js/ is in $PATH" - this would certainly be something to expect the node.js-specific installer to set up by itself.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#537

Post by thomgo »

The author brings up a good point. Starting to develop for the web still requires too much setup and configuration. No one likes/wants to be doing this. It would be nice if these were abstracted away so we could focus on actually building products.

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#538

Post by [deleted] »

malux85 wrote: post #223
user-the-name wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/usr/local/bin has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with programming. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. It is completely superfluous knowledge. It is only required because, as the author correctly points out, the tools we use are BAD. They are absolutely fucking AWFUL. /usr/local/bin is an implementation detail from an OS nobody has used for decades. It's still here because we refuse to fix these ridiculous things. Nobody sho…

I've been programming for 25 years now, about 20 of which as a developer at billion dollar companies, google, facebook and various high scale hedge funds, including systems that serve billions of users a day. I have had a hobby in embedded programming and FPGA programming, compiler design and distributed deep learning. All of which used /usr/local/bin and $PATH. Every system, regardless of programming language across…

[deleted]

Re: Why can't I write code inside my browser?

#540

Post by robenkleene »

shawnz wrote: post #518
robenkleene wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thought experiment if you have time for it: Let's say you take a word processor. It's a great word processor, well-designed for its purpose. But it's primarily designed for "consumer" text editing, things like resumes, school papers, and the like. And let's say you add some programmer specific functionality to it, but do it in a way that doesn't interfere with any of the consumer-first features. E.g., you make it a…

If I really liked that word processor for general use then I might also use it for simple one-off programming tasks, like how I use my browser's developer tools today (Firefox though). What's the alternative though? Is the suggestion that browsers ought to be competitive out of the box with whole off-the-shelf IDEs that can cost thousands of dollars, prioritizing that use case over even web browsing?

I wasn't suggestion browsers should compete with IDEs, just that consumer browsers and developer browsers should be different applications with different features, just like word processors and text editors are different applications with different features.

Regarding the word processor experiment, I don't really mean as something you'd use for one-off programming tasks, I mean as a replacement for a dedicated programmer's text editor. E.g., the point is that a developer-first browser could have features and developer-experience that consumer-first browser can never match, just like adding developer features to a word processor would struggle to match a dedicated programming text editor.

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