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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?

#561

Post by tracker1 »

jethro_tell wrote: post #478
dooptroop wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, it goes so much further down than that.

Turtles all the way down.

Until you're working on a project where the turtles eat the errors...

Funny story, that's how I've been describing the issue with how errors have been handled on the project I'm working on, where there are SO many areas where errors are just ignored... so they don't propagate up the chain/stack... doubly annoying in a node environment where it's all supposed to be error first (as in the first thing you think about and check for).

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

#562

Post by collinmanderson »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #22

Yeah it is. Django is a good example of a framework that is popular and well documented overall. Yet when a new Django revision comes out the books and documentation from third parties take months to follow on. So by the time I've learned all the major changes in a revision well enough it's already party over for that revision. Official support is just ending because they have a new revision out. Unless it's an LTS b…

Django is moving in that direction by having each LTS have its own major version number, and backwards compatibility guarantees within each major version. So you can think in terms of major versions every two years if you want.

You can start your project on Django 2.0 (expected December 2017) and "Version 2" will be supported (via 2.2 LTS) through April 2022.

https://www.djangoproject.com/download/#supported-versions

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

#563

Post by tracker1 »

cosinetau wrote: post #540
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 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.

LOL, all of the frameworks mentioned, even express are pretty light abstractions... that said, I feel angular, as an example goes TOO far.. way too far. These days, I hesitate to even use lodash, let alone jquery or larger bits. Though I'll still bring in moment if I have to deal with a lot of date/time logic and formatting (hate the size of it though).

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

#564

Post by Shorel »

In my work I can be writing C++, or PHP or Javascript, depending on what part of the stack I'm working on.

C++ bugs are a bit hard to find, because the error messages are not very useful, so I launch the debugger, do a stack trace that fills the screen with arcane texts, then open the relevant source file in the line pointed by the debugger, and after about a minute of staring at that line and thinking, the bug is fixed.

In comparison to modern C++, JavaScript issues are complex beasts that can eat all your morning and give nothing in return. And then you test with another browser and it starts all over again.

Even so, some things like detecting the decimal separator supported by your operating system work in IE and Mozilla but were never implemented in Chrome, so you can't never really fix that 'bug'.

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

#565

Post by atoko »

soundwave106 wrote: post #451
frostymarvelous wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how many frameworks can you count in a win forms or wpf application? If we're going to count frameworks, there'd be no end it. As I once said, programming is abstraction upon abstraction. Like an onion, a Russia doll or better still, inception. Frameworks abound everywhere, at every layer. You just need to adjust your scope as you see fit, to find them.

Honestly from the programmer's perspective, it's really just one framework: .NET. I know that .NET abstracts away other frameworks such as the Win32 API, but generally you don't need to know any Win32 API etc. to make a Winforms / WPF / etc. application. With modern "web application" style development, it seems these days you need to know multiple frameworks by default, for better or for worse. More to the point, .NE…

You are confusing .Net, C# and WP* frameworks. .Net is closer to the JVM, C# is the language and WP* are libraries that interact with w32 apis

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

#566

Post by tracker1 »

ufmace wrote: post #482
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've used Angular a good bit, seems fine to me. Last place I worked probably had around 20-30k lines of Angular code. It wasn't perfect, but it was way better organized and easier to understand than a much smaller project (~1k lines) done with JQuery and handmade paging system.

I have yet to work on any ng (1 or 2) project that I'd take over a well-structured React + Redux project.

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

#567

Post by Shorel »

segmondy wrote: post #127
meshko wrote: post #37

It is scary how most commenters here are missing the point. No, not all programming sucks. Yes, web programming sucks more than other things. No, it doesn't have to be like this. Yes, even web programming was better 10 years ago. No, I don't know how to fix it. Neither do I know exactly where we took the wrong turn. One of my theories is this: had Sun not sued Microsoft over their extensions in JVM, MS would have kep…

I'm sorry but I beg to differ, web programming 10 years ago was a nightmare. It's much better today. It's not web programming that sucks, it's programming with others. I bet most people won't complain much if they got choose what tools they wanted and worked alone. When working with others, different ideas and opinion clash heavily. Programmers are not best known for their awesome communication and the lack of it lea…

Web programming nowadays is so good that it reminds me of the development speed of good old Foxpro.

The difference between then and now is that the end result now is 'distributed'.

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

#570

Post by vram22 »

contingencies wrote: post #413
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) .…

You forgot something for the mobile strategy, something for web stats, something for monitoring, something for source control, something for issue management, something which shall remain nameless for team communication that breaks store and forward and interrupts you constantly, something for 'social', etc. Oh wait, and your infrastructure automation solution. And your third party DDoS protection/web cache integrati…

You forgot integrating all of that, keeping it integrated (aka working) as versions of pieces change, and debugging it all.
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