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Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

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Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#71

Post by abnercoimbre »

em-bee wrote: post #52
grawprog wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Linux based operating systems and I've used them pretty much exclusively for at least a decade now, and I agree with a lot of your post, but >By cutting away abstraction, I don't think I agree with this take. You haven't cut away abstraction, you've changed to a different kind of abstraction. Linux's 'everything is a file' abstraction is just that, an abstraction. >Linux is arranged masterfully, and makes the…

i strongly disagree with this: Every flavour of Linux uses a different layout for its root directories, stores configs in different places and generally is not consistent from distro to distro. there are differences, but it's 90% the same in the major distributions. and while you do have a point about user configs, it is getting better. .config and .local are getting used more and more and are an improvement over eve…

> and while you do have a point about user configs, it is getting better

Are people finally following the XDG standard? [0]

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XDG_Base_Directory

Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#72

Post by kgin »

The simple page you could make 20 years ago is the simple page you can make today. With a few minor tweaks, it will work as well as it did 20 years ago.

If you want to make a complex web app today, that's easier than it was 20 years ago. The tools are infinitely better.

If for some reason you decide to use the tools meant for complex web apps to make your simple page, you're going to feel like everything has gone horribly wrong. But why are you doing that?

Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#73

Post by grawprog »

em-bee wrote: post #52
grawprog wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Linux based operating systems and I've used them pretty much exclusively for at least a decade now, and I agree with a lot of your post, but >By cutting away abstraction, I don't think I agree with this take. You haven't cut away abstraction, you've changed to a different kind of abstraction. Linux's 'everything is a file' abstraction is just that, an abstraction. >Linux is arranged masterfully, and makes the…

i strongly disagree with this: Every flavour of Linux uses a different layout for its root directories, stores configs in different places and generally is not consistent from distro to distro. there are differences, but it's 90% the same in the major distributions. and while you do have a point about user configs, it is getting better. .config and .local are getting used more and more and are an improvement over eve…

>there are differences, but it's 90% the same in the major distributions.

Yes and that 10% can cause some unexpected, sometimes hard to fix problems. A poorly written build script or installer that expects a specific distro's directory layout can cause some problems. Especially if it's a large convoluted build system that hard codes the directories in multiple places.

I've actually had to deal with this, it sucks. That was as an end user trying to use an app, not as a developer.

You run into this a lot trying to build small libraries and stuff. There's unfortunately a lot of poor programming habits out there. Directories inevitably sometimes get hardcoded and this causes problems because of the inconsistencies between distros.

>and while you do have a point about user configs, it is getting better. .config and .local are getting used more and more

And yet there's hundreds of apps that will never be updated or changed to conform to standards.

>are an improvement over every app dropping stuff in $HOME.

Tell that to snap. It insists its folder must sit nicely in my home folder and nowhere else.

Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#74

Post by nitrogen »

nanna wrote: post #24
rectang wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing I find weird is how bloated static typical site generator tools are. The delivery medium of static HTML is timeless. But the odds that a static site generator with dozens of dependencies will still work N years from now? Grim.

'Typically' meaning...? Jekyll? Gatsby?

I have a couple of older static sites (one using Jekyll/Octopress, one using Middleman), and if I ever do a bundle update something is guaranteed to break. Not sure if that's the "bloat" the parent comment is talking about though.

Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#75

Post by laurent92 »

nanna wrote: post #24
rectang wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing I find weird is how bloated static typical site generator tools are. The delivery medium of static HTML is timeless. But the odds that a static site generator with dozens of dependencies will still work N years from now? Grim.

'Typically' meaning...? Jekyll? Gatsby?

Yes. I was on Jekyll 2 years ago, I don’t think I’ll be able to compile it in two years. It’s already on an old version of Ruby if I remember, if not Bundle or Gulp or... and it’s just a simple website.

Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#76

Post by winphone1974 »

5cott0 wrote: post #65

No, no it is not. It's somewhat amusing to see people complain about the supposedly increasing complexity of web development. Sorry-not-sorry it's not that bad or even that complex. In fact things are far easier and less complex then they were just a few years ago and improvements continue at a rapid pace (modern browser module support, vitejS, ESbuild). I don't even need to use babeljs anymore whereas just a few yea…

By what standard are you saying things are easier? Certainty not less complexity, abstraction, volume of code, number of moving pieces, raTe of change or configuration.

If you don't understand how the foundational technologies work and don't care to learn then things may indeed seem easier. If you have 15+ years of experience and seek to understand today's technology at the same level as when you first learned, things are definitely harder.

Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#77

Post by loa_in_ »

ruffianeo wrote: post #32
rossdavidh wrote: post #8

I think one driver of this cycle is: 1) need for capability that old method doesn't meet, so new tool is made 2) dev working on both simpler and more complex sites, wants everything to use the same tools 3) even sites with simple needs now get done using tools powerful enough to satisfy needs of complex sites 4) experienced dev doesn't see a problem, because they are conversant with those more complex tools, and also…

I think you forgot one driver, which IMHO is a major one: Imagine you are just getting into the business and are confronted with complexities, which would let you come to a grinding halt for the next 6 months until you have at least a foggy idea of what is going on. (Angular, Elm, PHP, React, ...) And once you worked through your initial list of "need to know", 5 more have popped up, like a hydra where chopping off h…

> And since someone mentioned Linux... what is the canonical way to write GUI apps in Linux these days? Tcl/Tk? xlib? xcb?, SDL2, wayland over X? Gtk, that huge google framework? QT? SDL2? Motif? Pure wayland? Also a huge mess and people "innovating" just to be ahead of the curve. Yes, there are always reasons, if you need them to be...

There isn't a canonical way - Tcl/Tk, Qt, Gtk, SDL, Java, pure graphics backend calls all continue to work. All as long as there's someone out in the world with enough dedication to them to keep them up to date. Linux ecosystem is not at mercy of Microsoft or Apple, thankfully.

Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#78

Post by geerlingguy »

I have gone back to plain CSS files and dropping Sass and other preprocessing techniques just because the past decade of managing build chains and dependencies to marginally improve writing styles that change minimally between redesigns has soured me on more complex build processes.

By the time you actually do a redesign that would take advantage of the fact you use mixins, css variables, etc., the whole design language changes, and meanwhile you'll have to change preprocessors anyways.

Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#79

Post by winphone1974 »

lenkite wrote: post #62
MereInterest wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly why any of my hobby projects that involve JS are done with plain JS, with as few libraries as possible. I might pull in specific libraries, but I don't want to pull in a giant framework that will be outdated the next time I decide to work on that particular project.

A micro-library like https://redom.js.org/ does make things easier though. I have also given up on mega-frameworks - just too many things to keep in mind as I get older.

Easier through ignorance seems like cheating IMO. you're basically saying yes things are harder but I just ignore them. How would a newbie decide what's safe to skip?

Re: Everything Easy is Hard Again (2018)

#80

Post by wildmanx »

bestinterest wrote: post #25
smoldesu wrote: post #10

The delineation of this argument is what made me switch to Linux. On Windows, things that should have been getting easy were getting harder for me: software management was getting worse, updates were getting worse, and everything that should "just work", just wouldn't. My experience on MacOS was just as bad, with all of the 32-bit apps I used gone in the wind. Now the 64-bit apps are up on the chopping block, and I h…

I wish wish wish I could move over to Linux but its font rendering situation is terrible [1] I've tried Manjaro and Ubuntu to no avail. I have no idea what causes it or if people on Linux are not as sensitive to it or its a specific hardware setup which causes terrible fonts but once you read Windows fonts stuff looks so much better to me. Apparently its a hot debated topic but its so obvious to some it seems. [1] ht…

Wow, first time I hear that as the main and apparently only argument to using Windows over any Linux distro.

With HiDPI displays all over the place, is subpixel rendering really still a thing? Pixels have gotten so small, I can't see individual ones anymore even if I'm trying. They could leave out anti-aliasing altogether in fonts and I'd hardly notice.

Or I'm just getting old.

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