7 ms·

What's sad is the zillions of hours wasted by engineers on an inherently flawed stack. What's sad is how ridiculously complicated it is to create and manage rel

by pixie_ 10y ago

What's sad is the zillions of hours wasted by engineers on an inherently flawed stack. What's sad is how ridiculously complicated it is to create and manage relatively simple UIs. What's sad is an entire generations of programmers growing up and thinking this is normal. Programming is supposed to be about creating platforms for each other so we can continue solving higher (and higher) level problems. This web crap has us stuck fighting in the mud going nowhere.

SZJX 10y ago
What's the alternative? The division of platforms is a fact and how can you deal with it by only programming native apps? This is the best solution people have come up with. You talk as if it's all a hugr waste of time. I don't think so.
TheMagicHorsey 10y ago
Yes. Exactly what you said. It bothers me when people think solving broken Javascript problems is a valuable way to spend our civilizations scarce skilled manpower.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Angry Birds and Candy Crush are clearly superior uses of time.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Well, they at least provide value to people without too much externalities which makes them much better than both fighting in the mud and all the adtech work that drives this mess.
idlewords 10y ago
The web lets you reach a large audience in a way nothing else can. You have to get over yourself about the tools not being elegant, and make sure the thing you're using the flawed tools for is worth the aggravation.
- wvenable 10y ago
  That's why it's so successful. There has to be a reason something so terrible could possibly be this successful and you hit the nail on the head.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  That doesn't mean it isn't terrible to work with and couldn't be much better. Unless you think the tool flaws are inescapable aspects of reaching a large audience?
- axlprose 10y ago
  > You have to get over yourself about the tools not being elegant https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/07/11/a-bad-workman-blames-his-tools/ https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/07/11/a-bad-workman-blam... Jokes aside, the history of mathematics is a pretty worthwhile subject to study to truly appreciate the importance and implications of tools (or mathematical discoveries in this case). There's a reason why it took humans 2000 years after Euclid first wrote his 'Elements' to discover non-euclidean geometry...
- dordoka 10y ago
  The fact that you can reach a massive audience doesn't make any less true that the tooling sucks. If that first fact wasn't true, we would not be commenting on this issue...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
raverbashing 10y ago
Complicated to create UIs? Win32 was complicated. MFC was complicated. GTK is hard HTML and CSS aren't as complex as those. Not even close
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  You can create controls in WIN32 or MFC that would simply be impossible in HTML for a reasonable level of performance
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Yes, but this doesn't matter for the majority of applications today
    - nodamage 10y ago
      Replace "WIN32 or MFC" with "iOS or Android" and the point still stands, especially on mobile devices where processing power is limited and battery life more important.
  - ivanhoe 10y ago
    Performance yes, you can't compete with that one because browsers don't let you control the low-level stuff. But the speed of development and the ease of doing complex layouts with css is hard to match (when you master css enough, of course), specially if you're trying to do UI from the code directly, without IDE helpers and visual builders.
    - millstone 10y ago
      The speed of development is very fast for the first 75%, and comes to a screeching halt for the last 25%. The web stack has no good way to answer basic questions like "does the user have arrow keys" or "what is the current mouse position." That's the point that you start to layer on the "hacks on hacks" that OP references.
ivanhoe 10y ago
Interesting, what native UI system is in your opinion easier to work with than web? Why then so many devs choose to use WebBrowser wrappers to render their desktop/mobile UIs because it's way faster and easier to develop with?
- regularfry 10y ago
  Delphi 4's VCL and IDE was the high point. It's been downhill ever since.
  - TimJYoung 10y ago
    You should try a newer version of the IDE/compiler. Delphi 10 Seattle and 10.1 Berlin are pretty damn good. Fast load times, editor is solid. The only real downside to the whole product is that the VCL (still) needs better layout management and easier ways to cope with scaling on high-DPI displays.
  - nurettin 10y ago
    Delphi 7 designer was a great improvement over delphi4 (we still use it at work) and yet delphi 2007 fixed some soap bugs and xe7+ is pretty decent as a cross platform ui development IDE.
- stockerta 10y ago
  I think they use it because they know that. Not because it is better. It is faster and easier for them, but the end product is a pile of ..... .
- Aaargh20318 10y ago
  > Interesting, what native UI system is in your opinion easier to work with than web? I'll answer that: every single one. I haven't ever seen a GUI system more complicated than the HTML/CSS/JS mess. The problem with these is that at first glance they look easy. Doing 'hello world' in HTML is little more than actually typing 'Hello world'. They only become a mess if you try to do something reasonably complex. The end result of this is that there are many people who start out with HTML and stick with it. They simply never experienced anything different. > Why then so many devs choose to use WebBrowser wrappers to render their desktop/mobile UIs because it's way faster and easier to develop with? No, it's cheaper to develop with. There are many more 'web developers' out there than mobile developers and they are usually very cheap to hire. The goal of corporations is not to build the best UI or to use the best tools, it is to make the most profit. A web-UI is usually considered good-enough by the suits and web 'developers' are a dime a dozen.
emodendroket 10y ago
You could say the same thing about Unix but nobody seems to be calling for that to die.
- tempodox 10y ago
  > nobody seems to be calling for that to die. There is the Unix Hater's Handbook (http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf). However, Unix doesn't suck half as bad as web development. Web development keeps a lot of problems alive that have been overcome in Unix development and everywhere else.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Yeah, there is, but it's ancient and that sort of carping seems to be a distant memory.
    - zeveb 10y ago
      That's kinda the problem, though: Unix really is worse than VMS or Lisp Machines, when measured on certain axes (and I love Unix!); rather than fix it, or replace it with something even better (e.g. Plan 9), the computing industry has instead decided that POSIX is the end-all, be-all of OS evolution, and collectively ignored all the ways that life could be better. It's very difficult, as I get older, not to survey the computing landscape and be profoundly bitter about our absolute and utter refusal to use better tools in order to achieve greatness. It's like people choosing to eat McDonald's when they could have an affordable home-cooked meal prepared for them, for essentially the same cost.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        This is what makes me focus more on Windows, macOS and the mobile OSes. Because these systems moved beyond what plain POSIX means. Even on Apple and Google's OSes, their UNIX underpinnings are not that relevant, because most of the user space libraries and APIs don't have anything to do with UNIX.

by pixie_ 10y ago

SZJX 10y ago

What's the alternative? The division of platforms is a fact and how can you deal with it by only programming native apps? This is the best solution people have come up with. You talk as if it's all a hugr waste of time. I don't think so.

TheMagicHorsey 10y ago

Yes. Exactly what you said. It bothers me when people think solving broken Javascript problems is a valuable way to spend our civilizations scarce skilled manpower.

astrodust 10y ago
Angry Birds and Candy Crush are clearly superior uses of time.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Well, they at least provide value to people without too much externalities which makes them much better than both fighting in the mud and all the adtech work that drives this mess.

idlewords 10y ago

The web lets you reach a large audience in a way nothing else can. You have to get over yourself about the tools not being elegant, and make sure the thing you're using the flawed tools for is worth the aggravation.

wvenable 10y ago
That's why it's so successful. There has to be a reason something so terrible could possibly be this successful and you hit the nail on the head.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
johncolanduoni 10y ago
That doesn't mean it isn't terrible to work with and couldn't be much better. Unless you think the tool flaws are inescapable aspects of reaching a large audience?
axlprose 10y ago
> You have to get over yourself about the tools not being elegant https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/07/11/a-bad-workman-blames-his-tools/ https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/07/11/a-bad-workman-blam... Jokes aside, the history of mathematics is a pretty worthwhile subject to study to truly appreciate the importance and implications of tools (or mathematical discoveries in this case). There's a reason why it took humans 2000 years after Euclid first wrote his 'Elements' to discover non-euclidean geometry...
dordoka 10y ago
The fact that you can reach a massive audience doesn't make any less true that the tooling sucks. If that first fact wasn't true, we would not be commenting on this issue...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

raverbashing 10y ago

Complicated to create UIs? Win32 was complicated. MFC was complicated. GTK is hard HTML and CSS aren't as complex as those. Not even close

bbcbasic 10y ago
You can create controls in WIN32 or MFC that would simply be impossible in HTML for a reasonable level of performance
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Yes, but this doesn't matter for the majority of applications today
  - nodamage 10y ago
    Replace "WIN32 or MFC" with "iOS or Android" and the point still stands, especially on mobile devices where processing power is limited and battery life more important.
- ivanhoe 10y ago
  Performance yes, you can't compete with that one because browsers don't let you control the low-level stuff. But the speed of development and the ease of doing complex layouts with css is hard to match (when you master css enough, of course), specially if you're trying to do UI from the code directly, without IDE helpers and visual builders.
  - millstone 10y ago
    The speed of development is very fast for the first 75%, and comes to a screeching halt for the last 25%. The web stack has no good way to answer basic questions like "does the user have arrow keys" or "what is the current mouse position." That's the point that you start to layer on the "hacks on hacks" that OP references.

ivanhoe 10y ago

Interesting, what native UI system is in your opinion easier to work with than web? Why then so many devs choose to use WebBrowser wrappers to render their desktop/mobile UIs because it's way faster and easier to develop with?

regularfry 10y ago
Delphi 4's VCL and IDE was the high point. It's been downhill ever since.
- TimJYoung 10y ago
  You should try a newer version of the IDE/compiler. Delphi 10 Seattle and 10.1 Berlin are pretty damn good. Fast load times, editor is solid. The only real downside to the whole product is that the VCL (still) needs better layout management and easier ways to cope with scaling on high-DPI displays.
- nurettin 10y ago
  Delphi 7 designer was a great improvement over delphi4 (we still use it at work) and yet delphi 2007 fixed some soap bugs and xe7+ is pretty decent as a cross platform ui development IDE.
stockerta 10y ago
I think they use it because they know that. Not because it is better. It is faster and easier for them, but the end product is a pile of ..... .
Aaargh20318 10y ago
> Interesting, what native UI system is in your opinion easier to work with than web? I'll answer that: every single one. I haven't ever seen a GUI system more complicated than the HTML/CSS/JS mess. The problem with these is that at first glance they look easy. Doing 'hello world' in HTML is little more than actually typing 'Hello world'. They only become a mess if you try to do something reasonably complex. The end result of this is that there are many people who start out with HTML and stick with it. They simply never experienced anything different. > Why then so many devs choose to use WebBrowser wrappers to render their desktop/mobile UIs because it's way faster and easier to develop with? No, it's cheaper to develop with. There are many more 'web developers' out there than mobile developers and they are usually very cheap to hire. The goal of corporations is not to build the best UI or to use the best tools, it is to make the most profit. A web-UI is usually considered good-enough by the suits and web 'developers' are a dime a dozen.

emodendroket 10y ago

You could say the same thing about Unix but nobody seems to be calling for that to die.

tempodox 10y ago
> nobody seems to be calling for that to die. There is the Unix Hater's Handbook (http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf). However, Unix doesn't suck half as bad as web development. Web development keeps a lot of problems alive that have been overcome in Unix development and everywhere else.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Yeah, there is, but it's ancient and that sort of carping seems to be a distant memory.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    That's kinda the problem, though: Unix really is worse than VMS or Lisp Machines, when measured on certain axes (and I love Unix!); rather than fix it, or replace it with something even better (e.g. Plan 9), the computing industry has instead decided that POSIX is the end-all, be-all of OS evolution, and collectively ignored all the ways that life could be better. It's very difficult, as I get older, not to survey the computing landscape and be profoundly bitter about our absolute and utter refusal to use better tools in order to achieve greatness. It's like people choosing to eat McDonald's when they could have an affordable home-cooked meal prepared for them, for essentially the same cost.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      This is what makes me focus more on Windows, macOS and the mobile OSes. Because these systems moved beyond what plain POSIX means. Even on Apple and Google's OSes, their UNIX underpinnings are not that relevant, because most of the user space libraries and APIs don't have anything to do with UNIX.