8 ms·

The web community is flooded in negativity because it was swamped by kids with overly idealistic, unrealistic, and heroic ideas about what the web was going to

by hodwik 11y ago

The web community is flooded in negativity because it was swamped by kids with overly idealistic, unrealistic, and heroic ideas about what the web was going to be post-Facebook. Those people then realized that the web is, like all things, both real and imperfect. So now they're upset. This is all part of growing up. People who have been involved with the web for a while are not in any way more jaded then before. They already witnessed PHP, PERL, Java Applets, Flash, the browser wars, and so on.

ktRolster 11y ago
> They already witnessed PHP, PERL, Java Applets, Flash, the browser wars, and so on. It's frustrating that the situation hasn't improved. I thought by now the web would have a clean, easy system to work with. At the rate things are going, I don't have much hope before 2030.
- gedy 11y ago
  Come'on it's way better than before. Before you could barely get the UI you wanted to work at all, now its mostly techy-debates about tooling and patterns.
  - pekk 11y ago
    Whether it's better than before is extremely debatable. Cross-browser compatibility was a major issue, and it has improved some. But the problem in the 90s wasn't whether you could get the UI you wanted to work, and even if that was the problem, it still isn't solved. Actually, the consensus I remember from back then was that Javascript sucked. I guess the solution to that problem was to have more Javascript? We have actually gone backwards in terms of ideas like "semantic markup" and most websites are no longer fit for viewing in Lynx. Which also means accessibility has gotten worse. Bloat is worse than ever and privacy issues are worse than ever. Power over the internet is concentrated in the hands of huge corporations who run crummy walled gardens. At least in the 90s most internet users agreed that AOL's walled garden was a bad idea, but now everyone comes out of the woodwork to argue in favor of Facebook or the App Store. I'd say things are worse than before.
    - gedy 11y ago
      I'm coming from a "end-result"-driven opinion about making something that works. It was a huge hurdle just to do pretty much anything beyond display text documents, so that was my problem when building web apps. As to you your last point - yes true, but I think it's much worse with non-web technology and native apps!
      - colllectorof 11y ago
        > It was a huge hurdle just to do pretty much anything beyond display text documents Like what? The trend I see in practice is that most web applications are still 98% text documents with images, but a combination of modern design patterns and tooling makes generating those documents insanely complicated. Currently I'm watching a project to "modernize" a bunch of small websites. The amount of effort it takes to convert them to some "familiar" (Bootstrap-like) UI is cringe-worthy.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  The web is fantastic today compared to what it was when I started web development a decade ago.
  - EvanPlaice 11y ago
    Amen. We can build powerful, stable applications for the web that work across all browsers and operating systems. It has never been easier to pass data around and tap into 3rd party services to compose platforms that weren't possible a decade ago. I'm hardly 'old' in IRL terms but I remember back before we had really good version control, commmunication, data synchronization, deployment, testing, etc... tools. The state of things nowadays is just nice. Just watch out for the hype landmines and life is good.
s986s 11y ago
This is different though. Javascript is something that all of us are, in one way or another, exposed to. Giant companies building an ecommerce platform, startups making fun and innovative spas, designers adding a bit of animation and adaptivity to a theme, bare metsl devs bringing javascript to robotics and operating systems, severside crud applications and websocket handling, C++ devs that are interesting in bringing the best to such a widely used language, mobile phones frameworks and compilers, microsoft, google, apple, unity, mozilla. Javascript is the real deal. What makes it crazier is that 10 year olds can do a few tutorials on html5 rocks and feel confident in their abilities (in a good way). Javascript is not just a crappy language, there a socio-political aspect that has probably never been seen before
- gingerrr 11y ago
  > startups making fun and innovative spas brb getting funding for my in-home bubblewrap facials
- dsp1234 11y ago
  10 year olds can probably never been seen before I sometimes feel that everyone thinks that this stuff is totally unique. However, I remember copying Basic code out of magazines and BBSs as a kid. Copying and modifying that code was as empowering and amazing then as github/npm/etc is now. There is certainly a higher quantity due to the ubiquity of the Internet, but the basic quality is the same.
  - mlvljr 11y ago
    Now, try to pull this argument off in a RPi thread... :)
  - s986s 11y ago
    I suppose this is my generations basic : / Visual basic was my first language actually. It was pretty fun, built some cool stuff with it. I guess the web more free since people a share with and I dont need windows computers. And I dont need visual studio to make an application. When I first started with website dev I used to write in notepad because I didnt have the money for dreamweaver and I felt like I was joining the elite. Then I learned about notepad++ anf it felt like a very natural progression
__derek__ 11y ago
It seems to me that most of the people complaining have been from the web old-guard (e.g., PPK[1][2]), but maybe I've missed the "kids" who are complaining. [1]: "Stop pushing the web forward" http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/07/stop_pushing_th.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/07/stop_pushing... [2]: "Tools don’t solve the web’s problems, they ARE the problem" http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/05/tools_dont_solv.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/05/tools_dont_s...
baldfat 11y ago
Creating something is difficult and criticizing is easy. Such that showing oneself to be capable by creating is MUCH harder then showing oneself to be capable by criticism.
bshimmin 11y ago
I don't think I agree. I've been developing stuff for the web since the mid-90s, when TABLEs were just about starting to be a thing and Perl was definitely the preferred choice on the server. There has been plenty of excitement along the way, undeniably, but it feels like HTML5 took forever to get to where Flash was, JavaScript on the server still underwhelms me, and it seems almost daily to get more complex and full of enterprise beans, browsers are far from equal, the CSS3 spec isn't finished, developing for the mobile web is often a pretty wretched experience... and my clients still ask me to make their logos bigger and complain that important stuff is below the fold. Am I jaded? You bet. But hey, at least we can centre things vertically in CSS with Flexbox now (apart from the dubious browser support, of course).
- freshyill 11y ago
  Flexbox took forever to arrive, but I its defense, support is at 95% these days. http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox
  - darkmarmot 11y ago
    I love flexbox (compared to what existed prior) -- but just watched layouts break on the release of Chrome 48. Yay! :)
- lmm 11y ago
  > But hey, at least we can centre things vertically in CSS with Flexbox now You mean we're back up to feature parity with when we used tables for layout? Awesome!
swk2015 11y ago
If this has a grain of truth in it, the 'older crowd' need to lead by example, stop shaming 'kids' for their age, and prove why their old products are better.

by hodwik 11y ago

ktRolster 11y ago

> They already witnessed PHP, PERL, Java Applets, Flash, the browser wars, and so on. It's frustrating that the situation hasn't improved. I thought by now the web would have a clean, easy system to work with. At the rate things are going, I don't have much hope before 2030.

gedy 11y ago
Come'on it's way better than before. Before you could barely get the UI you wanted to work at all, now its mostly techy-debates about tooling and patterns.
- pekk 11y ago
  Whether it's better than before is extremely debatable. Cross-browser compatibility was a major issue, and it has improved some. But the problem in the 90s wasn't whether you could get the UI you wanted to work, and even if that was the problem, it still isn't solved. Actually, the consensus I remember from back then was that Javascript sucked. I guess the solution to that problem was to have more Javascript? We have actually gone backwards in terms of ideas like "semantic markup" and most websites are no longer fit for viewing in Lynx. Which also means accessibility has gotten worse. Bloat is worse than ever and privacy issues are worse than ever. Power over the internet is concentrated in the hands of huge corporations who run crummy walled gardens. At least in the 90s most internet users agreed that AOL's walled garden was a bad idea, but now everyone comes out of the woodwork to argue in favor of Facebook or the App Store. I'd say things are worse than before.
  - gedy 11y ago
    I'm coming from a "end-result"-driven opinion about making something that works. It was a huge hurdle just to do pretty much anything beyond display text documents, so that was my problem when building web apps. As to you your last point - yes true, but I think it's much worse with non-web technology and native apps!
    - colllectorof 11y ago
      > It was a huge hurdle just to do pretty much anything beyond display text documents Like what? The trend I see in practice is that most web applications are still 98% text documents with images, but a combination of modern design patterns and tooling makes generating those documents insanely complicated. Currently I'm watching a project to "modernize" a bunch of small websites. The amount of effort it takes to convert them to some "familiar" (Bootstrap-like) UI is cringe-worthy.
nommm-nommm 11y ago
The web is fantastic today compared to what it was when I started web development a decade ago.
- EvanPlaice 11y ago
  Amen. We can build powerful, stable applications for the web that work across all browsers and operating systems. It has never been easier to pass data around and tap into 3rd party services to compose platforms that weren't possible a decade ago. I'm hardly 'old' in IRL terms but I remember back before we had really good version control, commmunication, data synchronization, deployment, testing, etc... tools. The state of things nowadays is just nice. Just watch out for the hype landmines and life is good.

s986s 11y ago

This is different though. Javascript is something that all of us are, in one way or another, exposed to. Giant companies building an ecommerce platform, startups making fun and innovative spas, designers adding a bit of animation and adaptivity to a theme, bare metsl devs bringing javascript to robotics and operating systems, severside crud applications and websocket handling, C++ devs that are interesting in bringing the best to such a widely used language, mobile phones frameworks and compilers, microsoft, google, apple, unity, mozilla. Javascript is the real deal. What makes it crazier is that 10 year olds can do a few tutorials on html5 rocks and feel confident in their abilities (in a good way). Javascript is not just a crappy language, there a socio-political aspect that has probably never been seen before

gingerrr 11y ago
> startups making fun and innovative spas brb getting funding for my in-home bubblewrap facials
dsp1234 11y ago
10 year olds can probably never been seen before I sometimes feel that everyone thinks that this stuff is totally unique. However, I remember copying Basic code out of magazines and BBSs as a kid. Copying and modifying that code was as empowering and amazing then as github/npm/etc is now. There is certainly a higher quantity due to the ubiquity of the Internet, but the basic quality is the same.
- mlvljr 11y ago
  Now, try to pull this argument off in a RPi thread... :)
- s986s 11y ago
  I suppose this is my generations basic : / Visual basic was my first language actually. It was pretty fun, built some cool stuff with it. I guess the web more free since people a share with and I dont need windows computers. And I dont need visual studio to make an application. When I first started with website dev I used to write in notepad because I didnt have the money for dreamweaver and I felt like I was joining the elite. Then I learned about notepad++ anf it felt like a very natural progression

__derek__ 11y ago

It seems to me that most of the people complaining have been from the web old-guard (e.g., PPK[1][2]), but maybe I've missed the "kids" who are complaining. [1]: "Stop pushing the web forward" http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/07/stop_pushing_th.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/07/stop_pushing... [2]: "Tools don’t solve the web’s problems, they ARE the problem" http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/05/tools_dont_solv.html http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/05/tools_dont_s...

baldfat 11y ago

Creating something is difficult and criticizing is easy. Such that showing oneself to be capable by creating is MUCH harder then showing oneself to be capable by criticism.

bshimmin 11y ago

I don't think I agree. I've been developing stuff for the web since the mid-90s, when TABLEs were just about starting to be a thing and Perl was definitely the preferred choice on the server. There has been plenty of excitement along the way, undeniably, but it feels like HTML5 took forever to get to where Flash was, JavaScript on the server still underwhelms me, and it seems almost daily to get more complex and full of enterprise beans, browsers are far from equal, the CSS3 spec isn't finished, developing for the mobile web is often a pretty wretched experience... and my clients still ask me to make their logos bigger and complain that important stuff is below the fold. Am I jaded? You bet. But hey, at least we can centre things vertically in CSS with Flexbox now (apart from the dubious browser support, of course).

freshyill 11y ago
Flexbox took forever to arrive, but I its defense, support is at 95% these days. http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox
- darkmarmot 11y ago
  I love flexbox (compared to what existed prior) -- but just watched layouts break on the release of Chrome 48. Yay! :)
lmm 11y ago
> But hey, at least we can centre things vertically in CSS with Flexbox now You mean we're back up to feature parity with when we used tables for layout? Awesome!

swk2015 11y ago

If this has a grain of truth in it, the 'older crowd' need to lead by example, stop shaming 'kids' for their age, and prove why their old products are better.