10 ms·

No such thing as “real programming” (2015)

113 points by yumaikas 11y ago

captn3m0 11y ago
This hits home for me. I started web development in PHP, went up and down the ladder a lot, but still continue to do PHP (Mostly Laravel these days). However, I am fascinated by the web in general and all the abstractions that make it stand up. More specifically, things like REST, HTTP, sessions, and all the web APIs that you consider for granted on the browser. Even things like CORS. The nice thing about PHP is that it lets you play with these abstractions _even when you are starting out_. For eg, a redirect in ruby/sinatra would be `redirect https://google.com` https://google.com`, but stock PHP would want you to use the header("Location: https://google.com"); https://google.com"); variant[0]. PHP doesn't abstract out the web, but lets you build on top of it. Its close enough to C so you know what is happening and how things are working (or atleast its easier to figure out), and still dynamic enough to get shit done. There are problems with PHP's design, sure. But these are getting fewer and fewer with things like PHP7/Composer and the entire ecosystem still evolving. And believe it or not: there are problems with _every programming language_. Just pick the right tool for the job, will you. [0]: I know comparing sinatra to PHP isn't ideal, but I am yet to see anyone code in pure CGI in Ruby.
- downer65 11y ago
  The 2 things that create the most beef about PHP are simply: 1. Type Safety (string? int? boolean?) 2. The Runtime Engine (apache? nginx? linux? windows? what file system?) The flexible nature of these two concepts, leaves any given PHP script resting on shifting sands of uncertainty, which is really the only thing that leaves people feeling inadequate. The willingness to compromise, and accept a runtime where it's hard to debug, permits programmers to put themselves in situations where they'll have a hard time providing a conclusive answer in succinct terms, to non-technical folks disinterested in obscure details beyond the scope of one's external field or daily interests. It's not because of impostor syndrome, or any sort of psychological underdog complex. It's simply the awareness that there are gaps in what's often expected to be a hermetic seal. And knowing about that, would gnaw at the edges of just about anybody's confidence at a subliminal level.
  - Joeri 11y ago
    Every programming language has differences across platforms and servers, and the dynamic ones all have the type safety aspects. Those two arguments cannot be the reason because then javascript, python or ruby devs would be susceptible to the same.
- lucideer 11y ago
  Your observation on abstraction is interesting. I've always considered PHP to be quite the opposite. e.g. Going from PHP to NodeJS, NodeJS is a lot more direct and less abstracted (handling the request directly, reading the request data incrementally and handling reader state, setting headers and then explicitly writing to the buffer, handling connection state, etc.) - note I do mean NodeJS here, not something like Express another e.g. PSR-7 I find is, counterintuitively, actually much less abstracted than raw PHP built-ins as it goes out if it's way to map the interfaces to the stack as intended, rather than completely arbitrary weird abstractions. Like the retrieval of query parameters being entirely separate and unrelated to retrieval of the body payload, whereas PHP tends to sort of conflate these things in $_GET/$_POST/$_REQUEST and then doesn't really have obvious intuitive handling of non-x-form-url-encoded payloads. And don't get me started on query string array handling. I do completely agree with the article though, and I still use PHP a lot. Voluntarily. But I just found your specific observation surprising.
  - captn3m0 11y ago
    Agreed, nodejs lets you build servers from the ground up using streams. However, I am yet to see anyone build their first node project without something like Express and just use http.createServer. The PHP abstractions are not always clear as you rightly point out (REQUEST = GET+POST+COOKIE...), but they are vastly different "magic" that you see in the Ruby land, for eg where you would rarely be ever thinking about cookies at all.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  > stock PHP would want you to use the header("Location: https://google.com"); https://google.com"); variant Which is actually a broken abstraction, because in most PHP SAPIs that doesn't actually spit out a header line directly. Instead, it's parsed into its components, and PHP additionally sets the HTTP status code to a redirection one.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mattvanhorn 11y ago
Real programming ended with Mel.
- jeff_marshall 11y ago
  Tell that to the people who debug new CSP/BSPs using binary search on "which line did the boot sequence make it to" using GPIO to an LED. Thankfully, most of us don't spend a lot of time doing that sort of thing these days (even in the embedded world). I also feel for anyone who ends up using an upside-down air can to debug shoddy solder joints on a BGA device ;)
  - njharman 11y ago
    Be enlightened http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
- xjay 11y ago
  My first thought was that "real programmers" are those who deal with floating-points.. "God is real, unless declared integer."
lxe 11y ago
When I first entered the workforce I started off doing embedded Linux programming. Device drivers, kernel hacks, small systems with limited resources, FPGAs, etc... This was difficult, and posed lots of challenges. I ended up jumping all the way to the other end of the "stack" -- web front-ends. Webdev has been a side-hobby of a sort for quite a while, and I pretty much expected it to be a lot simpler than the low level systems programming that I've been doing. I've been doing web client and server programming for some time now, and I can without a doubt claim that it poses its own set of challenges that compare and oftentimes exceed in complexity to those encountered in the "lower level" programming fields. I think the entire notion that one type of programming is more "real" than others comes from lack of perspective. Once you dive deep into more than one development layer, use case, architecture, language, or community, you realize that the challenges each one faces are as varied, unique, and interesting as the rest of them.
- trentmb 11y ago
  > I've been doing web client and server programming for some time now, and I can without a doubt claim that it poses its own set of challenges that compare and oftentimes exceed in complexity to those encountered in the "lower level" programming fields. I'm a math major turned 'full stack' dev with an eye on embedded dev as my prize- I needed this comment.
  - notalaser 11y ago
    It's extremely true. I occasionally joke about how web programming isn't really programming, but it really is nothing but a joke. Making a LED blink on a microcontroller is just about as difficult as showing an intermittent alert in a browser window. It may seem harder because you need to know a little more about the abstraction layers underneath, but those are things that you can pick up just as quickly as JavaScript. Designing a high-throughput data interface system in FPGA (which I'm doing now) is at least as hard as doing a high-throughput back-end infrastructure for a web service. I can barely do the former -- I sure as fuck can't do the latter right now, regardless of how "real" my programming skills are. When I read through a paper on the latter topic, or watch a presentation, I can mostly understand what it's about and appreciate the technical prowess, but doing something like that myself would likely be a quick lesson in humility. If you like what you're doing and you're creating programs that do useful, or at least spectacular things, you're a real programmer.
tluyben2 11y ago
I guess people generally call 'real programming' something that isn't connecting up CRUD forms/pages. And although I would not call it 'real programming' as a term, I do not see that kind of thing as a challenge or interesting at all. I have made / helped make 1000s of sites over the years (in many different technologies and CMS's) and most of them are just incredibly boring and require no kind of programming skills really. So in that sense they are not 'real programming'. If you can install WP, Google CSS changes for the theme you buy or get from the designer and then Google the plugins + few lines of code changes to make it work then that is not 'real programming' in a sense. But it does pay the bills and it pays them well. I am not sure about other countries, but in NL and DE, for big companies, I see the complex & inflexible (Java) Enterprise CMS software being replaced by WP. Often not openly and company wide, but departmentally for sure. We get asked to consume the content in the 'big corporate' CMS via a webservice or even scraping and when that's done and the WP site runs and can be used to run that part of the site, they ask corporate hosting to do some proxy passing and rewriting. To illustrate (I cannot name names ...), let's say you have an international online retailer and the ECMS contains a different site per country like: https://retailer.com/nl/.. https://retailer.com/nl/... https://retailer.com/de/.. https://retailer.com/de/... etc for all countries they are in. Then the NL dep asks us to recreate their /nl/ site in WP with the content from the ECMS and then they proxypass/rewrite /nl/ to the new server which contains the WP installation. Why? Because WP allows, for 'low cost' and 'no real programming' to add all the features they want and to allow workflow-free fast updates when they have a special or deals or contest or whatever specific to that country. Not to mention people understand how to use it right away; no courses needed. With the ECMS that all runs via the head office and that workflow is too hard to change so this is much cheaper/easier. Sometimes they don't even really notify the head office but just do it on their own servers. This same thing happens in many companies / institutions that have many 'sub-sites' managed by different regions/countries/verticals. It works, it makes clients happy and the fact I don't like WP (at all) and the fact I find this kind of thing rather boring not to create code (like you would in Django or Ruby) is not really interesting; the average 'corporate' WP site we deliver has 1 custom WP file with functions the guys who set everything up and integrate the design reuse and (rarely) append. I would say that if I was to name something real or not real programming, this would be it. And yet it makes a lot of money and, more importantly, it makes clients happy & productive without extremely long processes of implementation. Edit: Other than that I agree with the article; it is a matter of taste though. Like said I would not call these things 'real or non-real (fake)' programming but I do choose to not do most of this work myself as I like embedded and native mobile work better. That keeps clients happy too anyway.
fallous 11y ago
When I'm engaged in rapid prototyping or testing an idea, I almost exclusively rely on the stack I'm familiar with that fits the problem domain. But I don't consider that "real code" given the very nature of what I'm doing and the understanding that once the problem has a solution, that solution can be applied to whatever stack BEST fits the situation. The author seems to engage in the same behavior, but conflates the "get things done fast" with the production solution. If you're a good programmer and your preferred tool is PHP, then you're engaged in "real programming." If you insist on using PHP as a deployment solution because it's what you're familiar with rather than because it is an appropriate/optimal solution to the problem then you're engaged in laziness. A good programmer can adapt their mental models and adopt the tools necessary for the problem domain. A bad one always has an excuse for why their comfort justifies tool choice.
- dietrichepp 11y ago
  I'd like to use a broad definition of "appropriate/optimal". I could imagine PHP being optimal only because you already have PHP talent in house.
  - fallous 11y ago
    Yes, if PHP is appropriate to the task at hand AND you have an existing set of PHP talent in-house then it would be hard to argue that isn't an optimal solution. However, if PHP is not appropriate, that in-house PHP talent does not change the fact that PHP is the wrong tool.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    If your in house 'talent' can't learn a new web framework without too much trouble, then it's questionable to call it talent. I've never worked at a company that used Delphi, but I have complete confidence in my ability to use the language. If a person doesn't feel confident in their ability to pick up C, they are missing something from their toolkit.
falcolas 11y ago
If web developers think they have it bad for being razzed about not being real programmers, they should talk to SDET folks.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
dschiptsov 11y ago
Tell that to Linus.)
- dschiptsov 11y ago
  I see. To be able to write world-class kernel code (or projects like nginx) a programmer must posses at least practical knowledge of advanced data-structures and algorithms (including implementation details), machine architectures and automata theory (FSMs for protocols) - subjects about which typical PHP/JS coder have no idea. That's why they are so sure that there is nothing beyond their amazing coding skills out there.
0xcde4c3db 11y ago
The term "full-stack" has related problems. Most people, regardless of where they center their expertise, have some idea of a layer of the stack beyond which is Somebody Else's Problem.
- lowglow 11y ago
  Can confirm, am fullstack: Physical layer is someone else's problem.
  - Cyph0n 11y ago
    Actually, even the three layers above that are likely someone else's problem (data link,network, and transport). Full-stack usually means knowledge of the application layer i.e. HTTP and client side.
    - lowglow 11y ago
      I have a pretty extensive background working as a security engineer at an ISP out of high school, so I can handle that junk pretty easily.
    - ownagefool 11y ago
      Honestly, I think that's extremely cheeky usage of the term. I'm of the opinion that you should be able to:- - talk to a datacentre, get servers, switches, power, network racked and ready to go. - Do the devops to configure this infrastructure. - Understand data-layer requirements and generally host and manage a CP or AP system. - Write the apps that'll live on these servers. - Implement resonable caching to scale. - Write the frontend code to implement a design to connect to these systems. - Have enough knowledge to profile and debug the performance bottlenecks of such systems. At about that point, you can start to consider yourselve "full stack". Now some could argue that you don't need rack the system or do the devops, but if you don't understand what you're hosting on, how are you ever going to debug an issue that outwith your application?
xjay 11y ago
Programming is ultimately about systems. There's a recent talk [1] by Mary Shaw from Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU). It's about what has happened since the NATO conference in 1968 (dubbed the Software Crisis), and what engineering means in software engineering. According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million "casual" programmers, and ~2.5 million highly trained software engineers, and there's a need to get more programmers into the engineering aspects. [1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 There's a link to the slides in the description of the video.
- morgante 11y ago
  > According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million "casual" programmers I don't believe that statistic for a second, unless we're using some convoluted definition of "programmers" which includes anyone who can open Microsoft Word. That would mean half the labor force can program. Ludicrous. Looking at the slides[1], I'm pretty sure you interpreted that wrong. There are 90M end users of software, not 90M "casual" programmers. [1] http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-amsterdam-2015/slides/MaryShaw_KEYNOTEProgressTowardAnEngineeringDisciplineOfSoftware.pdf http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-amsterdam-2015/slides/MaryShaw_KE...
  - xjay 11y ago
    I'll correct some things: 1) The speaker said projection, not survey. 2) I interchanged "developers" and "programmers" at the top of the slide, but the speaker lumps "programming like things" into the 90M "end users," which among others include pretty much all the web people (scripting languages, database interfacing, web server security, etc). Please see the relevant part at 49:50 [1], but I'll bring it in next. The speaker pretty much defines "end users"/casual developers as people who do programming like things; "There are something like 90M people out there who are doing 'programming like things'; they are building databases, they are building spreadsheets, they are using scripting languages, they are building sophisticated websites--what are we doing to help them?" It's a broad category, but I think the confusion is that programming is not simply about writing code, it also includes the overall architecture, and design of a system. So what I get from this is that end users means anyone who didn't go through the academic channels to learn the engineering aspects, and that's who they need to reach. The speaker had a link to their software engineering programs at CMU [2] in an earlier slide. Also, see the context in view of the stackoverlow survey--which doesn't add up if you look at the numbers, but the speaker explains it's because some people reported in more than once.--It sought to be an example of how "end users" end up doing "programming like things." [1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 [2] Software Engineering Masters Programs http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-engineering/ http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-engineering/
nickpsecurity 11y ago
This article links to this powerful story that's worth a read and has some life lessons in it: http://www.brightball.com/business/what-exactly-happened-to-brightball-for-hire http://www.brightball.com/business/what-exactly-happened-to-... In gratitude, I'm going to be a nice guy that avoids the PHP vs "real" languages part of the discussion. :)
- maxerickson 11y ago
  You didn't though.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Oh no, I did. Anyone seeing prior posts would spot the contrast. ;)
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      So you were merely tiresome in the above post? My post above is of course also tiresome and pretty uninteresting, but it doesn't pretend to be otherwise.
      - nickpsecurity 11y ago
        You're spotting the wiseguy aspect but ignoring the other aspect: that it admits I could drop bombs on PHP, even while considering him a real programmer, but kindly and unusually don't due to a rare moment of respect given the story I read. So, the statement both conveys my position and avoids an attack while also delivering a "Hell yeah!" moment of respect. That you ignored the obvious compliment embedded in that... twice... was tiresome. I won't let it bother me, though. Just helping you follow along. :P
        maxerickson 11y ago
        Uh, when I say tiresome, I'm partly talking about the attitude that this would be interesting reading: that it admits I could drop bombs on PHP, even while considering him a real programmer, but kindly and unusually don't due to a rare moment of respect given the story I read. PHP is well worn territory, discussion of who is a real programmer or not is just dick measuring.
kalzium 11y ago
omg I know I'll be down voted for this but... ugh, this guy hasn't gotten anything and it's so super sad. I've a similar background like him, but I kinda felt embarassed reading his post. Mannnnn... you can argue all day long what programming is about and go crey crey on forums and write stupid blog posts... but WHY the hell waste time with that if you could build something awesome in the meantime with all the things that you know and all the tools that you got - like argh come back when you build something awesome I dunno... :/
- brightball 11y ago
  Totally understandable point of view. I enjoy writing as a hobby so that's the main reason I'm willing to invest the time. This one in particular was because I read the other piece and it bothered me enough that I couldn't sleep. Occasionally I do some paid blogging for Codeship too.
- kalzium 11y ago
  I'm sorry I was half asleep and drunk. I have no idea what I was talking about.
  - brightball 11y ago
    Accepted :)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
xjay 11y ago
Alan Kay: "It turns out there was this term called 'coding' back when I started, and the term called 'programming'. So a programmer actually wrote flowcharts. That was the high-level language used back then. These flowcharts would work on any computer, and what a coder was, was a human compiler for those flowcharts." Alan Kay @ SAP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXjpA9gFX5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXjpA9gFX5c The quote is from the last few minutes, before the video cuts off.
- epalmer 11y ago
  I still diagram flowcharts. Usually to convey to one of my internal customers how we envision interfacing with a 3rd party system or solving some complex business logic. I diagram a lot of things. Mostly for my benefit. I have struggled over the years with what symbol do I use for X but now I just pick a rectangle or predefined process rectangle and label it well. Diagramming helps me get my internal thoughts out and makes the systems I write better and less error prone.
  - steverb 11y ago
    Diagramming also has the added benefit of being a more precise way of communication how a system works. I've found that a 30 minute discussion can be turned into a 2 minute explanation with the use of a diagram. Personally, I can't even really think about complex business/application/system logic without drawing it out on a whiteboard.
  - xjay 11y ago
    This was also a point brought up in a recent talk [1] on software engineering, and what has happened since the "software crisis" was recognized in 1968. The speaker, Mary Shaw, talks about Design Guidance, and how a decision chart is "a better organization of a body of design decision knowledge" [starts 27:40] and how we still, desperately, need something like that, and that there aren't any better ways to communicate such knowledge, that the speaker is aware of, than "this ancient chart." (UML is mentioned later, but under the context that it is dying, which was probably a good thing.) [1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8
bcarlyle 11y ago
People like building their own solutions because it is way more fun then just installing Wordpress and adding some plugins. But sometimes Wordpress is more effective. I've learned a lot about programming from a friend I worked on a startup with. But the business part suffered since the focus was on coding instead of the experience for the end user. I have friends who are brilliant programmers who made excellent startup employees and friends who know little about programming who are excellent startup founders. I’m not even sure the best programmers make the best startup founders. A friend of mine was amazed when I showed him how to view source code on a website. His startup just raised a million dollars. I think this has to do with the fact that people who don't program can't focus on the code. They focus on solving the problem. Sometimes the right solution might be to build my own solutions but since thousands of people are constantly telling me that I'm not a real programmer I doubt my own ability to do it. People complaining that web developers aren't real programmers keeps web developers from learning programming. The thought that web developers aren't programmers paradoxically keeps me from becoming "a real programmer". Because my work doesn't count as real programming I have to start every new "real programming" challenge thinking that I don't really know what I'm doing. This creates doubt that limits my ability. I feel confident in my ability to build what I want on the web but I'm actively doubting if I'm a real programmer. Most of the web development work I do involves building interactive programs for helping people cope with mental health problems. My clients only care if I solve their problems. Previously we had a super advanced custom built system that was a mess to deal with. I recently switched back to Wordpress because it is way more effective. I also think another reason developers don't like Wordpress is that it levels the playing field between people who can and can't program. Suddenly anyone can do what it took you years to learn. People telling me I can't program because I work on the web makes me a shittier programmer because it makes me nervous when I write code that is logical. It is harder for me mentally to write javascript for my application then for writing the css or html and it's not because the logic is harder. It is because I mentally fear that I don't know how to program because the internet keeps telling me I can't. But every time I do it it turns out that I can. I can feel it in my body when I switch to the js file in Atom. The feeling is fear. I don't have it for: setting up a new ubuntu server, building a responsive website, styling with css or working with Wordpress because I know this is web development. I can't mentally figure out what to think about building apps in swift. There is a lot of logic so that is technically "real programming" but there is a lot of styling so that is technically not programming. So I guess I have a moderate fear for it. My point is that this isn't about the fact that it is harder to write logic then html or css. This is about my own fear. And the idea that web developers can't code makes it worse. I actually wrote something related to this on my website. https://birgermoell.com/2016/01/30/solve-your-problems-through-software-not-code/ https://birgermoell.com/2016/01/30/solve-your-problems-throu...
finishingmove 11y ago
This article is just common sense. In every area there are people who pursue excellence and people who are slackers. People who look hard for optimal solutions given the constraints, and people who try to sell whatever they write as "smart solutions". Web development is very transparent and in the spotlight these days, so it's exposed to a lot of criticism. I wonder how many cases of "smart programming" do we have in C code-bases around the world...
- sklogic 11y ago
  Just take a look at Toyota scandal. There is a same bunch of slackers in embedded, not any different from that pathetic lot that gave PHP a bad karma.
jpswade 11y ago
When I started out with PHP (cica 2000) it was just another scripting language to make stuff happen on web pages and it was easier to work with than perl. In 2003, Rasmus who created PHP said: "I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way". PHP has since been developed into a fully fledged programming language borrowing many of its traits from Perl, C, C++, Java, Tcl. Now at PHP7, having two major versions since 2000, I can say with some confidence that PHP is a "real programming" language.
- sklogic 11y ago
  PHP became a barely passable language only after HHVM was created. Before that it only had totally pathetic implementations. Edit: do downvoters really think the original PHP implementation was not a pile of crap?!? Amusing!
fit2rule 11y ago
Real programming is anything you do in order to achieve the godlike state of a user, using the computer, to do something. Anything.
sklogic 11y ago
All your web stuff is not a real programming. Not because it is "easier" or "less valuable" than, say, aerospace or automotive, but because you're doing it wrong. Among all things, the entire web stack of technologies is the most horribly overengineered one. Most of the frightingly hard problems you're solving should have never existed in the first place. And yes, web devs, it is your fault, your collective responsibility. Web could have been nice. You screwed it.
- mikegioia 11y ago
  Is this sarcasm or just ignorance?
  - YngwieMalware 11y ago
    I'm going with ignorance
  - sklogic 11y ago
    If you do not think that all that web stack is horribly overengineered, then you know nothing about engineering at all. If you do not see dozens of ways it could have been orders of magnitude simpler without surrendering any functionality, you know nothing about engineering at all.
    - mikegioia 11y ago
      This is from your comment history: I have to admit that I did not do any web development ... I also know about it from interaction with frontend developers themselves and from toying around it Do you believe that people who have never done something are capable of understanding it well enough to have the abrasive and ignorantly arrogant stance as your own? You either do and are ignorant, or you don't and are a hypocrite.
      - sklogic 11y ago
        I am an engineer. I do not need years of experience in a technology to assess it. And, btw., you may not know what my "toying around" really means in terms of depth and exposure. So no, it is your astonishing ignorance here. You should stop pointless personal attacks and provide only rational, technical arguments. This thread is already such a code monkey circlejerk that there is no value in adding anything to it.
brightball 11y ago
Did not expect to see this post making HN this morning. Thanks!
EugeneOZ 11y ago
Author is mixing programming for money and programming for enjoying of algorithms, optimizations and little part of science inside.
iolothebard 11y ago
What works is what's "real". I don't care if you're building in php, .net, ruby, or anything else. All that matters is does it work for the user. Selling software for my own companies for almost two decades, wait, exactly two decades, I've never had a SINGLE customer ask me "what language is this programmed in". The closest you'd get is anyone running a non standard OS (anything besides Windows).
davidspiess 11y ago
I had the same crisis two years ago. I was on vacation and couldn't stand the thought going back to work doing the same odd and boring CMS PHP stuff i used to code day in and day out. My girlfriend left me at the same time, so i decided to make a move. I quit the job, i thougt i was good at, and went to a company which programmed mostly in C# and F#. It was challenging, but at the same time so satisfying to be excited again. I learned about functional programming, looked beyond the horizon of my save little PHP and JS world. I never looked bad to my old me and my old job. Stay curious and if the moment comes you feel stuck, move on to something similar but yet unknown and challenging.
CM30 11y ago
As someone who does a lot of basic PHP development and makes various sites with WordPress, I think the key point people seem to forget in this debate is that most projects are simple by nature, at least on a technical level. I mean sure, making a WordPress site with themes and plugins is not as complicated as coding a web app in Node.js or whatever, but the majority of business sites don't really need much in the way of complexity. Just a few pages that the client can add content to and maybe a blog on the site that might send the content to social media sites upon being posted. In those cases, why not use WordPress or another simple CMS system? On another note, this is also kind of the reason I haven't really gotten the chance to use much in the way of the latest or fanciest technology. Because every idea I get turns out to be one that doesn't need it.
crispyambulance 11y ago
Your idealism is so sweet it makes my teeth hurt. There's plenty of work for everyone. No need to call what other people do "trivial" or demean them for not "automating" something after having done it once. FWIW, automating something can easily be a job orders of magnitude more difficult than doing the original job. It might require capabilities and resources which far exceed what is available at the organization. Moreover, automation is a complicated continuum of solutions. If you're talking about REAL WORLD computing problems more complex than can be handled by a bash script, NO, you don't automate after solving a problem once.
- sklogic 11y ago
  I am talking about things being repeated over and over again, far more than just a couple of times. And the only thing organisations are lacking is sanity. The rest is trivial, proven many times. I will regard all of them as lowly and stupid, because this is what they are. See my rant elsewhere in this thread - this stupid world is full of examples of idiots in charge. Are you trying to convince me that the morons who designed Oyster are not morons and I should not judge them? No way. They are scum. Should not I judge the deranged NHS bosses? No way! I'd be delighted to see them beheaded, no less. Their incompetence cost human lives. And I hate it when people are trying to play down the stupidity of others. In my book there is no sin worse than stupidity and incompetence. Won't you deny that most of the idiots out there cannot code at all, although they call themselves "developers"? See even the high profile apps for Android for example. Say, "BBC News". Millions had been spent on it. And this shit locks when internet connection is lost. Don't the retards who wrote it commute on a tube? Don't they know how to code asynchronous UIs? And don't let me even start ranting about the British Gas "Hive" thingy. The spread of the ignorance and stupidity in this world is unforgivable. And I won't ever be polite to the stupid and ignorant. They're worthless and they deserve the most harsh criticism possible.
  - ownagefool 11y ago
    So out of interests, what's so wrong with Oyster in 2016?
JohnLeTigre 11y ago
If I remember correctly, Real Programmers use FORTRAN and Quiche Eaters use PASCAL

113 points by yumaikas 11y ago

This hits home for me. I started web development in PHP, went up and down the ladder a lot, but still continue to do PHP (Mostly Laravel these days). However, I am fascinated by the web in general and all the abstractions that make it stand up. More specifically, things like REST, HTTP, sessions, and all the web APIs that you consider for granted on the browser. Even things like CORS. The nice thing about PHP is that it lets you play with these abstractions _even when you are starting out_. For eg, a redirect in ruby/sinatra would be `redirect https://google.com` https://google.com`, but stock PHP would want you to use the header("Location: https://google.com"); https://google.com"); variant[0]. PHP doesn't abstract out the web, but lets you build on top of it. Its close enough to C so you know what is happening and how things are working (or atleast its easier to figure out), and still dynamic enough to get shit done. There are problems with PHP's design, sure. But these are getting fewer and fewer with things like PHP7/Composer and the entire ecosystem still evolving. And believe it or not: there are problems with _every programming language_. Just pick the right tool for the job, will you. [0]: I know comparing sinatra to PHP isn't ideal, but I am yet to see anyone code in pure CGI in Ruby.

downer65 11y ago
The 2 things that create the most beef about PHP are simply: 1. Type Safety (string? int? boolean?) 2. The Runtime Engine (apache? nginx? linux? windows? what file system?) The flexible nature of these two concepts, leaves any given PHP script resting on shifting sands of uncertainty, which is really the only thing that leaves people feeling inadequate. The willingness to compromise, and accept a runtime where it's hard to debug, permits programmers to put themselves in situations where they'll have a hard time providing a conclusive answer in succinct terms, to non-technical folks disinterested in obscure details beyond the scope of one's external field or daily interests. It's not because of impostor syndrome, or any sort of psychological underdog complex. It's simply the awareness that there are gaps in what's often expected to be a hermetic seal. And knowing about that, would gnaw at the edges of just about anybody's confidence at a subliminal level.
- Joeri 11y ago
  Every programming language has differences across platforms and servers, and the dynamic ones all have the type safety aspects. Those two arguments cannot be the reason because then javascript, python or ruby devs would be susceptible to the same.
lucideer 11y ago
Your observation on abstraction is interesting. I've always considered PHP to be quite the opposite. e.g. Going from PHP to NodeJS, NodeJS is a lot more direct and less abstracted (handling the request directly, reading the request data incrementally and handling reader state, setting headers and then explicitly writing to the buffer, handling connection state, etc.) - note I do mean NodeJS here, not something like Express another e.g. PSR-7 I find is, counterintuitively, actually much less abstracted than raw PHP built-ins as it goes out if it's way to map the interfaces to the stack as intended, rather than completely arbitrary weird abstractions. Like the retrieval of query parameters being entirely separate and unrelated to retrieval of the body payload, whereas PHP tends to sort of conflate these things in $_GET/$_POST/$_REQUEST and then doesn't really have obvious intuitive handling of non-x-form-url-encoded payloads. And don't get me started on query string array handling. I do completely agree with the article though, and I still use PHP a lot. Voluntarily. But I just found your specific observation surprising.
- captn3m0 11y ago
  Agreed, nodejs lets you build servers from the ground up using streams. However, I am yet to see anyone build their first node project without something like Express and just use http.createServer. The PHP abstractions are not always clear as you rightly point out (REQUEST = GET+POST+COOKIE...), but they are vastly different "magic" that you see in the Ruby land, for eg where you would rarely be ever thinking about cookies at all.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
> stock PHP would want you to use the header("Location: https://google.com"); https://google.com"); variant Which is actually a broken abstraction, because in most PHP SAPIs that doesn't actually spit out a header line directly. Instead, it's parsed into its components, and PHP additionally sets the HTTP status code to a redirection one.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mattvanhorn 11y ago

Real programming ended with Mel.

jeff_marshall 11y ago
Tell that to the people who debug new CSP/BSPs using binary search on "which line did the boot sequence make it to" using GPIO to an LED. Thankfully, most of us don't spend a lot of time doing that sort of thing these days (even in the embedded world). I also feel for anyone who ends up using an upside-down air can to debug shoddy solder joints on a BGA device ;)
- njharman 11y ago
  Be enlightened http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html
xjay 11y ago
My first thought was that "real programmers" are those who deal with floating-points.. "God is real, unless declared integer."

lxe 11y ago

When I first entered the workforce I started off doing embedded Linux programming. Device drivers, kernel hacks, small systems with limited resources, FPGAs, etc... This was difficult, and posed lots of challenges. I ended up jumping all the way to the other end of the "stack" -- web front-ends. Webdev has been a side-hobby of a sort for quite a while, and I pretty much expected it to be a lot simpler than the low level systems programming that I've been doing. I've been doing web client and server programming for some time now, and I can without a doubt claim that it poses its own set of challenges that compare and oftentimes exceed in complexity to those encountered in the "lower level" programming fields. I think the entire notion that one type of programming is more "real" than others comes from lack of perspective. Once you dive deep into more than one development layer, use case, architecture, language, or community, you realize that the challenges each one faces are as varied, unique, and interesting as the rest of them.

trentmb 11y ago
> I've been doing web client and server programming for some time now, and I can without a doubt claim that it poses its own set of challenges that compare and oftentimes exceed in complexity to those encountered in the "lower level" programming fields. I'm a math major turned 'full stack' dev with an eye on embedded dev as my prize- I needed this comment.
- notalaser 11y ago
  It's extremely true. I occasionally joke about how web programming isn't really programming, but it really is nothing but a joke. Making a LED blink on a microcontroller is just about as difficult as showing an intermittent alert in a browser window. It may seem harder because you need to know a little more about the abstraction layers underneath, but those are things that you can pick up just as quickly as JavaScript. Designing a high-throughput data interface system in FPGA (which I'm doing now) is at least as hard as doing a high-throughput back-end infrastructure for a web service. I can barely do the former -- I sure as fuck can't do the latter right now, regardless of how "real" my programming skills are. When I read through a paper on the latter topic, or watch a presentation, I can mostly understand what it's about and appreciate the technical prowess, but doing something like that myself would likely be a quick lesson in humility. If you like what you're doing and you're creating programs that do useful, or at least spectacular things, you're a real programmer.

tluyben2 11y ago

I guess people generally call 'real programming' something that isn't connecting up CRUD forms/pages. And although I would not call it 'real programming' as a term, I do not see that kind of thing as a challenge or interesting at all. I have made / helped make 1000s of sites over the years (in many different technologies and CMS's) and most of them are just incredibly boring and require no kind of programming skills really. So in that sense they are not 'real programming'. If you can install WP, Google CSS changes for the theme you buy or get from the designer and then Google the plugins + few lines of code changes to make it work then that is not 'real programming' in a sense. But it does pay the bills and it pays them well. I am not sure about other countries, but in NL and DE, for big companies, I see the complex & inflexible (Java) Enterprise CMS software being replaced by WP. Often not openly and company wide, but departmentally for sure. We get asked to consume the content in the 'big corporate' CMS via a webservice or even scraping and when that's done and the WP site runs and can be used to run that part of the site, they ask corporate hosting to do some proxy passing and rewriting. To illustrate (I cannot name names ...), let's say you have an international online retailer and the ECMS contains a different site per country like: https://retailer.com/nl/.. https://retailer.com/nl/... https://retailer.com/de/.. https://retailer.com/de/... etc for all countries they are in. Then the NL dep asks us to recreate their /nl/ site in WP with the content from the ECMS and then they proxypass/rewrite /nl/ to the new server which contains the WP installation. Why? Because WP allows, for 'low cost' and 'no real programming' to add all the features they want and to allow workflow-free fast updates when they have a special or deals or contest or whatever specific to that country. Not to mention people understand how to use it right away; no courses needed. With the ECMS that all runs via the head office and that workflow is too hard to change so this is much cheaper/easier. Sometimes they don't even really notify the head office but just do it on their own servers. This same thing happens in many companies / institutions that have many 'sub-sites' managed by different regions/countries/verticals. It works, it makes clients happy and the fact I don't like WP (at all) and the fact I find this kind of thing rather boring not to create code (like you would in Django or Ruby) is not really interesting; the average 'corporate' WP site we deliver has 1 custom WP file with functions the guys who set everything up and integrate the design reuse and (rarely) append. I would say that if I was to name something real or not real programming, this would be it. And yet it makes a lot of money and, more importantly, it makes clients happy & productive without extremely long processes of implementation. Edit: Other than that I agree with the article; it is a matter of taste though. Like said I would not call these things 'real or non-real (fake)' programming but I do choose to not do most of this work myself as I like embedded and native mobile work better. That keeps clients happy too anyway.

fallous 11y ago

When I'm engaged in rapid prototyping or testing an idea, I almost exclusively rely on the stack I'm familiar with that fits the problem domain. But I don't consider that "real code" given the very nature of what I'm doing and the understanding that once the problem has a solution, that solution can be applied to whatever stack BEST fits the situation. The author seems to engage in the same behavior, but conflates the "get things done fast" with the production solution. If you're a good programmer and your preferred tool is PHP, then you're engaged in "real programming." If you insist on using PHP as a deployment solution because it's what you're familiar with rather than because it is an appropriate/optimal solution to the problem then you're engaged in laziness. A good programmer can adapt their mental models and adopt the tools necessary for the problem domain. A bad one always has an excuse for why their comfort justifies tool choice.

dietrichepp 11y ago
I'd like to use a broad definition of "appropriate/optimal". I could imagine PHP being optimal only because you already have PHP talent in house.
- fallous 11y ago
  Yes, if PHP is appropriate to the task at hand AND you have an existing set of PHP talent in-house then it would be hard to argue that isn't an optimal solution. However, if PHP is not appropriate, that in-house PHP talent does not change the fact that PHP is the wrong tool.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  If your in house 'talent' can't learn a new web framework without too much trouble, then it's questionable to call it talent. I've never worked at a company that used Delphi, but I have complete confidence in my ability to use the language. If a person doesn't feel confident in their ability to pick up C, they are missing something from their toolkit.

falcolas 11y ago

If web developers think they have it bad for being razzed about not being real programmers, they should talk to SDET folks.

deleted 11y ago
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dschiptsov 11y ago

Tell that to Linus.)

dschiptsov 11y ago
I see. To be able to write world-class kernel code (or projects like nginx) a programmer must posses at least practical knowledge of advanced data-structures and algorithms (including implementation details), machine architectures and automata theory (FSMs for protocols) - subjects about which typical PHP/JS coder have no idea. That's why they are so sure that there is nothing beyond their amazing coding skills out there.

0xcde4c3db 11y ago

The term "full-stack" has related problems. Most people, regardless of where they center their expertise, have some idea of a layer of the stack beyond which is Somebody Else's Problem.

lowglow 11y ago
Can confirm, am fullstack: Physical layer is someone else's problem.
- Cyph0n 11y ago
  Actually, even the three layers above that are likely someone else's problem (data link,network, and transport). Full-stack usually means knowledge of the application layer i.e. HTTP and client side.
  - lowglow 11y ago
    I have a pretty extensive background working as a security engineer at an ISP out of high school, so I can handle that junk pretty easily.
  - ownagefool 11y ago
    Honestly, I think that's extremely cheeky usage of the term. I'm of the opinion that you should be able to:- - talk to a datacentre, get servers, switches, power, network racked and ready to go. - Do the devops to configure this infrastructure. - Understand data-layer requirements and generally host and manage a CP or AP system. - Write the apps that'll live on these servers. - Implement resonable caching to scale. - Write the frontend code to implement a design to connect to these systems. - Have enough knowledge to profile and debug the performance bottlenecks of such systems. At about that point, you can start to consider yourselve "full stack". Now some could argue that you don't need rack the system or do the devops, but if you don't understand what you're hosting on, how are you ever going to debug an issue that outwith your application?

xjay 11y ago

Programming is ultimately about systems. There's a recent talk [1] by Mary Shaw from Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU). It's about what has happened since the NATO conference in 1968 (dubbed the Software Crisis), and what engineering means in software engineering. According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million "casual" programmers, and ~2.5 million highly trained software engineers, and there's a need to get more programmers into the engineering aspects. [1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 There's a link to the slides in the description of the video.

morgante 11y ago
> According to their survey, the American workplace consists of ~90 million "casual" programmers I don't believe that statistic for a second, unless we're using some convoluted definition of "programmers" which includes anyone who can open Microsoft Word. That would mean half the labor force can program. Ludicrous. Looking at the slides[1], I'm pretty sure you interpreted that wrong. There are 90M end users of software, not 90M "casual" programmers. [1] http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-amsterdam-2015/slides/MaryShaw_KEYNOTEProgressTowardAnEngineeringDisciplineOfSoftware.pdf http://gotocon.com/dl/goto-amsterdam-2015/slides/MaryShaw_KE...
- xjay 11y ago
  I'll correct some things: 1) The speaker said projection, not survey. 2) I interchanged "developers" and "programmers" at the top of the slide, but the speaker lumps "programming like things" into the 90M "end users," which among others include pretty much all the web people (scripting languages, database interfacing, web server security, etc). Please see the relevant part at 49:50 [1], but I'll bring it in next. The speaker pretty much defines "end users"/casual developers as people who do programming like things; "There are something like 90M people out there who are doing 'programming like things'; they are building databases, they are building spreadsheets, they are using scripting languages, they are building sophisticated websites--what are we doing to help them?" It's a broad category, but I think the confusion is that programming is not simply about writing code, it also includes the overall architecture, and design of a system. So what I get from this is that end users means anyone who didn't go through the academic channels to learn the engineering aspects, and that's who they need to reach. The speaker had a link to their software engineering programs at CMU [2] in an earlier slide. Also, see the context in view of the stackoverlow survey--which doesn't add up if you look at the numbers, but the speaker explains it's because some people reported in more than once.--It sought to be an example of how "end users" end up doing "programming like things." [1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 [2] Software Engineering Masters Programs http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-engineering/ http://mse.isri.cmu.edu/software-engineering/

nickpsecurity 11y ago

This article links to this powerful story that's worth a read and has some life lessons in it: http://www.brightball.com/business/what-exactly-happened-to-brightball-for-hire http://www.brightball.com/business/what-exactly-happened-to-... In gratitude, I'm going to be a nice guy that avoids the PHP vs "real" languages part of the discussion. :)

maxerickson 11y ago
You didn't though.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Oh no, I did. Anyone seeing prior posts would spot the contrast. ;)
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    So you were merely tiresome in the above post? My post above is of course also tiresome and pretty uninteresting, but it doesn't pretend to be otherwise.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      You're spotting the wiseguy aspect but ignoring the other aspect: that it admits I could drop bombs on PHP, even while considering him a real programmer, but kindly and unusually don't due to a rare moment of respect given the story I read. So, the statement both conveys my position and avoids an attack while also delivering a "Hell yeah!" moment of respect. That you ignored the obvious compliment embedded in that... twice... was tiresome. I won't let it bother me, though. Just helping you follow along. :P
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        Uh, when I say tiresome, I'm partly talking about the attitude that this would be interesting reading: that it admits I could drop bombs on PHP, even while considering him a real programmer, but kindly and unusually don't due to a rare moment of respect given the story I read. PHP is well worn territory, discussion of who is a real programmer or not is just dick measuring.

kalzium 11y ago

omg I know I'll be down voted for this but... ugh, this guy hasn't gotten anything and it's so super sad. I've a similar background like him, but I kinda felt embarassed reading his post. Mannnnn... you can argue all day long what programming is about and go crey crey on forums and write stupid blog posts... but WHY the hell waste time with that if you could build something awesome in the meantime with all the things that you know and all the tools that you got - like argh come back when you build something awesome I dunno... :/

brightball 11y ago
Totally understandable point of view. I enjoy writing as a hobby so that's the main reason I'm willing to invest the time. This one in particular was because I read the other piece and it bothered me enough that I couldn't sleep. Occasionally I do some paid blogging for Codeship too.
kalzium 11y ago
I'm sorry I was half asleep and drunk. I have no idea what I was talking about.
- brightball 11y ago
  Accepted :)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

xjay 11y ago

Alan Kay: "It turns out there was this term called 'coding' back when I started, and the term called 'programming'. So a programmer actually wrote flowcharts. That was the high-level language used back then. These flowcharts would work on any computer, and what a coder was, was a human compiler for those flowcharts." Alan Kay @ SAP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXjpA9gFX5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXjpA9gFX5c The quote is from the last few minutes, before the video cuts off.

epalmer 11y ago
I still diagram flowcharts. Usually to convey to one of my internal customers how we envision interfacing with a 3rd party system or solving some complex business logic. I diagram a lot of things. Mostly for my benefit. I have struggled over the years with what symbol do I use for X but now I just pick a rectangle or predefined process rectangle and label it well. Diagramming helps me get my internal thoughts out and makes the systems I write better and less error prone.
- steverb 11y ago
  Diagramming also has the added benefit of being a more precise way of communication how a system works. I've found that a 30 minute discussion can be turned into a 2 minute explanation with the use of a diagram. Personally, I can't even really think about complex business/application/system logic without drawing it out on a whiteboard.
- xjay 11y ago
  This was also a point brought up in a recent talk [1] on software engineering, and what has happened since the "software crisis" was recognized in 1968. The speaker, Mary Shaw, talks about Design Guidance, and how a decision chart is "a better organization of a body of design decision knowledge" [starts 27:40] and how we still, desperately, need something like that, and that there aren't any better ways to communicate such knowledge, that the speaker is aware of, than "this ancient chart." (UML is mentioned later, but under the context that it is dying, which was probably a good thing.) [1] Progress Toward an Engineering Discipline of Software https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLnsi522LS8

bcarlyle 11y ago

People like building their own solutions because it is way more fun then just installing Wordpress and adding some plugins. But sometimes Wordpress is more effective. I've learned a lot about programming from a friend I worked on a startup with. But the business part suffered since the focus was on coding instead of the experience for the end user. I have friends who are brilliant programmers who made excellent startup employees and friends who know little about programming who are excellent startup founders. I’m not even sure the best programmers make the best startup founders. A friend of mine was amazed when I showed him how to view source code on a website. His startup just raised a million dollars. I think this has to do with the fact that people who don't program can't focus on the code. They focus on solving the problem. Sometimes the right solution might be to build my own solutions but since thousands of people are constantly telling me that I'm not a real programmer I doubt my own ability to do it. People complaining that web developers aren't real programmers keeps web developers from learning programming. The thought that web developers aren't programmers paradoxically keeps me from becoming "a real programmer". Because my work doesn't count as real programming I have to start every new "real programming" challenge thinking that I don't really know what I'm doing. This creates doubt that limits my ability. I feel confident in my ability to build what I want on the web but I'm actively doubting if I'm a real programmer. Most of the web development work I do involves building interactive programs for helping people cope with mental health problems. My clients only care if I solve their problems. Previously we had a super advanced custom built system that was a mess to deal with. I recently switched back to Wordpress because it is way more effective. I also think another reason developers don't like Wordpress is that it levels the playing field between people who can and can't program. Suddenly anyone can do what it took you years to learn. People telling me I can't program because I work on the web makes me a shittier programmer because it makes me nervous when I write code that is logical. It is harder for me mentally to write javascript for my application then for writing the css or html and it's not because the logic is harder. It is because I mentally fear that I don't know how to program because the internet keeps telling me I can't. But every time I do it it turns out that I can. I can feel it in my body when I switch to the js file in Atom. The feeling is fear. I don't have it for: setting up a new ubuntu server, building a responsive website, styling with css or working with Wordpress because I know this is web development. I can't mentally figure out what to think about building apps in swift. There is a lot of logic so that is technically "real programming" but there is a lot of styling so that is technically not programming. So I guess I have a moderate fear for it. My point is that this isn't about the fact that it is harder to write logic then html or css. This is about my own fear. And the idea that web developers can't code makes it worse. I actually wrote something related to this on my website. https://birgermoell.com/2016/01/30/solve-your-problems-through-software-not-code/ https://birgermoell.com/2016/01/30/solve-your-problems-throu...

finishingmove 11y ago

This article is just common sense. In every area there are people who pursue excellence and people who are slackers. People who look hard for optimal solutions given the constraints, and people who try to sell whatever they write as "smart solutions". Web development is very transparent and in the spotlight these days, so it's exposed to a lot of criticism. I wonder how many cases of "smart programming" do we have in C code-bases around the world...

sklogic 11y ago
Just take a look at Toyota scandal. There is a same bunch of slackers in embedded, not any different from that pathetic lot that gave PHP a bad karma.

jpswade 11y ago

When I started out with PHP (cica 2000) it was just another scripting language to make stuff happen on web pages and it was easier to work with than perl. In 2003, Rasmus who created PHP said: "I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way". PHP has since been developed into a fully fledged programming language borrowing many of its traits from Perl, C, C++, Java, Tcl. Now at PHP7, having two major versions since 2000, I can say with some confidence that PHP is a "real programming" language.

sklogic 11y ago
PHP became a barely passable language only after HHVM was created. Before that it only had totally pathetic implementations. Edit: do downvoters really think the original PHP implementation was not a pile of crap?!? Amusing!

fit2rule 11y ago

Real programming is anything you do in order to achieve the godlike state of a user, using the computer, to do something. Anything.

sklogic 11y ago

All your web stuff is not a real programming. Not because it is "easier" or "less valuable" than, say, aerospace or automotive, but because you're doing it wrong. Among all things, the entire web stack of technologies is the most horribly overengineered one. Most of the frightingly hard problems you're solving should have never existed in the first place. And yes, web devs, it is your fault, your collective responsibility. Web could have been nice. You screwed it.

mikegioia 11y ago
Is this sarcasm or just ignorance?
- YngwieMalware 11y ago
  I'm going with ignorance
- sklogic 11y ago
  If you do not think that all that web stack is horribly overengineered, then you know nothing about engineering at all. If you do not see dozens of ways it could have been orders of magnitude simpler without surrendering any functionality, you know nothing about engineering at all.
  - mikegioia 11y ago
    This is from your comment history: I have to admit that I did not do any web development ... I also know about it from interaction with frontend developers themselves and from toying around it Do you believe that people who have never done something are capable of understanding it well enough to have the abrasive and ignorantly arrogant stance as your own? You either do and are ignorant, or you don't and are a hypocrite.
    - sklogic 11y ago
      I am an engineer. I do not need years of experience in a technology to assess it. And, btw., you may not know what my "toying around" really means in terms of depth and exposure. So no, it is your astonishing ignorance here. You should stop pointless personal attacks and provide only rational, technical arguments. This thread is already such a code monkey circlejerk that there is no value in adding anything to it.

brightball 11y ago

Did not expect to see this post making HN this morning. Thanks!

EugeneOZ 11y ago

Author is mixing programming for money and programming for enjoying of algorithms, optimizations and little part of science inside.

iolothebard 11y ago

What works is what's "real". I don't care if you're building in php, .net, ruby, or anything else. All that matters is does it work for the user. Selling software for my own companies for almost two decades, wait, exactly two decades, I've never had a SINGLE customer ask me "what language is this programmed in". The closest you'd get is anyone running a non standard OS (anything besides Windows).

davidspiess 11y ago

I had the same crisis two years ago. I was on vacation and couldn't stand the thought going back to work doing the same odd and boring CMS PHP stuff i used to code day in and day out. My girlfriend left me at the same time, so i decided to make a move. I quit the job, i thougt i was good at, and went to a company which programmed mostly in C# and F#. It was challenging, but at the same time so satisfying to be excited again. I learned about functional programming, looked beyond the horizon of my save little PHP and JS world. I never looked bad to my old me and my old job. Stay curious and if the moment comes you feel stuck, move on to something similar but yet unknown and challenging.

CM30 11y ago

As someone who does a lot of basic PHP development and makes various sites with WordPress, I think the key point people seem to forget in this debate is that most projects are simple by nature, at least on a technical level. I mean sure, making a WordPress site with themes and plugins is not as complicated as coding a web app in Node.js or whatever, but the majority of business sites don't really need much in the way of complexity. Just a few pages that the client can add content to and maybe a blog on the site that might send the content to social media sites upon being posted. In those cases, why not use WordPress or another simple CMS system? On another note, this is also kind of the reason I haven't really gotten the chance to use much in the way of the latest or fanciest technology. Because every idea I get turns out to be one that doesn't need it.

crispyambulance 11y ago

Your idealism is so sweet it makes my teeth hurt. There's plenty of work for everyone. No need to call what other people do "trivial" or demean them for not "automating" something after having done it once. FWIW, automating something can easily be a job orders of magnitude more difficult than doing the original job. It might require capabilities and resources which far exceed what is available at the organization. Moreover, automation is a complicated continuum of solutions. If you're talking about REAL WORLD computing problems more complex than can be handled by a bash script, NO, you don't automate after solving a problem once.

sklogic 11y ago
I am talking about things being repeated over and over again, far more than just a couple of times. And the only thing organisations are lacking is sanity. The rest is trivial, proven many times. I will regard all of them as lowly and stupid, because this is what they are. See my rant elsewhere in this thread - this stupid world is full of examples of idiots in charge. Are you trying to convince me that the morons who designed Oyster are not morons and I should not judge them? No way. They are scum. Should not I judge the deranged NHS bosses? No way! I'd be delighted to see them beheaded, no less. Their incompetence cost human lives. And I hate it when people are trying to play down the stupidity of others. In my book there is no sin worse than stupidity and incompetence. Won't you deny that most of the idiots out there cannot code at all, although they call themselves "developers"? See even the high profile apps for Android for example. Say, "BBC News". Millions had been spent on it. And this shit locks when internet connection is lost. Don't the retards who wrote it commute on a tube? Don't they know how to code asynchronous UIs? And don't let me even start ranting about the British Gas "Hive" thingy. The spread of the ignorance and stupidity in this world is unforgivable. And I won't ever be polite to the stupid and ignorant. They're worthless and they deserve the most harsh criticism possible.
- ownagefool 11y ago
  So out of interests, what's so wrong with Oyster in 2016?

JohnLeTigre 11y ago

If I remember correctly, Real Programmers use FORTRAN and Quiche Eaters use PASCAL