5 ms·

You are so right. The web as an application delivery platform sucks. And we are no even capable of producing UIs with the same level of polishment I did in visu

by elviejo 11y ago

You are so right. The web as an application delivery platform sucks. And we are no even capable of producing UIs with the same level of polishment I did in visual basic 2.0 in 1996 or so. Alan Kay has expressed the same filling. PS to downvoters if you have not used a proper interface designer such a QT or Delphi, then you don't know what we mean. Please watch some videos to decide if the state of the art (angular and react) is what we should be using in 2016.

dasil003 11y ago
The downvotes are because he is not engaging with my point. Never did I say the web is a proper application development environment. My point was that you can't create a proper application development environment that is both an open and defacto standard the way the web is.
- jt2190 11y ago
  > My point was that you can't create a proper application > development environment that is both an open and defacto > standard the way the web is. Why? Is there a technical limitation? Or are you saying that it's technically possible, but that you have no faith that vendors will cooperate and support such a thing?
  - dasil003 11y ago
    The latter.
- timr 11y ago
  How am I not engaging with your point? In response to a comment pointing out how we need to re-think web application development, you said: "The web is the first truly cross-platform development environment." ...and then talked a bit about how it's open (yeah, ok, sure), and then you said it's not really a good application development environment (obviously). I'm saying, your entire premise is wrong: it isn't an application development environment, any more than a box of legos is a "housing development environment". People have built houses out of legos, but that doesn't make "lego" a building material. It's a big, messy, nasty hack. The fact that it's "open" is a non-sequitur response to "it's the wrong tool for the job", which is what the OP (and I, and elviejo) are arguing. It's also not a legitimate response to argue that any re-thinking of the model has to come from a company, or otherwise not be "open". The reason that web apps happened is because web apps started as a hack. That doesn't mean we can't change the paradigm, but to do that, we have to stop defending the current model. (Realistically, the reason I'm getting downvoted probably has more to do with my willingness to call out React as a pile of garbage than with the substance of the greater argument. C'est la vie...it's actually pretty amusing to watch the comment fluctuate between -3 and +3...)
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I'm in the middle of reading through The Unix-Haters Handbook and I must say that the arguments against web-as-application-platform (and the attempts to defend it) and are eerily similar to what this book reports about arguments against Unix that were circulated in the 80s and early 90s. Sadly, the fact Unix managed to a) win, and b) fuck up the computing world so badly that people don't even realize how much we've lost doesn't make me hopeful about the future of the web. Bad stuff seems to win because it's more evolutionarily adapted than well thought out stuff. This happens to hold for programming languages too.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dr_tldr 11y ago
      Your takeaway of computers going from niche industry to the single largest driver of global economic activity is that the bad stuff won? What an incredibly myopic conclusion. The recent cross-communication between JavaScript, Elm, and Clojure has been incredibly fruitful but hasn't been noticed by the bitter die-hards. And really, almost all of it could've happened literally 15 years ago with Lisp if the Lisp community hadn't been dismissive, arrogant douchebags that considered JavaScript a worthless toy language. What's truly sad is that some people would rather be abstractly right while producing nothing of value than work with the dominant paradigm and introduce useful concepts to it.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > Your takeaway of computers going from niche industry to the single largest driver of global economic activity is that the bad stuff won? What an incredibly myopic conclusion. This did not happen thanks to Unix; if anything, you'd probably have to be grateful to Microsoft and Apple for introducing OSes that were end-user-usable. There's a reason the "year of Linux on Desktop" never happened and is always one year from now. The point of The Unix-Haters Handbook, which also applies very much to modern web is that the so-called "advancement" didn't really bring anything new. It reinvented old things - things we knew how to do right - but in a broken way, full of half-assed hacks that got fossilized because everything else depends on it. > And really, almost all of it could've happened literally 15 years ago with Lisp if the Lisp community hadn't been dismissive, arrogant douchebags that considered JavaScript a worthless toy language. I don't know where you're getting that from, but it's probably a good opportunity to remind you that JavaScript was supposed to be Scheme twice, both time it didn't happen because Netscape wanted a Java-looking solution right fucking now to compete first with Java, and then with Microsoft, and somehow no-one thought to pause for the moment and maybe do it right. (Also don't blame Lisp community for the fact that companies reinvented half of Lisp in XML. Rather ask yourself why most programmers think the history of programming is a linear progression of power from Assembler and C, and why they remain ignorant of anything that happened before ~1985.) JavaScript got a bad rep because a) it was terribly broken (less so now), and b) because of all the stupid stuff people were writing in it those 15 years ago. But the current problems of the Web are not really the fault of JavaScript, but of the community moving forward at the speed of typing, without stopping for a second and thinking if those layers on layers on layers of complexity are actually needed or useful. Simple landing pages are now built on frameworks that are more complex than what we used to call "Enterprise Edition" 10 years ago.
- clevernickname 11y ago
  >My point was that you can't create a proper application development environment that is both an open and defacto standard the way the web is. In addition to the countless examples posted in this thread, I would argue that if it's nearly impossible to create your own implementation of a platform or standard from scratch, then it's not really open in a practical sense. Who cares if the specs are available if it takes dozens or hundreds of man years to deliver a passable implementation?
  - shwouchk 11y ago
    "Who cares if you have the formula of a drug to cure cancer if it takes many manyears to produce it from said formula?"

by elviejo 11y ago

dasil003 11y ago

The downvotes are because he is not engaging with my point. Never did I say the web is a proper application development environment. My point was that you can't create a proper application development environment that is both an open and defacto standard the way the web is.

jt2190 11y ago
> My point was that you can't create a proper application > development environment that is both an open and defacto > standard the way the web is. Why? Is there a technical limitation? Or are you saying that it's technically possible, but that you have no faith that vendors will cooperate and support such a thing?
- dasil003 11y ago
  The latter.
timr 11y ago
How am I not engaging with your point? In response to a comment pointing out how we need to re-think web application development, you said: "The web is the first truly cross-platform development environment." ...and then talked a bit about how it's open (yeah, ok, sure), and then you said it's not really a good application development environment (obviously). I'm saying, your entire premise is wrong: it isn't an application development environment, any more than a box of legos is a "housing development environment". People have built houses out of legos, but that doesn't make "lego" a building material. It's a big, messy, nasty hack. The fact that it's "open" is a non-sequitur response to "it's the wrong tool for the job", which is what the OP (and I, and elviejo) are arguing. It's also not a legitimate response to argue that any re-thinking of the model has to come from a company, or otherwise not be "open". The reason that web apps happened is because web apps started as a hack. That doesn't mean we can't change the paradigm, but to do that, we have to stop defending the current model. (Realistically, the reason I'm getting downvoted probably has more to do with my willingness to call out React as a pile of garbage than with the substance of the greater argument. C'est la vie...it's actually pretty amusing to watch the comment fluctuate between -3 and +3...)
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I'm in the middle of reading through The Unix-Haters Handbook and I must say that the arguments against web-as-application-platform (and the attempts to defend it) and are eerily similar to what this book reports about arguments against Unix that were circulated in the 80s and early 90s. Sadly, the fact Unix managed to a) win, and b) fuck up the computing world so badly that people don't even realize how much we've lost doesn't make me hopeful about the future of the web. Bad stuff seems to win because it's more evolutionarily adapted than well thought out stuff. This happens to hold for programming languages too.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dr_tldr 11y ago
    Your takeaway of computers going from niche industry to the single largest driver of global economic activity is that the bad stuff won? What an incredibly myopic conclusion. The recent cross-communication between JavaScript, Elm, and Clojure has been incredibly fruitful but hasn't been noticed by the bitter die-hards. And really, almost all of it could've happened literally 15 years ago with Lisp if the Lisp community hadn't been dismissive, arrogant douchebags that considered JavaScript a worthless toy language. What's truly sad is that some people would rather be abstractly right while producing nothing of value than work with the dominant paradigm and introduce useful concepts to it.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      > Your takeaway of computers going from niche industry to the single largest driver of global economic activity is that the bad stuff won? What an incredibly myopic conclusion. This did not happen thanks to Unix; if anything, you'd probably have to be grateful to Microsoft and Apple for introducing OSes that were end-user-usable. There's a reason the "year of Linux on Desktop" never happened and is always one year from now. The point of The Unix-Haters Handbook, which also applies very much to modern web is that the so-called "advancement" didn't really bring anything new. It reinvented old things - things we knew how to do right - but in a broken way, full of half-assed hacks that got fossilized because everything else depends on it. > And really, almost all of it could've happened literally 15 years ago with Lisp if the Lisp community hadn't been dismissive, arrogant douchebags that considered JavaScript a worthless toy language. I don't know where you're getting that from, but it's probably a good opportunity to remind you that JavaScript was supposed to be Scheme twice, both time it didn't happen because Netscape wanted a Java-looking solution right fucking now to compete first with Java, and then with Microsoft, and somehow no-one thought to pause for the moment and maybe do it right. (Also don't blame Lisp community for the fact that companies reinvented half of Lisp in XML. Rather ask yourself why most programmers think the history of programming is a linear progression of power from Assembler and C, and why they remain ignorant of anything that happened before ~1985.) JavaScript got a bad rep because a) it was terribly broken (less so now), and b) because of all the stupid stuff people were writing in it those 15 years ago. But the current problems of the Web are not really the fault of JavaScript, but of the community moving forward at the speed of typing, without stopping for a second and thinking if those layers on layers on layers of complexity are actually needed or useful. Simple landing pages are now built on frameworks that are more complex than what we used to call "Enterprise Edition" 10 years ago.
clevernickname 11y ago
>My point was that you can't create a proper application development environment that is both an open and defacto standard the way the web is. In addition to the countless examples posted in this thread, I would argue that if it's nearly impossible to create your own implementation of a platform or standard from scratch, then it's not really open in a practical sense. Who cares if the specs are available if it takes dozens or hundreds of man years to deliver a passable implementation?
- shwouchk 11y ago
  "Who cares if you have the formula of a drug to cure cancer if it takes many manyears to produce it from said formula?"