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I wonder why this mentality only exists with web devs. Everywhere else, someone writing software is considered normal, not some scary problem. Nobody sees any

I wonder why this mentality only exists with web devs. Everywhere else, someone writing software is considered normal, not some scary problem. Nobody sees any other kind of application written by a previous programmer and cries "oh no! I am entirely at the mercy of this previous programmer! If only they had used one of the dozen competing frameworks this tragedy could have been avoided.". It is just normal. Perhaps the low barrier to entry and corresponding low average experience of web developers plays a part in this mentality.

V-2 10y ago
"I wonder why this mentality only exists with web devs [...] Nobody sees any other kind of application [...]" Your premise - on which you based a slightly convoluted ad hominem, implying lack of professional experience on my part - is false to start with. While I did have some PHP experience, I'm not really a web dev. I'm a mobile (Android) and desktop (Windows) developer. Having said that, with web applications you typically have more moving parts and layers to integrate than in case of a client app.
nix0n 10y ago
I think some of it has to do with the languages involved. I find the type systems of C/C++/Java to be helpful in figuring out what a piece of code does, as compared to the type systems of Python/PHP/Ruby where it's more difficult to tell what a variable contains. Frameworks help solve this problem because you can infer what type of data you've got by looking at what method it's coming from and where it's being used.
squeaky-clean 10y ago
Because 99% of web dev code is the same stuff and 99% of the time it doesn't need to be rewritten. You don't need your own implementation of URL rules, user authentication and roles, testing suites, database driver or ORM, request parsing, csrf protection, session handling.... I can buy a book on Django/Flask/Symfony/Spring/Express. I can't buy a book about your homebrew 30k LOC "non-framework" which does all the same things plus an additional customized CRUD layer. > Nobody sees any other kind of application written by a previous programmer and cries "oh no! I am entirely at the mercy of this previous programmer! If only they had used one of the dozen competing frameworks this tragedy could have been avoided." If a large majority of the code you've been given to maintain could instead be handled by well known, well documented project with thousands of eyes fixing bugs and adding features, you would probably say the same thing. Imagine inheriting a java codebase of a simple POS system with a UI. Except instead of using Swing or AWT or I don't know what else, the entire UI is custom written in OpenGL. And instead of using any of the standard sorting or ArrayList implementation, they write their own, which are similar, but not identical (and often have 0 tests).
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  This whole argument is based on two false assumptions. One, that shitty broken web frameworks like cakephp and zend are "well known, well documented project with thousands of eyes fixing bugs and adding features" rather than the horrible messes they actually are. And two, that web apps are the only software to share any common aspects. Every lame VB+Access app I ever saw had more in common than two randomly chosen web apps. Yet nobody needed a "framework" to enforce worst practices and ensure that everything was done inefficiently and unmaintainably.
Glyptodon 10y ago
I think you're right that the propensity of non-technical organizations to try and hire unqualified people at below market rates leads to a particular problem in web development. But I think people programming other types of software have structure that comes from elsewhere. For example, if you write plain Android or iOS apps, in may ways there's a kind of standard app architecture that's just used and taken for granted. Sure, it can be muddled, but only so much for the most part. And the same is largely true for desktop applications, too, when they're built with IDEs that impose structure or even things like Unity. The thing that's extra weird about this is that most web apps have to reinvent the wheel in ways that desktop software doesn't.
arcatek 10y ago
Not sure why you think it doesn't happen in other fields. Every time I spoke with a software developer, they were constantly cursing the architecture of the code they had to dealt with.
kbenson 10y ago
Because the myriad ways public people interact with your code through HTTP and routes starts to rival the complexity of getting crypto code right, with a lot of the same sorts of downsides (which is to say problems often lead to security issues, and very few people are capable of reasoning about all the implications of the decisions made). I would suggest someone not roll their own framework (which is essentially creating a framework of their own at some level) for the same reasons I would suggest someone not roll their own crypto. The upside is relatively minuscule compared to the downsides, IMO. > Nobody sees any other kind of application written by a previous programmer and cries "oh no! I am entirely at the mercy of this previous programmer! If only they had used one of the dozen competing frameworks this tragedy could have been avoided.". Yes, they do. If you came upon someone's custom HTTP client, I imagine your response would be something along those lines. If not lamenting that you're at their mercy, at least cursing them for imposing a requirement of some level of strength that you use what is very likely to be a substandard implementation of what you can find freely available. So, you either replace it with something less likely to cause the odd problem later (and deal with all the testing to make sure you didn't introduce a bug, and you probably did) or deal with those odd problems ("what do you mean we aren't conforming to TLS correctly? Why haven't we seen this until now?").
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- MustardTiger 10y ago
  > If you came upon someone's custom HTTP client, I imagine your response would be something along those lines. No, why would it? What HTTP client framework am I supposed to be wishing they used?
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Maybe cURL? Some other one I don't know of (I know the ones in my preferred languages). Do we really need to also be responsible to dealing with already solved problems as well as the problems specific to our domain? Do we really want to also deal with the not-fully-compliant HTTP client or making sure we support HTTP/2, or do we want to use widely accepted solutions for those so we can focus on the real problem at hand (which is usually not the intricacies of HTTP negotiation, or some other well understood and supplied need).

V-2 10y ago

"I wonder why this mentality only exists with web devs [...] Nobody sees any other kind of application [...]" Your premise - on which you based a slightly convoluted ad hominem, implying lack of professional experience on my part - is false to start with. While I did have some PHP experience, I'm not really a web dev. I'm a mobile (Android) and desktop (Windows) developer. Having said that, with web applications you typically have more moving parts and layers to integrate than in case of a client app.

nix0n 10y ago

I think some of it has to do with the languages involved. I find the type systems of C/C++/Java to be helpful in figuring out what a piece of code does, as compared to the type systems of Python/PHP/Ruby where it's more difficult to tell what a variable contains. Frameworks help solve this problem because you can infer what type of data you've got by looking at what method it's coming from and where it's being used.

squeaky-clean 10y ago

Because 99% of web dev code is the same stuff and 99% of the time it doesn't need to be rewritten. You don't need your own implementation of URL rules, user authentication and roles, testing suites, database driver or ORM, request parsing, csrf protection, session handling.... I can buy a book on Django/Flask/Symfony/Spring/Express. I can't buy a book about your homebrew 30k LOC "non-framework" which does all the same things plus an additional customized CRUD layer. > Nobody sees any other kind of application written by a previous programmer and cries "oh no! I am entirely at the mercy of this previous programmer! If only they had used one of the dozen competing frameworks this tragedy could have been avoided." If a large majority of the code you've been given to maintain could instead be handled by well known, well documented project with thousands of eyes fixing bugs and adding features, you would probably say the same thing. Imagine inheriting a java codebase of a simple POS system with a UI. Except instead of using Swing or AWT or I don't know what else, the entire UI is custom written in OpenGL. And instead of using any of the standard sorting or ArrayList implementation, they write their own, which are similar, but not identical (and often have 0 tests).

MustardTiger 10y ago
This whole argument is based on two false assumptions. One, that shitty broken web frameworks like cakephp and zend are "well known, well documented project with thousands of eyes fixing bugs and adding features" rather than the horrible messes they actually are. And two, that web apps are the only software to share any common aspects. Every lame VB+Access app I ever saw had more in common than two randomly chosen web apps. Yet nobody needed a "framework" to enforce worst practices and ensure that everything was done inefficiently and unmaintainably.

Glyptodon 10y ago

I think you're right that the propensity of non-technical organizations to try and hire unqualified people at below market rates leads to a particular problem in web development. But I think people programming other types of software have structure that comes from elsewhere. For example, if you write plain Android or iOS apps, in may ways there's a kind of standard app architecture that's just used and taken for granted. Sure, it can be muddled, but only so much for the most part. And the same is largely true for desktop applications, too, when they're built with IDEs that impose structure or even things like Unity. The thing that's extra weird about this is that most web apps have to reinvent the wheel in ways that desktop software doesn't.

arcatek 10y ago

Not sure why you think it doesn't happen in other fields. Every time I spoke with a software developer, they were constantly cursing the architecture of the code they had to dealt with.

kbenson 10y ago

Because the myriad ways public people interact with your code through HTTP and routes starts to rival the complexity of getting crypto code right, with a lot of the same sorts of downsides (which is to say problems often lead to security issues, and very few people are capable of reasoning about all the implications of the decisions made). I would suggest someone not roll their own framework (which is essentially creating a framework of their own at some level) for the same reasons I would suggest someone not roll their own crypto. The upside is relatively minuscule compared to the downsides, IMO. > Nobody sees any other kind of application written by a previous programmer and cries "oh no! I am entirely at the mercy of this previous programmer! If only they had used one of the dozen competing frameworks this tragedy could have been avoided.". Yes, they do. If you came upon someone's custom HTTP client, I imagine your response would be something along those lines. If not lamenting that you're at their mercy, at least cursing them for imposing a requirement of some level of strength that you use what is very likely to be a substandard implementation of what you can find freely available. So, you either replace it with something less likely to cause the odd problem later (and deal with all the testing to make sure you didn't introduce a bug, and you probably did) or deal with those odd problems ("what do you mean we aren't conforming to TLS correctly? Why haven't we seen this until now?").

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
MustardTiger 10y ago
> If you came upon someone's custom HTTP client, I imagine your response would be something along those lines. No, why would it? What HTTP client framework am I supposed to be wishing they used?
- kbenson 10y ago
  Maybe cURL? Some other one I don't know of (I know the ones in my preferred languages). Do we really need to also be responsible to dealing with already solved problems as well as the problems specific to our domain? Do we really want to also deal with the not-fully-compliant HTTP client or making sure we support HTTP/2, or do we want to use widely accepted solutions for those so we can focus on the real problem at hand (which is usually not the intricacies of HTTP negotiation, or some other well understood and supplied need).