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As someone who has only ever done web development how true is the statement "web development itself is inherently complicated" when compared to other fields of

by Hates_ 10y ago

As someone who has only ever done web development how true is the statement "web development itself is inherently complicated" when compared to other fields of programming? After seeing the Jonathan Blow talk on software quality I really questioned how much I over-estimated the complexity of what I do every day.

gadrev 10y ago
Could you provide the full title or a link to that particular talk of Jonathan Blow?
- sgift 10y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k56wra39lwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k56wra39lwA Probably this one.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Hates_ 10y ago
  Sorry I forgot to paste it in my comment. It's the one that sgift has linked to.
dmbass 10y ago
I think a lot of the "complexity" of web development comes from the fact that most of us are just YOLOing to get something that "mostly works" out the door. For the most part, lives don't depend on our systems and the standard for performance is much lower than something like a video game or operating system thanks to the legacy of dialup and ads.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  To be frank, you have no idea what "most" people are doing, you only know your small sphere of experience. For example, I've worked on several numerical simulation systems where the results were used for safety ratings of different industrial processes. This was all on the Web, and it honestly did fit for the Web. The market for all types software is huge and we only ever hear from a very small section of it. It's why I don't take the concept of programming-language-oriented "communities" too seriously. There is a huge body of dark-matter programmers out there--probably 90% in any particular language--who do not participate in the meetups and conferences and discussion forums. They just work and then go home at the end of the day to do something completely unrelated to programming.
moron4hire 10y ago
There isn't anything inherently hard about web development. There are some things that are a little harder than desktop. There are some things that are a little easier. Overall, I wouldn't say there is anything core to the fabric of either that makes one more or less difficult. What matters is the scale at which you plan to build your project. If the project is only ever meant for one person to use, then it's practically trivial. But being on the Web, you expose yourself to a much larger potential market, so I think it's easier for estimates to get blown out of the water. Desktop applications scale horizontally be default. Web applications scale vertically by default [0]. So if there is some "difficulty", then it is in that most Computer Science degreed people [1] first train in single-user, runs-on-a-desktop programming, so that is what they are initially familiar with. But it's a difference of starting point, not a difference in overall difficulty. There is a cultural issue that a lot of companies continue to treat the Web as a sub-standard platform, a lot of engineering teams continue to treat "The Front End" as an after thought, and they continue to hire only junior developers who have only ever written programs for themselves. This is not to knock Jr. Devs. We all start somewhere. But there are a lot of companies that expect way too much out of someone with 0 to 5 years of experience because they don't expect enough out of the Web as a platform. Other than that, concerns like accessibility, internationalization, cross-platform compatibility, they're all easier across the board on all platforms today than they've ever been on any of the platforms. I don't think there is any argument to be made there. [0] Hence the desire to make SPAs. A good SPA scales horizontally as well as any desktop application. [1] Myself included in this group.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  I fundamentally can't agree with this because desktops apps are generally synchronous with one computer involved and web apps are asynchronous with at least 2 computers involved. I can't see how that's not a MASSIVE difference. That's adds a whole extra layer of complexity. There is virtually nothing in web apps that is easier, almost by very definition. What web apps made easy was deployment. Please name one other thing that's easier than in a desktop app. HTML wasn't even designed for apps. I just cannot comprehend how you can believe what you wrote. I really haven't written many desktop apps, but generally speaking when I did in say VB6 or Silverlight, they have been trivial to make compared to a web app of identical complexity.
rubber_duck 10y ago
Frontend development is trivial compared to stuff I've done in gamedev or in building distributed backends. There's stuff to learn but the problems are nowhere near as complicated and it's much simpler to debug (although cross browser complicates that somewhat, it's not even close to debugging distributed systems, or games on different hardware and drivers)

by Hates_ 10y ago

gadrev 10y ago

Could you provide the full title or a link to that particular talk of Jonathan Blow?

sgift 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k56wra39lwA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k56wra39lwA Probably this one.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Hates_ 10y ago
Sorry I forgot to paste it in my comment. It's the one that sgift has linked to.

dmbass 10y ago

I think a lot of the "complexity" of web development comes from the fact that most of us are just YOLOing to get something that "mostly works" out the door. For the most part, lives don't depend on our systems and the standard for performance is much lower than something like a video game or operating system thanks to the legacy of dialup and ads.

moron4hire 10y ago
To be frank, you have no idea what "most" people are doing, you only know your small sphere of experience. For example, I've worked on several numerical simulation systems where the results were used for safety ratings of different industrial processes. This was all on the Web, and it honestly did fit for the Web. The market for all types software is huge and we only ever hear from a very small section of it. It's why I don't take the concept of programming-language-oriented "communities" too seriously. There is a huge body of dark-matter programmers out there--probably 90% in any particular language--who do not participate in the meetups and conferences and discussion forums. They just work and then go home at the end of the day to do something completely unrelated to programming.

moron4hire 10y ago

There isn't anything inherently hard about web development. There are some things that are a little harder than desktop. There are some things that are a little easier. Overall, I wouldn't say there is anything core to the fabric of either that makes one more or less difficult. What matters is the scale at which you plan to build your project. If the project is only ever meant for one person to use, then it's practically trivial. But being on the Web, you expose yourself to a much larger potential market, so I think it's easier for estimates to get blown out of the water. Desktop applications scale horizontally be default. Web applications scale vertically by default [0]. So if there is some "difficulty", then it is in that most Computer Science degreed people [1] first train in single-user, runs-on-a-desktop programming, so that is what they are initially familiar with. But it's a difference of starting point, not a difference in overall difficulty. There is a cultural issue that a lot of companies continue to treat the Web as a sub-standard platform, a lot of engineering teams continue to treat "The Front End" as an after thought, and they continue to hire only junior developers who have only ever written programs for themselves. This is not to knock Jr. Devs. We all start somewhere. But there are a lot of companies that expect way too much out of someone with 0 to 5 years of experience because they don't expect enough out of the Web as a platform. Other than that, concerns like accessibility, internationalization, cross-platform compatibility, they're all easier across the board on all platforms today than they've ever been on any of the platforms. I don't think there is any argument to be made there. [0] Hence the desire to make SPAs. A good SPA scales horizontally as well as any desktop application. [1] Myself included in this group.

mattmanser 10y ago
I fundamentally can't agree with this because desktops apps are generally synchronous with one computer involved and web apps are asynchronous with at least 2 computers involved. I can't see how that's not a MASSIVE difference. That's adds a whole extra layer of complexity. There is virtually nothing in web apps that is easier, almost by very definition. What web apps made easy was deployment. Please name one other thing that's easier than in a desktop app. HTML wasn't even designed for apps. I just cannot comprehend how you can believe what you wrote. I really haven't written many desktop apps, but generally speaking when I did in say VB6 or Silverlight, they have been trivial to make compared to a web app of identical complexity.

rubber_duck 10y ago

Frontend development is trivial compared to stuff I've done in gamedev or in building distributed backends. There's stuff to learn but the problems are nowhere near as complicated and it's much simpler to debug (although cross browser complicates that somewhat, it's not even close to debugging distributed systems, or games on different hardware and drivers)