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Bingo. SPA is what I like to call "non-existent technology," meaning a buzzword that is neither a real technology people can download and use, nor a specificat

by tboyd47 10y ago

Bingo. SPA is what I like to call "non-existent technology," meaning a buzzword that is neither a real technology people can download and use, nor a specification people can refer to. Other examples: "Cloud computing," "NoSQL," "SOA." It only really exists on people's resumes and on blog posts. Non-technical people have no way of knowing that it is not real. There are good reasons why web applications have backends. There are also good reasons why you would use that backend to serve pre-rendered HTML. There are also good reasons why you would use page transitions to take the user from one screen to another. These concepts are lost on many developers nowadays. I'm not saying you never want an SPA, but it's really freaking hard to do because you're going against the grain on a platform with 20 years of progress in another direction. What happens when non-existent technology makes up the greater part of the beginner's stack? When instead of the LAMP stack or Ruby on Rails, people graduate coding bootcamps with a specialty in building functional SPAs using NoSQL and cloud-based BFFs?

paulddraper 10y ago
For cloud computing not being real, there is a lot of money being spent/made on it. "Cloud computing," "NoSQL," "SOA" are concepts/ideas. They aren't "technologies" per say. There are, however, technologies that implement these ideas (AWS, CouchDB, Ostrich).
- deleted 10y ago
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- tboyd47 10y ago
  I am only making a point that concepts/ideas are not the same as technologies, and shouldn't be treated as if they are. It's gotten so out of hand now that I half-expect people to start attaching version numbers to them, like "NoSQL 2.0". It's as if the phenomenon of a "technology buzzword" has been totally divorced from the technical product the buzzword is supposed to refer to, which is frustrating. If I have a resume full of concepts/ideas and no actual technologies, then the fact is that I can't be trusted to extend or repair any real system. The beauty of open source is that I do have skills I can take from company to company. I can use my Rails experience at one company to hit the ground running at another. If we start replacing actual technologies with mere concepts in our trade, then we still have a shared language but no shared skills. So the end result is eventually the same as if open source never happened and every programming environment was proprietary. End rant.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Sure, put down details on your resume. But calling SPA a "non-existent technology" is like calling SUV a "non-existent sandwich". No one claims SPA is a "technology" any more than they claim REST is a technology. It's a paradigm.

by tboyd47 10y ago

paulddraper 10y ago

For cloud computing not being real, there is a lot of money being spent/made on it. "Cloud computing," "NoSQL," "SOA" are concepts/ideas. They aren't "technologies" per say. There are, however, technologies that implement these ideas (AWS, CouchDB, Ostrich).

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tboyd47 10y ago
I am only making a point that concepts/ideas are not the same as technologies, and shouldn't be treated as if they are. It's gotten so out of hand now that I half-expect people to start attaching version numbers to them, like "NoSQL 2.0". It's as if the phenomenon of a "technology buzzword" has been totally divorced from the technical product the buzzword is supposed to refer to, which is frustrating. If I have a resume full of concepts/ideas and no actual technologies, then the fact is that I can't be trusted to extend or repair any real system. The beauty of open source is that I do have skills I can take from company to company. I can use my Rails experience at one company to hit the ground running at another. If we start replacing actual technologies with mere concepts in our trade, then we still have a shared language but no shared skills. So the end result is eventually the same as if open source never happened and every programming environment was proprietary. End rant.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Sure, put down details on your resume. But calling SPA a "non-existent technology" is like calling SUV a "non-existent sandwich". No one claims SPA is a "technology" any more than they claim REST is a technology. It's a paradigm.