5 ms·

Isn't this just re-solving a decades old problem, with the (unnecessary) constraints caused by modern web systems?

matthewmacleod 10y ago
While being technically correct, your statement is pretty much pointless. All development is 'just' re-solving an existing problem with better performance, or 'just' extending an existing algorithm to be more resilient, or 'just' implementing a legacy interface on a new platform. There are lots of very obvious reasons that the web has the constraints that it does and describing them as 'unnecessary' adds literally nothing useful to that conversation.
- analognoise 10y ago
  Very obvious? Could you elaborate? I don't mind changing my opinion, but it looks like the web is a mishmash of poor implementations made possible by increasing bandwidth and ram.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >All development is 'just' re-solving an existing problem with better performance, or 'just' extending an existing algorithm to be more resilient, or 'just' implementing a legacy interface on a new platform. Only this is "re-solving an existing problem with worse performance that we had decades ago (on native), but slightly faster than the previous speeds we achieved having it run with its feet tied". (Where by "feet tied" we refer to the performance penalty imposed by having everything run on the web stack).
  - analognoise 10y ago
    This is what I meant!
  - zedadex 10y ago
    If the problems were solved for people on native, there wouldn't be this much focus on reinventing the wheel on mobile. Clearly for some subset of people, "something" is missing for those native solutions (I can guess - portability, convenient 'moddability', etc) which they believe the standardization-reliant web can better address for them.
    - astrobe_ 10y ago
      Obviously the browser has become the universal VM. It solves the same problem as Java, but with Javascript instead of Java. So this decade Java school became Javascript schools, next decade it will be something else.
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    Can you explain how "native" solved the problem of performing minimal MVC-style updates to a UI "decades ago"? Decades ago, we had the Win32 API, which didn't even try to solve this—apps had to roll their own.
    - astrobe_ 10y ago
      Smalltalk?
      - pcwalton 10y ago
        Smalltalk isn't native!
        pjmlp 10y ago
        It is a matter of implementation. It was native on the Alto, as the primitives were implemented in microcode, which could be a FPGA nowadays. Also Squeak and Pharo are implemented in Smalltalk.
        pcwalton 10y ago
        When people complain about "Web" vs. "native", they are not talking about the Web versus the Xerox Alto.
        pjmlp 10y ago
        Well I wish that web was able to achieve those boring native hypermedia systems from Xerox PARC, instead of squeezing a VM into a document platform.
        astrobe_ 10y ago
        Then one of the "RAD" tools from the nineties. Delphi maybe?
    - analognoise 10y ago
      As mentioned below - Smalltalk. You know, the language MVC was invented on...
- gmfawcett 10y ago
  All development is just re-solving or extending? That's a sweeping generalization. My own work is definitely the incremental kind, and maybe yours is too --- but surely you'd agree that someone, somewhere in the world is doing truly innovative work.
  - samth 10y ago
    No, this is false. All "innovation" can be characterized as re-solving or extending. Pick a computing technology, and I'm happy to do it.
    - gmfawcett 10y ago
      Well, of course you can. Pick any human endeavour, including software development, and I can demonstrate that it's just applied philosophy. But it's not a useful exercise, IMO, it's just a reductionist rhetorical device. I think it's wise to keep ourselves humble -- few of us are blazing new trails, in anything that we do. And I agree that many so-called innovations are nothing of the sort. But if we reduce everything that we do to revision and extension, then the word "innovation" entirely loses meaning. Why would we want to do that?
- Pxtl 10y ago
  Yes, but the point here seems to be that once again, the web platform is obstructive and forcing us to build abstractions on abstractions.
  - always_good 10y ago
    As opposed to what, exactly? "abstractions on abstractions" defines all of computing. As said above, it's not a distinction, thus it's meaningless.
skybrian 10y ago
If you can confirm to those constraints, you can securely ship UI code that automatically runs on computers all over the world, which wasn't a thing before the web.
- analognoise 10y ago
  Smalltalk-80 had a platform independent VM in 1980. If you want to be more recent, Java. Why is there so much confusion about how the web fits into things?
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    Java applets on the Web were tried! They failed largely due to performance.
    - analognoise 10y ago
      Modern web is just as shitty, we just have faster computers.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      The performance problems were because of the way that specific VM was designed, not because it was a VM. You can easily have sub-millisecond initialization time on a VM if you make it a design goal.
  - skybrian 10y ago
    The Smalltalk-80 VM is certainly interesting but as far as I know it wasn't allowing users to run untrusted, possibly malicious code. Taking security seriously came later. Java was a pioneer with shipping untrusted code to users in a sandbox, but it turns out its sandbox wasn't secure, and there were other UI issues as well. (Similarly with Flash, though that was more of a mobile performance issue.) To be fair, the early web had a lot of security problems. What we have now is what's left after a lot of hardening. And we still have a lot of security issues. But anyway, if you use JavaScript this isn't really your problem. Browsers take care of sandboxing and deployment for you. Nothing wrong with building on the hard work of others.
nebabyte 10y ago
What's wrong with re-solving an existing problem? Isn't that the entire idea of "fearless refactoring" that several process models use to mitigate reliance on/complacence with archaic systems? I don't think "it's been done before" has ever in the history of progress been a good reason for something to not be reexamined and made better or easier to use.
hl5 10y ago
It used to be called mail merge. Now that there are so many abstractions layers, it's apparently best performance wise if you add a VM running inside a VM running inside a VM.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
erikpukinskis 10y ago
The web is the only platform that has solved the sub-100ms install+load problem, which helped it solve the be-on-every-device problem. Solving those problems introduced constraints did make certain things harder. But IMO it was a good trade-off. Being the biggest software platform in the world certainly suggests it was worth it. Let me know when Windows gets 100ms install+load and I'll be interested in the rendering model. Until then... measuring install time in seconds, or minutes? You can hardly claim to be performance oriented.
- analognoise 10y ago
  When you can run a real CAD program on a phone, I'll be interested. The web is for disposable toys, uninteresting ones at that. All of Windows 3.1 could fit in less space than the Apple website. You're telling me a silent install of Windows 3.1 would take more time to install than...Some app to find local hookups by GPS?

While being technically correct, your statement is pretty much pointless. All development is 'just' re-solving an existing problem with better performance, or 'just' extending an existing algorithm to be more resilient, or 'just' implementing a legacy interface on a new platform. There are lots of very obvious reasons that the web has the constraints that it does and describing them as 'unnecessary' adds literally nothing useful to that conversation.

analognoise 10y ago
Very obvious? Could you elaborate? I don't mind changing my opinion, but it looks like the web is a mishmash of poor implementations made possible by increasing bandwidth and ram.
coldtea 10y ago
>All development is 'just' re-solving an existing problem with better performance, or 'just' extending an existing algorithm to be more resilient, or 'just' implementing a legacy interface on a new platform. Only this is "re-solving an existing problem with worse performance that we had decades ago (on native), but slightly faster than the previous speeds we achieved having it run with its feet tied". (Where by "feet tied" we refer to the performance penalty imposed by having everything run on the web stack).
- analognoise 10y ago
  This is what I meant!
- zedadex 10y ago
  If the problems were solved for people on native, there wouldn't be this much focus on reinventing the wheel on mobile. Clearly for some subset of people, "something" is missing for those native solutions (I can guess - portability, convenient 'moddability', etc) which they believe the standardization-reliant web can better address for them.
  - astrobe_ 10y ago
    Obviously the browser has become the universal VM. It solves the same problem as Java, but with Javascript instead of Java. So this decade Java school became Javascript schools, next decade it will be something else.
- pcwalton 10y ago
  Can you explain how "native" solved the problem of performing minimal MVC-style updates to a UI "decades ago"? Decades ago, we had the Win32 API, which didn't even try to solve this—apps had to roll their own.
  - astrobe_ 10y ago
    Smalltalk?
    - pcwalton 10y ago
      Smalltalk isn't native!
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        It is a matter of implementation. It was native on the Alto, as the primitives were implemented in microcode, which could be a FPGA nowadays. Also Squeak and Pharo are implemented in Smalltalk.
        pcwalton 10y ago
        When people complain about "Web" vs. "native", they are not talking about the Web versus the Xerox Alto.
        pjmlp 10y ago
        Well I wish that web was able to achieve those boring native hypermedia systems from Xerox PARC, instead of squeezing a VM into a document platform.
      - astrobe_ 10y ago
        Then one of the "RAD" tools from the nineties. Delphi maybe?
  - analognoise 10y ago
    As mentioned below - Smalltalk. You know, the language MVC was invented on...
gmfawcett 10y ago
All development is just re-solving or extending? That's a sweeping generalization. My own work is definitely the incremental kind, and maybe yours is too --- but surely you'd agree that someone, somewhere in the world is doing truly innovative work.
- samth 10y ago
  No, this is false. All "innovation" can be characterized as re-solving or extending. Pick a computing technology, and I'm happy to do it.
  - gmfawcett 10y ago
    Well, of course you can. Pick any human endeavour, including software development, and I can demonstrate that it's just applied philosophy. But it's not a useful exercise, IMO, it's just a reductionist rhetorical device. I think it's wise to keep ourselves humble -- few of us are blazing new trails, in anything that we do. And I agree that many so-called innovations are nothing of the sort. But if we reduce everything that we do to revision and extension, then the word "innovation" entirely loses meaning. Why would we want to do that?
Pxtl 10y ago
Yes, but the point here seems to be that once again, the web platform is obstructive and forcing us to build abstractions on abstractions.
- always_good 10y ago
  As opposed to what, exactly? "abstractions on abstractions" defines all of computing. As said above, it's not a distinction, thus it's meaningless.

skybrian 10y ago

If you can confirm to those constraints, you can securely ship UI code that automatically runs on computers all over the world, which wasn't a thing before the web.

analognoise 10y ago
Smalltalk-80 had a platform independent VM in 1980. If you want to be more recent, Java. Why is there so much confusion about how the web fits into things?
- pcwalton 10y ago
  Java applets on the Web were tried! They failed largely due to performance.
  - analognoise 10y ago
    Modern web is just as shitty, we just have faster computers.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    The performance problems were because of the way that specific VM was designed, not because it was a VM. You can easily have sub-millisecond initialization time on a VM if you make it a design goal.
- skybrian 10y ago
  The Smalltalk-80 VM is certainly interesting but as far as I know it wasn't allowing users to run untrusted, possibly malicious code. Taking security seriously came later. Java was a pioneer with shipping untrusted code to users in a sandbox, but it turns out its sandbox wasn't secure, and there were other UI issues as well. (Similarly with Flash, though that was more of a mobile performance issue.) To be fair, the early web had a lot of security problems. What we have now is what's left after a lot of hardening. And we still have a lot of security issues. But anyway, if you use JavaScript this isn't really your problem. Browsers take care of sandboxing and deployment for you. Nothing wrong with building on the hard work of others.

nebabyte 10y ago

What's wrong with re-solving an existing problem? Isn't that the entire idea of "fearless refactoring" that several process models use to mitigate reliance on/complacence with archaic systems? I don't think "it's been done before" has ever in the history of progress been a good reason for something to not be reexamined and made better or easier to use.

hl5 10y ago

It used to be called mail merge. Now that there are so many abstractions layers, it's apparently best performance wise if you add a VM running inside a VM running inside a VM.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

erikpukinskis 10y ago

The web is the only platform that has solved the sub-100ms install+load problem, which helped it solve the be-on-every-device problem. Solving those problems introduced constraints did make certain things harder. But IMO it was a good trade-off. Being the biggest software platform in the world certainly suggests it was worth it. Let me know when Windows gets 100ms install+load and I'll be interested in the rendering model. Until then... measuring install time in seconds, or minutes? You can hardly claim to be performance oriented.

analognoise 10y ago
When you can run a real CAD program on a phone, I'll be interested. The web is for disposable toys, uninteresting ones at that. All of Windows 3.1 could fit in less space than the Apple website. You're telling me a silent install of Windows 3.1 would take more time to install than...Some app to find local hookups by GPS?