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Whenever I see something like this, I sigh and wonder, "Why should it be so hard for the average internet user to create a live 'grid of thumbnails' for 'a list

Whenever I see something like this, I sigh and wonder, "Why should it be so hard for the average internet user to create a live 'grid of thumbnails' for 'a list of links to webpages'? Why should it take a whole developer to code and deploy an entire website, just for this one use-case?" Software today is not as "soft" as one would've hoped, fifty years ago. It's not malleable. It's not composable. It's barely reactive. This is not how it was meant to be.

onion2k 9y ago
Every time someone says "Why should it be so hard to.." with software it's because they've not thought about the requirements. If you break down "a live grid of thumbnails" it's actually a relatively complex app even if you're just making an MVP. Even if you're prescriptive about things like the number of links in the list, the size of thumbnails, the layout of the thumbnails, the way the user manages what links they see, the regularity of updates, you're still left with an application that needs a basic list CRUD UI, a grid of thumbnails, something to render a screenshot of the website to a thumbnail, code to handle the site being unavailable or un-rendererable, a backend to store the list data and thumbnail images, maybe something to check to see if the site has actually changed (which can be tricky if it loads content with JS). And that's before the user's ask for features like drag and drop grid reordering, update scheduling, etc. That's not to suggest it'd take more than half a day to knock something together, but that's more down to the awesome ecosystem of software libraries than it being a simple project. To write an app from scratch in, say, C++ would be a huge project.
- kristianc 9y ago
  > Software today is not as "soft" as one would've hoped, fifty years ago. It's not malleable. It's not composable. It's barely reactive. That would seem to be the point the OP is making.
- AriaMinaei 9y ago
  I would disagree. All of the problems that you mentioned, such as "the layout of the thumbnails", "the regularity of updates" and "something to render a screenshot of the website to a thumbnail" can already be solved and parameterized to such genericness to be sufficiently usable for this use-case and, I'd surmise, most others.
koolba 9y ago
I don't think it's that difficult if it's rendered live. You could have a similar site with a series of iframe. Could spoof it as an image by overlaying a div that captures and discards all clicks. I bet the whole thing could be done with a couple lines of JS. What does require real dev work and infrastructure is prerendering the web page screen shots and serving them up.
viach 9y ago
Similar things could be done with IFTTT, Zapier and, in the past, Yahoo Pipes.
darrenf 9y ago
The average internet user could use Dropmark: http://www.dropmark.com/ http://www.dropmark.com/ (not affiliated, but happy user)
AliAdams 9y ago
Given that the word 'software' only really started appearing around 50 years ago [1], that might be a stretch, but nonetheless, I think you do our current set of technologies a disservice. I'm sure it would be relatively incidental for the majority of HN readers to cobble something together that fulfils this sort of functionality without much work. If your complaint is that languages don't form higher abstractions of things like 'thumbnails', I think that is just due to us collectively preferring the flexibility of lower level code - it's certainly not because it would be difficult to create a language with such abstractions. [1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=software&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csoftware%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=software&year_...
arc_of_descent 9y ago
I dread the day when the average Internet user can do such things. Or even _want_ to do such things. Please hire a good developer to do this and pay good money :) I recollect a conversation I had with a recruiter around 12 years back. He was predicting that a day will come when a "manager" can drag and drop objects and create any kind of software application. That day has not come and it will not come.
neogodless 9y ago
Before I try to address the idea that "software" should just be fully adaptable to the needs and wants of the average internet user, let's stick to this more specific use case. If you want a web site that allows you to create your own personal grid of thumbnails for a list of links (from a URL), that is something that can be built with software (with relative ease). If this particular developer created that tool, the considerations would certainly elevate rapidly - now it's useful to a lot more people, so you need to provide hosting for your larger audience. Instead of a novelty, you've created a burden on your resources. Particularly if they want a "live" grid of thumbnails, and thus it updates "constantly", the resource costs could quickly become staggering. What are reasonable expectations for software, and if they are not being met, what is the roadblock? What exactly were the predictions and hopes for software in the late 60s? A relatively average user can use WYSIWYG editors (including word processors, web editors, and apps that provide text, photo and video editing at your fingertips.) What else should they be able to do? Are we merely discontent with the rate of progress? People who are not in the line of work of home automation are able to purchase hardware and configure it in their homes. People can buy inexpensive, versatile computer chips off the shelf and program them to be unique devices, meeting specific needs. We can already imagine, predict and hope for a future where the functionality of a web site or device is wildly configurable to the individual. What metrics do we have to reach before we're satisfied?

onion2k 9y ago

Every time someone says "Why should it be so hard to.." with software it's because they've not thought about the requirements. If you break down "a live grid of thumbnails" it's actually a relatively complex app even if you're just making an MVP. Even if you're prescriptive about things like the number of links in the list, the size of thumbnails, the layout of the thumbnails, the way the user manages what links they see, the regularity of updates, you're still left with an application that needs a basic list CRUD UI, a grid of thumbnails, something to render a screenshot of the website to a thumbnail, code to handle the site being unavailable or un-rendererable, a backend to store the list data and thumbnail images, maybe something to check to see if the site has actually changed (which can be tricky if it loads content with JS). And that's before the user's ask for features like drag and drop grid reordering, update scheduling, etc. That's not to suggest it'd take more than half a day to knock something together, but that's more down to the awesome ecosystem of software libraries than it being a simple project. To write an app from scratch in, say, C++ would be a huge project.

kristianc 9y ago
> Software today is not as "soft" as one would've hoped, fifty years ago. It's not malleable. It's not composable. It's barely reactive. That would seem to be the point the OP is making.
AriaMinaei 9y ago
I would disagree. All of the problems that you mentioned, such as "the layout of the thumbnails", "the regularity of updates" and "something to render a screenshot of the website to a thumbnail" can already be solved and parameterized to such genericness to be sufficiently usable for this use-case and, I'd surmise, most others.

koolba 9y ago

I don't think it's that difficult if it's rendered live. You could have a similar site with a series of iframe. Could spoof it as an image by overlaying a div that captures and discards all clicks. I bet the whole thing could be done with a couple lines of JS. What does require real dev work and infrastructure is prerendering the web page screen shots and serving them up.

viach 9y ago

Similar things could be done with IFTTT, Zapier and, in the past, Yahoo Pipes.

darrenf 9y ago

The average internet user could use Dropmark: http://www.dropmark.com/ http://www.dropmark.com/ (not affiliated, but happy user)

AliAdams 9y ago

Given that the word 'software' only really started appearing around 50 years ago [1], that might be a stretch, but nonetheless, I think you do our current set of technologies a disservice. I'm sure it would be relatively incidental for the majority of HN readers to cobble something together that fulfils this sort of functionality without much work. If your complaint is that languages don't form higher abstractions of things like 'thumbnails', I think that is just due to us collectively preferring the flexibility of lower level code - it's certainly not because it would be difficult to create a language with such abstractions. [1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=software&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csoftware%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=software&year_...

arc_of_descent 9y ago

I dread the day when the average Internet user can do such things. Or even _want_ to do such things. Please hire a good developer to do this and pay good money :) I recollect a conversation I had with a recruiter around 12 years back. He was predicting that a day will come when a "manager" can drag and drop objects and create any kind of software application. That day has not come and it will not come.

neogodless 9y ago

Before I try to address the idea that "software" should just be fully adaptable to the needs and wants of the average internet user, let's stick to this more specific use case. If you want a web site that allows you to create your own personal grid of thumbnails for a list of links (from a URL), that is something that can be built with software (with relative ease). If this particular developer created that tool, the considerations would certainly elevate rapidly - now it's useful to a lot more people, so you need to provide hosting for your larger audience. Instead of a novelty, you've created a burden on your resources. Particularly if they want a "live" grid of thumbnails, and thus it updates "constantly", the resource costs could quickly become staggering. What are reasonable expectations for software, and if they are not being met, what is the roadblock? What exactly were the predictions and hopes for software in the late 60s? A relatively average user can use WYSIWYG editors (including word processors, web editors, and apps that provide text, photo and video editing at your fingertips.) What else should they be able to do? Are we merely discontent with the rate of progress? People who are not in the line of work of home automation are able to purchase hardware and configure it in their homes. People can buy inexpensive, versatile computer chips off the shelf and program them to be unique devices, meeting specific needs. We can already imagine, predict and hope for a future where the functionality of a web site or device is wildly configurable to the individual. What metrics do we have to reach before we're satisfied?