11 ms·

I actually just let my membership to their developer program lapse after 4 years. In addition to having to pay money to develop on their platform, the return I

by Donzo 8y ago

I actually just let my membership to their developer program lapse after 4 years. In addition to having to pay money to develop on their platform, the return I get is questionable. The straw was that they're forcing me to republish old programs, just to force them through their new compliance tunnels. Frankly, I'm sick of their hoops and their walled-garden. I'm ok with forcing users to the browser now. Amazon does it for digital sales.

threeseed 8y ago
I think you're being a bit disingenuous here. The point of republishing old programs is to make sure they are running against the latest SDK. This is an important aspect for the ecosystem. It forces apps to work properly on the latest OS as well as support technologies like App Thinning. It's not just to mess you around for compliance reasons.
- Donzo 8y ago
  A website from 1996 will look much the same in a modern version of Chrome. Good luck with your SDKs.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    What a hilarious statement to make. Sure a website from 1996 will look the same. It will also have no accessibility, work terribly on mobile, be largely like reading a Word document and have none of the interesting features of modern web sites. Your world is not the world most people want.
    - electic 8y ago
      Hacker News is one such site that is very basic and has none of the stuff you outline as modern features. You know what? It is by far one of the most performant and enjoyable websites I use daily.
      - threeseed 8y ago
        Seriously ? Sure pick out a few examples. Now let's talk about taking the entire web back to 1996. No Javascript, Websockets/SSE, AJAX, CSS etc. You really think all of the innovations made in the last two decades is just throw-away ?
        sattoshi 8y ago
        The goalposts have wheels!
        ycombobreaker 8y ago
        > let's talk about taking the entire web back to 1996. Let's not, that's a tangent. The original statement to which you replied was this: > A website from 1996 will look much the same in a modern version of Chrome. Good luck with your SDKs. That remains true, despite the advances you listed. http://www.thekrib.com/ http://www.thekrib.com/ is an example from 1994 which still looks like it renders about the same. It doesn't have the bells and whistles, but the point is, _what was written remains available._ Interactive applications tracking a moving SDK cannot be left for future generations, they have to be maintained. Putting non-interactive content into those types of applications is forcing a maintenance burden forevermore.
    - Donzo 8y ago
      The modern browser is quite good at rendering text, just as it was in 1996. The web is largely still about words. What improvement is so important as to strike the words of those from 1996 off the record?
      - tommymachine 8y ago
        Nobody here has argued to start striking outdated websites off the record. However the advent of reader mode has certainly helped things in that neighborhood come through a bit cleaner. But as yet websites don’t control rapidly evolving and privacy sensitive hardware on mobile devices. Also, user time spent in apps versus web browsers is hovering around ~90% versus 10. Might it be possible that having an up-to-date experience as it’s enforced by mobile platform owners could contribute somewhat to this abundant user preference for apps?
    - wwweston 8y ago
      I can think of some sites on the order of 15 - 20 years old that work better on mobile than sites made in the last 5. And while the various accommodations for accessibility that have come up over the last two decades are nice, the fact is that most of the web was fairly accessibly using specialized user agents (or even just Lynx) by the very late 90s.
    - cm2187 8y ago
      There is a lot to be said about adaptive web fails, text or graphics overflowing outside of the screen while locking the zoom level, botched overrides of browser behaviors. A simple old html page is often more readable on a smartphone than a page where the developper tried hard to fuck with the way it is rendered on a small screen. If the text is too small you can easily zoom in. And most smartphones these days have large, high dpi screens.
  - Donzo 8y ago
    I guess what we're seeing here is a developer/development-first ideology versus a platform-first ideology. Should the developer/development have to resubmit to the benevolent platform? Or should the platform have to support the development that has occurred? I don't really care, but I know that I'd rather develop somewhere where my contributions aren't under constant threat of being wiped off the landscape. Again, good luck with the other thing.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      You have painted this false dichotomy. In Apple's world: The users come first. Everyone else second.
      - fenomas 8y ago
        The policies described in the root comment we're replying to have nothing to do with putting the user first. Apple puts Apple first, even when it's bad for users.
        tommymachine 8y ago
        Maybe. But how bad would the user experience be if every time a user went to do an IAP, they were presented with a link to an external web page asking for their credit card information? Would that affect the security and privacy of the platform? Would it affect users' trust in the platform?
        zchrykng 8y ago
        Maybe if Apple didn't charge many times more than credit card processors to handle payments, developers wouldn't be trying to avoid getting robbed.
        tommymachine 8y ago
        Maybe if credit card processors started inventing platforms for software distribution and made them available and easy to use for anyone, they wouldn’t.
  - danShumway 8y ago
    To be fair, browsers aren't always perfect about preserving backwards compatibility for every API. Miles ahead of native, and hundreds of miles ahead of mobile. For the most part, the web is one of the most future-proof platforms you can develop for, if not the most future-proof platform you can develop for. But there's still room to improve.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Pity that it still doesn't provide a fully Delphi like development experience.
    - wilsonnb3 8y ago
      IBM mainframes are the most future-proof platform you can develop for. Current mainframes have backwards compatibility going back to the 70's. Perhaps even the 60's. The web is probably second, though. Either the web or Windows.
      - kbenson 8y ago
        If we're including devices that almost nobody has access to, the most future proof device is not the one that keeps backwards compatibility, but the one that only has one version that is still produced, since initial compatibility is the only compatibility. Any tricks and additional uses you develop for the abacus will likely long outlive any IBM if it's worthwhile. That doesn't mean it's particularly easy to develop something people will find worthwhile enough to propagate forward though. Backwards compatibility only matters as long as you have something that ca take advantage of it and a need to do so.

by Donzo 8y ago

threeseed 8y ago

I think you're being a bit disingenuous here. The point of republishing old programs is to make sure they are running against the latest SDK. This is an important aspect for the ecosystem. It forces apps to work properly on the latest OS as well as support technologies like App Thinning. It's not just to mess you around for compliance reasons.

Donzo 8y ago
A website from 1996 will look much the same in a modern version of Chrome. Good luck with your SDKs.
- threeseed 8y ago
  What a hilarious statement to make. Sure a website from 1996 will look the same. It will also have no accessibility, work terribly on mobile, be largely like reading a Word document and have none of the interesting features of modern web sites. Your world is not the world most people want.
  - electic 8y ago
    Hacker News is one such site that is very basic and has none of the stuff you outline as modern features. You know what? It is by far one of the most performant and enjoyable websites I use daily.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      Seriously ? Sure pick out a few examples. Now let's talk about taking the entire web back to 1996. No Javascript, Websockets/SSE, AJAX, CSS etc. You really think all of the innovations made in the last two decades is just throw-away ?
      - sattoshi 8y ago
        The goalposts have wheels!
      - ycombobreaker 8y ago
        > let's talk about taking the entire web back to 1996. Let's not, that's a tangent. The original statement to which you replied was this: > A website from 1996 will look much the same in a modern version of Chrome. Good luck with your SDKs. That remains true, despite the advances you listed. http://www.thekrib.com/ http://www.thekrib.com/ is an example from 1994 which still looks like it renders about the same. It doesn't have the bells and whistles, but the point is, _what was written remains available._ Interactive applications tracking a moving SDK cannot be left for future generations, they have to be maintained. Putting non-interactive content into those types of applications is forcing a maintenance burden forevermore.
  - Donzo 8y ago
    The modern browser is quite good at rendering text, just as it was in 1996. The web is largely still about words. What improvement is so important as to strike the words of those from 1996 off the record?
    - tommymachine 8y ago
      Nobody here has argued to start striking outdated websites off the record. However the advent of reader mode has certainly helped things in that neighborhood come through a bit cleaner. But as yet websites don’t control rapidly evolving and privacy sensitive hardware on mobile devices. Also, user time spent in apps versus web browsers is hovering around ~90% versus 10. Might it be possible that having an up-to-date experience as it’s enforced by mobile platform owners could contribute somewhat to this abundant user preference for apps?
  - wwweston 8y ago
    I can think of some sites on the order of 15 - 20 years old that work better on mobile than sites made in the last 5. And while the various accommodations for accessibility that have come up over the last two decades are nice, the fact is that most of the web was fairly accessibly using specialized user agents (or even just Lynx) by the very late 90s.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    There is a lot to be said about adaptive web fails, text or graphics overflowing outside of the screen while locking the zoom level, botched overrides of browser behaviors. A simple old html page is often more readable on a smartphone than a page where the developper tried hard to fuck with the way it is rendered on a small screen. If the text is too small you can easily zoom in. And most smartphones these days have large, high dpi screens.
- Donzo 8y ago
  I guess what we're seeing here is a developer/development-first ideology versus a platform-first ideology. Should the developer/development have to resubmit to the benevolent platform? Or should the platform have to support the development that has occurred? I don't really care, but I know that I'd rather develop somewhere where my contributions aren't under constant threat of being wiped off the landscape. Again, good luck with the other thing.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    You have painted this false dichotomy. In Apple's world: The users come first. Everyone else second.
    - fenomas 8y ago
      The policies described in the root comment we're replying to have nothing to do with putting the user first. Apple puts Apple first, even when it's bad for users.
      - tommymachine 8y ago
        Maybe. But how bad would the user experience be if every time a user went to do an IAP, they were presented with a link to an external web page asking for their credit card information? Would that affect the security and privacy of the platform? Would it affect users' trust in the platform?
        zchrykng 8y ago
        Maybe if Apple didn't charge many times more than credit card processors to handle payments, developers wouldn't be trying to avoid getting robbed.
        tommymachine 8y ago
        Maybe if credit card processors started inventing platforms for software distribution and made them available and easy to use for anyone, they wouldn’t.
- danShumway 8y ago
  To be fair, browsers aren't always perfect about preserving backwards compatibility for every API. Miles ahead of native, and hundreds of miles ahead of mobile. For the most part, the web is one of the most future-proof platforms you can develop for, if not the most future-proof platform you can develop for. But there's still room to improve.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Pity that it still doesn't provide a fully Delphi like development experience.
  - wilsonnb3 8y ago
    IBM mainframes are the most future-proof platform you can develop for. Current mainframes have backwards compatibility going back to the 70's. Perhaps even the 60's. The web is probably second, though. Either the web or Windows.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      If we're including devices that almost nobody has access to, the most future proof device is not the one that keeps backwards compatibility, but the one that only has one version that is still produced, since initial compatibility is the only compatibility. Any tricks and additional uses you develop for the abacus will likely long outlive any IBM if it's worthwhile. That doesn't mean it's particularly easy to develop something people will find worthwhile enough to propagate forward though. Backwards compatibility only matters as long as you have something that ca take advantage of it and a need to do so.