10 ms·

Web Programming Is Hard

258 points by grayhairmomma 16y ago

patio11 16y ago
I periodically think "Man, I really shouldn't be getting paid for this. Any idiot could stick these two APIs together." In my more sensible moments, I remember that that idiot only needed to know HTML, CSS, the DOM model, Javascript, jQuery, HTTP (mostly headers and status codes), Ruby, Rails, basic MVC design, Oauth, SQL, SQL performance, five-ish APIs to support the two that needed integration, how to configure and maintain a server, system architecture, a bit of security, etc. [There's also object oriented programming, class inheritance, polymorphism, algorithms, time complexity, discrete math, data structures, imperative programming, and a few other things I forgot the first time around. Lest we forget, we might take these for granted because we've been programming since we were $ARBITRARILY_YOUNG, but to most people these are just black magic. My girlfriend, a smart cookie, asked to see "how I made the phone ring" and, after I showed her the code that did that, told me it had never even occurred to her that every program she's ever seen was once a collection of special words placed in a particular order.] After that, it was pretty much done, except for the marketing. On the plus side: you can learn one or a few of these things at a time, and get more comfortable with how deep the rabbit hole goes as you go along. I coded my website in static HTML written in Notepad with no JS or CSS, crikey, only four years ago. (And my brain still recoils at how much better I'd have to get to do e.g. web scale work.)
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  It's like maintaining a skyscraper built out of Tinker Toys. What I wonder is: Does the following sentence run through the head of every expert in every field? Man, I really shouldn't be getting paid for this. Any idiot could [do X]. It certainly felt true of most of my day-to-day work in graduate semiconductor electronics. It felt true of a lot of biology research. My conclusion is that there are a mere handful of days in your career when you will have to do something so hard that you will feel smart about it. But most of your career as an expert will be spent doing stuff that you know so well that it's kind of routine, even if it is totally esoteric stuff that only you know how to do. Feynman said it well when he teased the mathematicians: "Mathematicians can only prove trivial theorems, because any theorem, once proved, is immediately seen to be trivial."
  - wccrawford 16y ago
    "It's like maintaining a skyscraper built out of Tinker Toys." OMG. That is such a perfect analogy. I've had that same though, but not in those words. I'm probably going to steal that.
  - dboyd 16y ago
    "It's like maintaining a skyscraper built out of Tinker Toys." Actually, it's like maintaining a skyscraper built from steel, concrete and glass integrated with complex HVAC, plumbing, electrical and elevator systems.
    - DougWebb 16y ago
      Two different development processes, two different outcomes. And unlike other 'construction'-type businesses, in software we have many different development processes.
    - mechanical_fish 16y ago
      This is also true. But it's a question of levels of abstraction. The skyscraper is built out of (in part) a plumbing system, the plumbing system is built (in part) out of pipes, and assembling pipes is like assembling Tinker Toys. Which is why we give a five-year-old aspiring plumber a set of Tinker Toys to learn with. [1] But this is only a few years after the web was invented, and the average website is still sufficiently ad hoc that the Tinker Toy level is a lot more visible. --- [1] Break any human-designed system down far enough and you'll often arrive at something as simple as a Tinker Toy. Although, of course, Tinker Toys are not that simple, so this fact may not help as much as you'd think. And this is not true of all systems: In metallurgy, the "simple" parts are atoms, quantum mechanics is not like Tinker Toys, and even if it was nobody has experience with a Tinker Toy set containing 10^28 pieces.
    - elptacek 16y ago
      "Actually, it's like maintaining a skyscraper built from steel, concrete and glass integrated with complex HVAC, plumbing, electrical and elevator systems." Adding, "Designed by a committee. Of MC Escher fans."
- mcantor 16y ago
  I bet 90% of the time, any "expert" is working on things that any idiot can do. But that isn't why people pay experts! I think experts are paid so much because of the other 10% of the time. When convoluted edge conditions have made a mockery of all things abstract and sensible, they are capable of diving into the black boxes and figuring out what's really going on to save the day.
  - coliveira 16y ago
    If an expert is 90% of the time doing something boring, maybe he/she should be hiring somebody else to handle it, don't you think? Taking the idea to software, maybe it wouldn't hurt to hire cheap programmers as long as they're following the directions of an expert.
    - throwaway126374 16y ago
      Cheap programmer reporting! I concur, a sort of an apprenticeship program would be quite useful. If an expert can guide 1-3 people to do most menial tasks, it would serve the dual purpose of getting stuff done and educating a lot of interested people. Currently we have university projects, internships and the like. However those are often slow to react to technology changes, or are too rigid and lacking proper employee orientation procedures. It is a nice pipe dream to have a sort of a board where one could find a mentor in a particular subject, while working on a real-life project that shows all the dirty stuff that most undergrads are sheltered from before they enter the job market. E.g. topics of the "I'm doing a Django project and I could use some slaves to do this, this and that" sort.
    - anthuswilliams 16y ago
      As a cheap programmer, I disagree. An expert may spend 90% of his time doing something he feels is drudgery, but he does it properly, so as to prevent the 10% all-hands-on-deck emergencies from occurring. If you hire cheap programmers to handle the 90% under the expert's supervision, the expert still has to painstakingly review the work so as to ensure it was done in a way that at least sort of resembles the method the expert himself would have used. And having reviewed other people's code, I am of the opinion that process is sometimes soul-crushing. As a cheap programmer, I appreciate the consideration, as I like to feel I have some utility. But as an entrepreneur, I think it's a bad idea.
- davidw 16y ago
  I think the comparison was with embedded programming, which can be pretty hard in its own right. Also, with lots of embedded stuff, you don't get the "do over" of being able to update your server with the latest code. Once it has shipped, it had better work. In some cases, people's lives may directly depend on it, something that's probably fairly rare in the world of web programming. I'd hire someone good with C pretty quickly, if I had the time to let them get ramped up, and they demonstrated the flexibility and willingness to learn.
  - grayhairmomma 16y ago
    Embedded is very challenging. But the tools don't change much through the years. With the web, stuff keeps a changin'- like minute by minute.
    - mfukar 16y ago
      That's a very simplistic and inaccurate statement.
      - grayhairmomma 16y ago
        I hopped on your website, sir (madam ?) and no doubt, you are a rockstar. I'm talking about typical jobs -- typical embedded vs. typical desktop vs. typical web. Yours does not seem like a typical job, nor do you appear to be a typical developer. Most typical desktop/embedded jobs out there do not require keeping up with constantly changing technologies the way typical web jobs do.
- kingsidharth 16y ago
  Being a web-programmer - those C and GUI stuff looks hard to me. The grass looks greener on the other side, the tech looks harder on the other side. I am humbled too.reply
- kmfrk 16y ago
  I think the people I have the most respect for are the people who master cross-browser CSS going back to IE7. Is there another equivalent when it comes to a somewhat popular technology where quirky fixes are actually the main part of the work process?
  - tjarratt 16y ago
    Integrating various python modules/ruby gems that all monkey patch over each other? ducks On a more serious note, the closest equivalent I can think of is porting games to work on windows, linux and mac platforms. You would have to have a good understanding of the entire renderer, any main event loops and physics, as well as experience in writing very low level code on all those platforms.
    - grayhairmomma 16y ago
      Yes, this would be very challenging. Making games cross-platform is not the typical GUI app out there, and is not the sort of app I was thinking about on my blogpost.
- mistermann 16y ago
  "only needed to know HTML, CSS, the DOM model, Javascript, jQuery, HTTP (mostly headers and status codes), Ruby, Rails, basic MVC design, Oauth, SQL, SQL performance, five-ish APIs to support the two that needed integration, how to configure and maintain a server, system architecture, a bit of security, etc." You should talk to my new boss, who just tore a strip off my ass for not getting somethings done in 3 days, that took another team in the company 3 months. Oh, you just have to "do this", no problem. Invoke Magic, upon 10 year old hardware.
- okaramian 16y ago
  It's interesting, I definitely see myself thinking the same thing (which may lead to myself undervaluing my skills because "any old dummy!" can learn this stuff). There are days where I've joked where I'm a "glorified typist" :) I think in order to become more and more skilled you tend to abstract certain things out and take them as a given. Basically you know how things work, you just never think about them. I remember when my company had an intern, and his only real education was college based (he hadn't really worked on any of his own projects). I had to explain how our stack worked, and generally these are a given when you're working with the stuff. But to someone who has never worked on this stuff it's very odd and unfamiliar. I also think that in order to build a good product for someone it helps to get to that point. I don't really need to spend a lot of time thinking about implementation these days and can focus on what would make clients happy. To users, this stuff just works and I forget that sometimes because I'm in the weeds.
- kellishaver 16y ago
  My husband's just starting to get into web development in the hopes of being able to do it with me in a few months. He's a C programmer from years back and has a great head for sorting out and designing how an app should run. His theory is solid, and he has real programming experience to back it up. I've been bringing him up to speed on the web stuff, though, and he's said the main thing that gets him is that he can't just learn a language and build an app. He's got to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript (the DOM, jQuery), SQL, PHP/Ruby/Python and any accompanying framework we choose to use, etc. and piece it all together. It's not that he finds any one of them particularly difficult (he's picking up on them quickly), it's just that there are so many pieces to the puzzle that all need to be understood and fitted together (and they often inter-mingle so much that you can't always separate them out and do one, then the other). It's just a large and varied volume of things to process.
- wisty 16y ago
  You forgot the architecture needed to sustain a development enviornment - the VCS, bug tracking, deployment (ssh? shell scripts? something more modern?), and so on. But that's probably because it's all so obvious.
  - dholowiski 16y ago
    I've always been a hobby programmer, but over the last few months I've been developing some web sites and trying to bring my skills up 'to the next level'. The things you mentioned- vcs, bug tracking, deployment- are definitely non trivial. Partly because while most programming languages are well documented and have lots of tutorials, the things you mention are almost a black art, something every programmer does a bit differently (I think) and rolls their own scripts. For example- there is a php project I want to contribute to with bug fixes. I can fix the bugs no problem, but submitting a patch & using the bug tracking system? Way beyond me!
    - wisty 16y ago
      VCS and bug tracking are not difficult. You can get it all by just installing fossil. If that's not your thing, you can install tortise hg (on Windows) or some other dvcs and get started in next to no time. Deployment is definetly ugly. There's stuff like pip, fabric, and virtual-env (all on python) which are meant to ease the pain ... but the fact that agile geeks reccomend 3 different frameworks just to make things simpler show how ugly it is. I don't know what the cool kids use for PhP though.
verysimple 16y ago
One common mistake when one tries to tackle the web is to do it all at once. What you need: - get familiar with HTML and css. That is, learn the basics, their purpose and how they interact. - get familiar with some basic JavaScript and how you use it on the browser. - learn one of the prominent web languages for the server-side. Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. I used to recommend PHP as a first language because compared to other languages, it was ubiquitous amongst hosting providers. Nowadays, I recommend against, especially if you already have some programming experience. Python and Ruby also have a decent offering and they have the added benefit of a community that generally promotes better programming practices than PHP. Having an overview of the entire development process, you should now be able to pick one area where you'd like to expand. Being a programmer I suspect you might pick either server-side or browser scripting (JavaScript). Stick to one at first and learn it well. When I started the web I rarely did any front-end at all. I concentrated on the server-side and was aided by some CSS and JavaScript coders. Likewise, I often worked with JS programmers who didn't want to know anything beyond the realm of what they were doing. It's a symbiotic relationship. - It may be tempting to do everything vanilla at first, but quickly switch to using a framework, they're often packed with lots of best practices. They're like training wheels, you can always take them off later when you feel confident. As you get comfortable with one field you can expand on others. After years playing in the server, I'm only now expanding my client side skills. Also, beyond technologies, other areas of interest that can expand your overall understanding and web expertise, are interface architecture, usability and various other optimizations. As you go, you'll stumble upon many.
- nathanwdavis 16y ago
  I would add one thing: get to know HTTP. Even a basic understanding will prevent you from making costly mistakes.
  - grayhairmomma 16y ago
    Great advice, all. The HTTP protocol skill is something I didn't even consider.
    - 16y ago
jarin 16y ago
It seems like there's always been a little bit of a rivalry between compiled language developers, web developers, and network administrators. Having done all three at high levels, I can say that in my experience web development (top to bottom) requires the most diversity of knowledge, which also makes it the most enjoyable to me. At any rate, I'm going to show this to my game developer buddies next time they give me crap about "working with toy languages"!
nathanwdavis 16y ago
There are frameworks full of very high-level abstractions that can make it a lot easier up front. BUT, that only delays it being hard down the road when the abstraction you got for free has to be replaced. Often that time comes very quickly.
- grayhairmomma 16y ago
  Yup. I've "built a website" with Ruby On Rails but frankly wasn't too impressed with myself afterward. It was a worthwhile exercise because it got me to understand the basics of web development. I'd rather focus on learning the nitty gritty basics.
newobj 16y ago
First, she thought implementing a linked list during an interview was hard. Then, she says that web programming is hard. And I'm not saying it's "easy", but talk about blogging yourself into a professional grave?
- grayhairmomma 16y ago
  I never said linked lists were hard. I said that it's not necessary to know how to reverse a linked list from memory -- from scratch. I can look it up and get to it right away.
  - newobj 16y ago
    Fair enough. But as someone who's conducted hundreds of developer interviews, I can say it's absolutely a huge red flag for me. Total failure would be a straight no-hire. I see it as something that should be very easily re-derivable. You certainly will encounter harder things that you need to invent (not just re-invent) during the course of any job.
    - grayhairmomma 16y ago
      Well, I guess you'd never hire me then. Which is OK. I can't be anything but honest. Sorry. It's who I am.
      - r00k 16y ago
        Couldn't you learn this concept, grow as a programmer, and become more hirable in the process? It seems like you've decided you're not capable of teaching yourself through it.
        grayhairmomma 16y ago
        Of course it's doable. Like I said on my website, I need to get off my ass and start coding up linked lists, binary search trees and sorts "til I fucking throw up all over Manhattan". Yes, of course it's doable. I'm no dummy. I can stumble through it on the whiteboard as well -- I'm not deaf, dumb and clueless -- I don't just stand there at the whiteboard listlessly, with blank stares, if that's what you mean. If I practice enough, reciting from memory (and on the whiteboard), coding the stuff up perfectly will be trivial. But to me, that's gaming the interview.
dasil003 16y ago
As a web developer I appreciate the concession from an embedded systems programmer that I am in fact not simply a monkey, but the quoted section probably goes a bit too far. For instance, terrible UIs on the web are just as common as terrible UIs in GUI applications. And making a cross-platform GUI application that looks good on all platforms requires familiarity with tools specific to each platform, which is much more involved than learning browser quirks. The hardest thing about the web is probably how fast it moves, but that's also what makes it exciting.
- andywood 16y ago
  I did C and C++ programming for more than 10 years, before suddenly delving into serious web development only 3 years ago. I soon realized that I had vastly underestimated how deeply technical web development is. But the reason was simply that I had formed my opinion back in ~1998, when "web development" really did mean just HTML, and maybe some roll-over script, most of the time! Being a systems programmer, I simply never had occasion to update my perception, as "web development" dramatically evolved while I wasn't looking.
wnoise 16y ago
s/web// Yes, it's a somewhat different skillset working with somewhat different software, but there's not that much difference.
rbranson 16y ago
Working for any primarily software driven company is going to be challenging. Working in an expensed IT department is what most developers do, and the work is pretty pedestrian. This seems to provide the most clear line of delineation in software development.
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groaner 16y ago
As someone who has only dabbled in web programming and done webdev-ish work at a company that doesn't "get" the web, I was in shock to see how much I didn't know that was really the bare minimum: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/72394/what-should-a-developer-know-before-building-a-public-web-site http://stackoverflow.com/questions/72394/what-should-a-devel...
- geekfactor 16y ago
  I've come across a few of those "bare minimum you need to know to do X" posts on SO and on one hand I think they can be great pointers to the best reference material in a given field. On the other hand I worry that these kinds of lists promote an impractical approach to mastering a field that is at odds with being a "Hacker". Think of it as being like Waterfall Subject Mastery versus Lean Subject Mastery. In Waterfall Subject Mastery you try to anticipate what you need to know up front, learn a bunch of stuff, then try to apply it to a problem. There are two problems with this model: First, you really don't know what you need to know. Second, you won't really understand it as well in the abstract. With Lean Subject Mastery OTOH, you pick a problem and crank on it until you run into a wall. Then do some learning until you can overcome the wall. At first the walls will be many and frequent. But over time your baseline of competency is increased and you actually become productive in the new technology. What's great about the lean approach is that when it comes time to learn about a specific topic, you have a much better context for understanding it, and thus the effort to learn it is greatly reduced. And because you have an active project, you can put your learning into practice more quickly and thus retention is increased. The secret, though, to making LSM really work well is to commit to learning a bit more than just what you need to get over the wall. This is the difference between truly learning and being an eternal cargo culter. Don't just start banging against the OAuth library; try to understand how OAuth works. Just do it in the context of a real-world problem. Don't get me wrong. I'm not against education and learning for learning's sake, I'm just more for efficiency and getting stuff done.
  - astrofinch 16y ago
    Another advantage of just-in-time learning is that forgetting is less of a problem. You don't have to worry about forgetting in between the time you learn it and the time you use it, and the fact that you've used it both helps you understand it better and gives you a working example to use as a reference. (Am I the only one who looks at their old code to see how they did something?) Probably the best is to sort of skim over the stuff you're supposed to know at first and then refer to it when you're reminded of it in your everyday work. Like the breadth-first approach Steve Yegge advocates for math: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers... The only problem I've found with this approach in practice is that skimming makes me antsy.
edw519 16y ago
But upon studying CSS, HTML and Javascript over the last month, I can honestly say I’m humbled. About half the time, I feel humbled whenever I encounter some new technology. The other half, I wonder why anyone bothered. The trick is knowing which half is which.
jaspero 16y ago
I appreciate the author for recognizing web development. I often stumble upon my 'programming' friends who think web development and especially front-end is boring and trivial. I have hard time explaining how important and how complex things can get. It's something my fellow hard-core programmer friends will never understand. I love my job and what I do. Web Development rules!
jemfinch 16y ago
Yes, it's hard. Unnecessarily hard, which is why I hate when I have to do it. The complexity of web development is not intrinsic to the problem, but an extrinsic reality imposed by widely differing implementations of a number of overengineered technologies.
- jordanlev 16y ago
  Well, if you expand your definition of "the problem" to "how do we enable people all over the world to interact with this information on any computing platform over an untrustworthy connection running on low-end hardware", then I think the chaos and technology soup is a little more necessary to things being where they're at now. So no, it's not technically necessary, but politically/economically it is.
iamwil 16y ago
It's not the sort of thing we should have pride in--that web programming is hard. For me, it goes to show that web front-end programming has a long way to go to make it better for developers. We're still looking for X to do to front end web programming that Rails did for back end web programming.
- wh-uws 16y ago
  I believe Jquery is doing at least some of that
csomar 16y ago
I think the main difficulty for Web Development is the separation between the Front-End and the Back-End. In Desktop development, the two are linked together, so if you want to handle a button click, you do that in the back-end and no other hassles. However, for Web Development, you'll need something called HTTP POST or GET and you want to improve it with AJAX (and make sure that it still works even without JavaScript). The user input become sensitive, and you have to take into account many other thing to secure your server. Still, Web Programming is fund. Having a server that answer requests is funny, for me. The author found Web Programming is hard, because it underestimated it.
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pocoloco 16y ago
I'm currently working on a set of SOAP web services using tomcat, cxf, mysql, and hibernate among others. I decided to do a switch from embedded to web development about a year and a half ago after being laid off. My paycheck is smaller but I now work on a whole new set of problems. After working about 10 years in embedded and everything around it, I felt that I needed a change. It was as if I was solving the same problems over and over. And don't get me started in the state of the tools. I remember thanking the heavens when we switched platforms to PowerPC and ELDK. At first I did not know were to start in web development. But I did decide to concentrate on the back end quite early. At first I approached each technology separately, mostly because of my ignorance. For example, I saw that tomcat was very popular, so I decided to take a look into it. But I quickly realized that I needed a birds eye view of the whole web service stack and not its individual components. At least not yet. I started to look into frameworks. After realizing that there are lots of those and that I learn about a new one almost every week, I had to narrow my search. I've been working and learning Groovy on Grails which is all based on the JVM since then. What sold it to me was the fact that Groovy is a language very similar to Python, which I know, and that Grails is a web framework that integrates all the necessary technologies to get a decent site up and running thanks in big part to the amount of plugins available for it. Like grayhairmomma says, it's a humbling experience.
- weej 16y ago
  Interesting. I'm considering doing the exact opposite (10 years web/server-side development - switching to embedded). Currently, I'm taking some extension engineering classes at UC Irvine while still working full-time. Any ideas on where to start to get my foot in the door in the embedded world? I was thinking newbie kernel bugs and eventually Linux drivers.
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  - pocoloco 16y ago
    The linux drivers idea is good particularly if you want to learn about communication with embedded system. But there are other approaches too. You'll need to ask yourself how low-level do you want to go. For example: Do you want to work on a system that has an OS, utilities, filesystem, etc such as the ELDK[1]? Or a little more stripped down with only the OS such as FreeRTOS[2], uClinux[3], or uC/OS[4]? Or even lower and use no OS at all. Use instead a foreground-background system--basically a forever loop. Another way of doing this is to select the hardware first according to what you would like to do. You must keep in mind that you will most likely not have access to all the debugging tools that you're used to. This translates into very expensive compilers and debuggers for the high end hardware. But these days it seems that there is something for every taste and wallet. Two particular development kits that come to mind are Arduino boards [5] and TI's MSP430 development kits [6]. I find the wireless watch development kit [7] particular interesting. I haven't used either. If you see something that you like, try to find the corresponding development kit that comes with a development board, cables, and software. A good place to start is by checking DIY or hacker magazines such as Make[8]. I hope this gives you an idea. [1] http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/ELDK http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/ELDK [2] http://www.freertos.org/ http://www.freertos.org/ [3] http://www.uclinux.org/ http://www.uclinux.org/ [4] http://micrium.com/page/home http://micrium.com/page/home [5] http://www.arduino.cc/ http://www.arduino.cc/ [6] http://focus.ti.com/mcu/docs/mcuprodoverview.tsp?sectionId=95&tabId=140&familyId=342&DCMP=MCU_other&HQS=Other+IL+msp430 http://focus.ti.com/mcu/docs/mcuprodoverview.tsp?sectionId=9... [7] http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-chronos.html http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-chronos.... [8] http://makeprojects.com/ http://makeprojects.com/
jacquesm 16y ago
Yes, web programming is hard. The amount of techniques and the haphazard way in which they interact (jsonp??) are terrible compared to 'real' software development in a controlled environment. But you really should be grateful for that. If it were easy a large number of us would not be earning what we do because things that are easy tend to devalue quickly. Remember when being able to write HTML would net you $80 / hour? Ten or fifteen years from now, when web programming is 'easy' you just might long for the times when web programming was hard but you could basically name your price if you were competent at it.
PhrosTT 16y ago
Web Programming is nigh impossible for 1 person any more. To build a legit website: 1. Mockup a pretty design in photoshop. Use color theory, design principles, UX theory, typography skills, etc. 2. Convert the design into HTML/CSS. Make it degrade gracefully, it should be cross-browser compatible, validate, be lightweight, meet accessibility standards. 3. Add unobstrusive javascript if you want, site should work without it. 4. Run YSlow, convert all images into sprites where possible, condense/minify your JS/CSS. 5. Do SEO tweaks and best practices. 6. Oh wait, does the site display well on iPads? build a mobile version and a tablet version. ... We haven't even gotten past the front end. Learn good db design, code your middle tier. Choose or roll your own framework. TONS of work. Once it works, go back and secure everything for the OWASP10 and other potential holes. Also make sure it will scale gracefully. Maybe you should optimize your cacheing scheme? Maybe tweak your php config so it runs faster. AGhghghsdhdshf%@!$^#$ it never ends!
- gbog 16y ago
  With all due respect, putting OWASP at the end is a big mistake, you may have to refactor a lot to secure your code.
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catshirt 16y ago
I oft encounter Java, C++ programmers, etc. who don't understand the fragility of the client. This is difficult to deal with.
petercooper 16y ago
It was funny to read this as I now find client side development ridiculously hard (I last did it frequently > 10 years ago) and difficult to get my head into, whereas even large scale Web development feels quite surmountable or even easy to me. I think it merely proves that what you keep doing, you eventually find natural.
ataranto 16y ago
"Desktop GUI can easily be made cross-platform." lol wut?
- grayhairmomma 16y ago
  OK, if we're talking about games, maybe not. I'm talking about your average Desktop GUI out there which can be made to work across different OS's using a GUI Toolkit such as Qt.
  - ataranto 16y ago
    Yes, it's easy to make your average Desktop GUI ugly as hell across different operating systems using a GUI Toolkit such as Qt.
    - grayhairmomma 16y ago
      You read my mind. Most are ugly as hell ! That's exactly what I said on my blog, and Desktop GUI developers get away with it.
      - Knack 16y ago
        Most of the time desktop apps and web apps serve completely different purposes. Desktop apps do not intend to be flashy or beautiful, they need to be usable for getting things done. They should follow the conventions of the OS, be fast and intuitive. So when a GUI developer creates a GUI that is highly usable and not showing off with eye candy, the GUI developer has done his job properly. Saying "they get away with it" because desktop GUIs are ugly is just wrong. Web sites often need to draw attentation. They want to sell something, be interesting. They should be flashy and beautiful.
        grayhairmomma 16y ago
        Thanks for getting me to see another point of view. Your argument makes sense !
fjabre 16y ago
Yes - it is indeed hard to make something do what it was never intended for.
arohner 16y ago
Yes, Web Programming can be hard, but it's probably harder than it needs to be. The whole ecosystem of HTML + CSS + JS + IE6 is a mess. Something along the lines of Cappuccino will help a lot. Then you're "only" left with the problems of UI/UX, scaling, security, A/B testing, big data and marketing.
- jordanlev 16y ago
  Until you want to do something new that Cappuccino developers didn't think of... now your ecosystem has expanded by 1 to HTML + CSS + JS + IE6 + Cappuccino :)
MarkPNeyer 16y ago
They're hard for different reasons. In my experience, games, scientific computing, trading, and 'real' web backend work (i.e. not 'move this shit into the database' but 'make the database scale to a million users') are hard because they challenge you to solve difficult problems. Web frontend and simple backend work are hard because of the pain in the ass of managing all the different languages and paradigms involved.
englishVoodoo 16y ago
Is there a need to learn it all though? I'm a designer at my place and here I do all the html/css work and a bit of jQuery fluff on top of that whenever it's quite basic. I do think that's how most places work. Of course for a developer it's necessary to have some knowledge of html primarily, but no real need for deep knowledge. Not in my, somewhat limited, experience anyway.
jallmann 16y ago
Front-end web work, at its basic level, is not hard in the traditional "let's go shopping!" sense, but what I find maddening is how unintuitive some of it is (CSS, I'm looking at you). Then you have to worry about how broken or incompatible browsers are. I think "pain in the ass" is a more apt term. When you get deeper into the UX, things like A/B, optimizing load time, scaling the backend, etc, and that is where it becomes less tedious and the domain knowledge required is more respectable.
tibbon 16y ago
Conversely, I think traditional programming seems really hard compared to RoR. I have to think about memory? I have to tell the computer what the variable type is? What are all these funny characters and symbols? I can actually crash the computer with this? What is this compiler thing and all these funny options? I'm (slowly) trying to re-learn C/C++ after getting decent with Ruby and honestly it just hurts. Few things I do need speed or system access on this level. The verbosity is painful, and you need so much (ugly code) to do so little.
Aegean 16y ago
Web programming is hard but not necessarily intuitive. That's what I dislike about it. Its a heap of different technologies put together in unstructured fashion. This applies to individual technologies as well, take CSS and see how unintuitive a syntax it has. Web programming is popular because it drives the web. I don't necessarily find it an intuitive programming experience. This way of thinking is the biggest obstacle ahead of the likes of me (hackers for pleasure) for business success, i.e. primarily focusing on what's interesting from an engineering perspective. This approach is sure to fail in business because people always care about the end result. Technology is just a tool to get there. I guess part of the problem is when you study computer science or engineering in university, you try to learn the best engineering approaches out there and improve on your engineering skills. Then you face real life where the result matters. I cannot really say CSS or javascript is the best technology out there, but they play a crucial part driving the web.
donaq 16y ago
I've not done any embedded stuff, but I've had jobs doing low level c/c++ to interface with poorly documented serial devices passing bit-masked instruction codes and status codes around and I'm now doing web programming and man, all I can say is this: Nothing is easy. If it looks easy for some reason, someone has probably done a lot of difficult work for you previously.
curiousyogurt 16y ago
I made the jump from Objective-C/Cocoa development to web app development after Startup School this year. Two things surprised me when I really got down to coding my initial project. First, the sheer number of technologies involved in developing my web app. For me, that's Ruby on Rails, Javascript, jQuery, Ajax, HTML, CSS. Second, the lack of integration between the various technologies was surprising. I often knew what I wanted a particular page to do, and the solution was to learn a new technology, and then figure out how to shuffle data between the new technology and those technologies I was already using. Integration problems also crop up in the form of mismatches between technologies. For example, I use bignum integers in my code; but ran into all sorts of interesting problems: Ruby/Sqlite work fine; but as soon as I uploaded the app to Heroku, I uncovered issues with how these integers were being stored in the PostgreSQL. And Javascript needs special routines if it is going to handle bignums. I haven't encountered this sort of mismatch on the desktop. That said, now that I've got a working app, I think the learning curve was in some ways (though not all ways) less steep than the desktop. A couple of reasons for this, I think: 1) The communities share code prolifically. It is not that there is no code sharing going on in desktop development, but code sharing seems much more prevalent in web development. As a new web developer, this makes my job a lot easier not only because I can just plug in code, but also because I can read that code and learn from it. 2) You can get minimal results quite quickly, which is very encouraging. Again, you can get minimal results quickly on the desktop, but the standards are different on the web. In my experience, a desktop app needs a lot more to be minimally functional than a web app, probably because the level of complexity is different. Yes, web apps can be just as complex as desktop apps; but I think a minimally functional web app is in many ways less complex than a minimally functional desktop app. Just think about all the menus, help files, and other accoutrements you need to get a desktop app minimally functional; web apps can get away with less. 3) The web technologies I depend on are more modern. Compared to Objective-C/Cocoa, Ruby is like a dream. Javascript and less so, but only because it seems more like what I'm used to on the desktop. What can I say, I like syntactic sugar and the readability that comes with it. So, perhaps web programming is hard, but there are several ways travelling the path is made easier - maybe even easier than on the desktop.
ibagrak 16y ago
I am not sure which particular flavor of "embedded" the author is referring to, but the argument, in my view, is completely off the mark, and here is why: The main challenge of embedded is that you are in charge of controlling and managing everything. The developer is closer to the hardware and the cost of things breaking is far higher because you cannot for one second forget about some part of the technology stack that's below you. Everything is suspect, and nothing can be ignored. On the web, you get used to your automatic garbage collection, your GUI toolkits, your nice browser sandbox with infinite memory that gets automagically replenished, your in-browser JavaScript debugger and all that jazz. You get to enjoy none of it in the embedded systems I've worked with. Fixing embedded systems in the field is freaking hard, so the quality of code matters is in a completely different dimension from what's on the web today. Now, I am not talking about Linksys router or your iPhone. That's just a fraction of "embedded" devices. I am talking about things that don't have a TCP/IP stack (or any connection to the outside world), don't have a GUI, and are installed at the contractor rate of $1,000/hr and must exist in the field for 10-20 years. There are millions of these devices shipping every month, and they are all around us. Are you telling me these systems are easier to design than a webpage that can be twiddled with at your whim a million times a day? Don't downvote just yet! Just so you know where I am coming from: I am a product manager for a 100K LOC embedded stack that runs in 128K of flash and 8K of RAM. It's all C code, no OS, no toolkits, no MMUs, no garbage collection and no dynamic memory allocation. These devices get 15 years on a single battery and go inside your house. I've also had good exposure (not an expert) to the online technologies the author mentions. Yes, things may be tough to learn (I don't actually believe they are), but the web is a lot more forgiving of mistakes too.
- grayhairmomma 16y ago
  No doubt, your embedded world presents incredibly difficult problems -- arguably much trickier ones than most web jobs out there. Keep in mind, as the OP and author, I'm comparing the "average" embedded job or desktop software job to the "average" web job. Perhaps I should have made this distinction clearer in the blog article. Most employed embedded engineers do not work on problems as tough as the ones which you describe. But to me, the biggest challenge with web is the unforgiving avalanche of emerging new technologies a practicing professional must keep abreast of, literally during every spare second of their life, if he or she is to remain employed !! This unrelenting blizzard of new algorithms, new languages, new frameworks, new design methodologies is just another typical day in the life of a highly competent and employable web engineer. The resource-limited embedded problems at your company are "old school". I'm not saying they're easy, but do the tools and technologies needed to solve such problems change much through the years ?
mfukar 16y ago
Yeah, web programmers are regular geniuses.
siculars 16y ago
When people complain to me about so and so technology related I tell them to relax, breath and consider the millions of things that need to go right in order for you to watch the latest Lady Gaga video on youtube. I am constantly reminded of this by Louis CK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

258 points by grayhairmomma 16y ago

I periodically think "Man, I really shouldn't be getting paid for this. Any idiot could stick these two APIs together." In my more sensible moments, I remember that that idiot only needed to know HTML, CSS, the DOM model, Javascript, jQuery, HTTP (mostly headers and status codes), Ruby, Rails, basic MVC design, Oauth, SQL, SQL performance, five-ish APIs to support the two that needed integration, how to configure and maintain a server, system architecture, a bit of security, etc. [There's also object oriented programming, class inheritance, polymorphism, algorithms, time complexity, discrete math, data structures, imperative programming, and a few other things I forgot the first time around. Lest we forget, we might take these for granted because we've been programming since we were $ARBITRARILY_YOUNG, but to most people these are just black magic. My girlfriend, a smart cookie, asked to see "how I made the phone ring" and, after I showed her the code that did that, told me it had never even occurred to her that every program she's ever seen was once a collection of special words placed in a particular order.] After that, it was pretty much done, except for the marketing. On the plus side: you can learn one or a few of these things at a time, and get more comfortable with how deep the rabbit hole goes as you go along. I coded my website in static HTML written in Notepad with no JS or CSS, crikey, only four years ago. (And my brain still recoils at how much better I'd have to get to do e.g. web scale work.)

mechanical_fish 16y ago
It's like maintaining a skyscraper built out of Tinker Toys. What I wonder is: Does the following sentence run through the head of every expert in every field? Man, I really shouldn't be getting paid for this. Any idiot could [do X]. It certainly felt true of most of my day-to-day work in graduate semiconductor electronics. It felt true of a lot of biology research. My conclusion is that there are a mere handful of days in your career when you will have to do something so hard that you will feel smart about it. But most of your career as an expert will be spent doing stuff that you know so well that it's kind of routine, even if it is totally esoteric stuff that only you know how to do. Feynman said it well when he teased the mathematicians: "Mathematicians can only prove trivial theorems, because any theorem, once proved, is immediately seen to be trivial."
- wccrawford 16y ago
  "It's like maintaining a skyscraper built out of Tinker Toys." OMG. That is such a perfect analogy. I've had that same though, but not in those words. I'm probably going to steal that.
- dboyd 16y ago
  "It's like maintaining a skyscraper built out of Tinker Toys." Actually, it's like maintaining a skyscraper built from steel, concrete and glass integrated with complex HVAC, plumbing, electrical and elevator systems.
  - DougWebb 16y ago
    Two different development processes, two different outcomes. And unlike other 'construction'-type businesses, in software we have many different development processes.
  - mechanical_fish 16y ago
    This is also true. But it's a question of levels of abstraction. The skyscraper is built out of (in part) a plumbing system, the plumbing system is built (in part) out of pipes, and assembling pipes is like assembling Tinker Toys. Which is why we give a five-year-old aspiring plumber a set of Tinker Toys to learn with. [1] But this is only a few years after the web was invented, and the average website is still sufficiently ad hoc that the Tinker Toy level is a lot more visible. --- [1] Break any human-designed system down far enough and you'll often arrive at something as simple as a Tinker Toy. Although, of course, Tinker Toys are not that simple, so this fact may not help as much as you'd think. And this is not true of all systems: In metallurgy, the "simple" parts are atoms, quantum mechanics is not like Tinker Toys, and even if it was nobody has experience with a Tinker Toy set containing 10^28 pieces.
  - elptacek 16y ago
    "Actually, it's like maintaining a skyscraper built from steel, concrete and glass integrated with complex HVAC, plumbing, electrical and elevator systems." Adding, "Designed by a committee. Of MC Escher fans."
mcantor 16y ago
I bet 90% of the time, any "expert" is working on things that any idiot can do. But that isn't why people pay experts! I think experts are paid so much because of the other 10% of the time. When convoluted edge conditions have made a mockery of all things abstract and sensible, they are capable of diving into the black boxes and figuring out what's really going on to save the day.
- coliveira 16y ago
  If an expert is 90% of the time doing something boring, maybe he/she should be hiring somebody else to handle it, don't you think? Taking the idea to software, maybe it wouldn't hurt to hire cheap programmers as long as they're following the directions of an expert.
  - throwaway126374 16y ago
    Cheap programmer reporting! I concur, a sort of an apprenticeship program would be quite useful. If an expert can guide 1-3 people to do most menial tasks, it would serve the dual purpose of getting stuff done and educating a lot of interested people. Currently we have university projects, internships and the like. However those are often slow to react to technology changes, or are too rigid and lacking proper employee orientation procedures. It is a nice pipe dream to have a sort of a board where one could find a mentor in a particular subject, while working on a real-life project that shows all the dirty stuff that most undergrads are sheltered from before they enter the job market. E.g. topics of the "I'm doing a Django project and I could use some slaves to do this, this and that" sort.
  - anthuswilliams 16y ago
    As a cheap programmer, I disagree. An expert may spend 90% of his time doing something he feels is drudgery, but he does it properly, so as to prevent the 10% all-hands-on-deck emergencies from occurring. If you hire cheap programmers to handle the 90% under the expert's supervision, the expert still has to painstakingly review the work so as to ensure it was done in a way that at least sort of resembles the method the expert himself would have used. And having reviewed other people's code, I am of the opinion that process is sometimes soul-crushing. As a cheap programmer, I appreciate the consideration, as I like to feel I have some utility. But as an entrepreneur, I think it's a bad idea.
davidw 16y ago
I think the comparison was with embedded programming, which can be pretty hard in its own right. Also, with lots of embedded stuff, you don't get the "do over" of being able to update your server with the latest code. Once it has shipped, it had better work. In some cases, people's lives may directly depend on it, something that's probably fairly rare in the world of web programming. I'd hire someone good with C pretty quickly, if I had the time to let them get ramped up, and they demonstrated the flexibility and willingness to learn.
- grayhairmomma 16y ago
  Embedded is very challenging. But the tools don't change much through the years. With the web, stuff keeps a changin'- like minute by minute.
  - mfukar 16y ago
    That's a very simplistic and inaccurate statement.
    - grayhairmomma 16y ago
      I hopped on your website, sir (madam ?) and no doubt, you are a rockstar. I'm talking about typical jobs -- typical embedded vs. typical desktop vs. typical web. Yours does not seem like a typical job, nor do you appear to be a typical developer. Most typical desktop/embedded jobs out there do not require keeping up with constantly changing technologies the way typical web jobs do.
kingsidharth 16y ago
Being a web-programmer - those C and GUI stuff looks hard to me. The grass looks greener on the other side, the tech looks harder on the other side. I am humbled too.reply
kmfrk 16y ago
I think the people I have the most respect for are the people who master cross-browser CSS going back to IE7. Is there another equivalent when it comes to a somewhat popular technology where quirky fixes are actually the main part of the work process?
- tjarratt 16y ago
  Integrating various python modules/ruby gems that all monkey patch over each other? ducks On a more serious note, the closest equivalent I can think of is porting games to work on windows, linux and mac platforms. You would have to have a good understanding of the entire renderer, any main event loops and physics, as well as experience in writing very low level code on all those platforms.
  - grayhairmomma 16y ago
    Yes, this would be very challenging. Making games cross-platform is not the typical GUI app out there, and is not the sort of app I was thinking about on my blogpost.
mistermann 16y ago
"only needed to know HTML, CSS, the DOM model, Javascript, jQuery, HTTP (mostly headers and status codes), Ruby, Rails, basic MVC design, Oauth, SQL, SQL performance, five-ish APIs to support the two that needed integration, how to configure and maintain a server, system architecture, a bit of security, etc." You should talk to my new boss, who just tore a strip off my ass for not getting somethings done in 3 days, that took another team in the company 3 months. Oh, you just have to "do this", no problem. Invoke Magic, upon 10 year old hardware.
okaramian 16y ago
It's interesting, I definitely see myself thinking the same thing (which may lead to myself undervaluing my skills because "any old dummy!" can learn this stuff). There are days where I've joked where I'm a "glorified typist" :) I think in order to become more and more skilled you tend to abstract certain things out and take them as a given. Basically you know how things work, you just never think about them. I remember when my company had an intern, and his only real education was college based (he hadn't really worked on any of his own projects). I had to explain how our stack worked, and generally these are a given when you're working with the stuff. But to someone who has never worked on this stuff it's very odd and unfamiliar. I also think that in order to build a good product for someone it helps to get to that point. I don't really need to spend a lot of time thinking about implementation these days and can focus on what would make clients happy. To users, this stuff just works and I forget that sometimes because I'm in the weeds.
kellishaver 16y ago
My husband's just starting to get into web development in the hopes of being able to do it with me in a few months. He's a C programmer from years back and has a great head for sorting out and designing how an app should run. His theory is solid, and he has real programming experience to back it up. I've been bringing him up to speed on the web stuff, though, and he's said the main thing that gets him is that he can't just learn a language and build an app. He's got to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript (the DOM, jQuery), SQL, PHP/Ruby/Python and any accompanying framework we choose to use, etc. and piece it all together. It's not that he finds any one of them particularly difficult (he's picking up on them quickly), it's just that there are so many pieces to the puzzle that all need to be understood and fitted together (and they often inter-mingle so much that you can't always separate them out and do one, then the other). It's just a large and varied volume of things to process.
wisty 16y ago
You forgot the architecture needed to sustain a development enviornment - the VCS, bug tracking, deployment (ssh? shell scripts? something more modern?), and so on. But that's probably because it's all so obvious.
- dholowiski 16y ago
  I've always been a hobby programmer, but over the last few months I've been developing some web sites and trying to bring my skills up 'to the next level'. The things you mentioned- vcs, bug tracking, deployment- are definitely non trivial. Partly because while most programming languages are well documented and have lots of tutorials, the things you mention are almost a black art, something every programmer does a bit differently (I think) and rolls their own scripts. For example- there is a php project I want to contribute to with bug fixes. I can fix the bugs no problem, but submitting a patch & using the bug tracking system? Way beyond me!
  - wisty 16y ago
    VCS and bug tracking are not difficult. You can get it all by just installing fossil. If that's not your thing, you can install tortise hg (on Windows) or some other dvcs and get started in next to no time. Deployment is definetly ugly. There's stuff like pip, fabric, and virtual-env (all on python) which are meant to ease the pain ... but the fact that agile geeks reccomend 3 different frameworks just to make things simpler show how ugly it is. I don't know what the cool kids use for PhP though.

verysimple 16y ago

One common mistake when one tries to tackle the web is to do it all at once. What you need: - get familiar with HTML and css. That is, learn the basics, their purpose and how they interact. - get familiar with some basic JavaScript and how you use it on the browser. - learn one of the prominent web languages for the server-side. Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. I used to recommend PHP as a first language because compared to other languages, it was ubiquitous amongst hosting providers. Nowadays, I recommend against, especially if you already have some programming experience. Python and Ruby also have a decent offering and they have the added benefit of a community that generally promotes better programming practices than PHP. Having an overview of the entire development process, you should now be able to pick one area where you'd like to expand. Being a programmer I suspect you might pick either server-side or browser scripting (JavaScript). Stick to one at first and learn it well. When I started the web I rarely did any front-end at all. I concentrated on the server-side and was aided by some CSS and JavaScript coders. Likewise, I often worked with JS programmers who didn't want to know anything beyond the realm of what they were doing. It's a symbiotic relationship. - It may be tempting to do everything vanilla at first, but quickly switch to using a framework, they're often packed with lots of best practices. They're like training wheels, you can always take them off later when you feel confident. As you get comfortable with one field you can expand on others. After years playing in the server, I'm only now expanding my client side skills. Also, beyond technologies, other areas of interest that can expand your overall understanding and web expertise, are interface architecture, usability and various other optimizations. As you go, you'll stumble upon many.

nathanwdavis 16y ago
I would add one thing: get to know HTTP. Even a basic understanding will prevent you from making costly mistakes.
- grayhairmomma 16y ago
  Great advice, all. The HTTP protocol skill is something I didn't even consider.
  - 16y ago

jarin 16y ago

It seems like there's always been a little bit of a rivalry between compiled language developers, web developers, and network administrators. Having done all three at high levels, I can say that in my experience web development (top to bottom) requires the most diversity of knowledge, which also makes it the most enjoyable to me. At any rate, I'm going to show this to my game developer buddies next time they give me crap about "working with toy languages"!

nathanwdavis 16y ago

There are frameworks full of very high-level abstractions that can make it a lot easier up front. BUT, that only delays it being hard down the road when the abstraction you got for free has to be replaced. Often that time comes very quickly.

grayhairmomma 16y ago
Yup. I've "built a website" with Ruby On Rails but frankly wasn't too impressed with myself afterward. It was a worthwhile exercise because it got me to understand the basics of web development. I'd rather focus on learning the nitty gritty basics.

newobj 16y ago

First, she thought implementing a linked list during an interview was hard. Then, she says that web programming is hard. And I'm not saying it's "easy", but talk about blogging yourself into a professional grave?

grayhairmomma 16y ago
I never said linked lists were hard. I said that it's not necessary to know how to reverse a linked list from memory -- from scratch. I can look it up and get to it right away.
- newobj 16y ago
  Fair enough. But as someone who's conducted hundreds of developer interviews, I can say it's absolutely a huge red flag for me. Total failure would be a straight no-hire. I see it as something that should be very easily re-derivable. You certainly will encounter harder things that you need to invent (not just re-invent) during the course of any job.
  - grayhairmomma 16y ago
    Well, I guess you'd never hire me then. Which is OK. I can't be anything but honest. Sorry. It's who I am.
    - r00k 16y ago
      Couldn't you learn this concept, grow as a programmer, and become more hirable in the process? It seems like you've decided you're not capable of teaching yourself through it.
      - grayhairmomma 16y ago
        Of course it's doable. Like I said on my website, I need to get off my ass and start coding up linked lists, binary search trees and sorts "til I fucking throw up all over Manhattan". Yes, of course it's doable. I'm no dummy. I can stumble through it on the whiteboard as well -- I'm not deaf, dumb and clueless -- I don't just stand there at the whiteboard listlessly, with blank stares, if that's what you mean. If I practice enough, reciting from memory (and on the whiteboard), coding the stuff up perfectly will be trivial. But to me, that's gaming the interview.

dasil003 16y ago

As a web developer I appreciate the concession from an embedded systems programmer that I am in fact not simply a monkey, but the quoted section probably goes a bit too far. For instance, terrible UIs on the web are just as common as terrible UIs in GUI applications. And making a cross-platform GUI application that looks good on all platforms requires familiarity with tools specific to each platform, which is much more involved than learning browser quirks. The hardest thing about the web is probably how fast it moves, but that's also what makes it exciting.

andywood 16y ago
I did C and C++ programming for more than 10 years, before suddenly delving into serious web development only 3 years ago. I soon realized that I had vastly underestimated how deeply technical web development is. But the reason was simply that I had formed my opinion back in ~1998, when "web development" really did mean just HTML, and maybe some roll-over script, most of the time! Being a systems programmer, I simply never had occasion to update my perception, as "web development" dramatically evolved while I wasn't looking.

wnoise 16y ago

s/web// Yes, it's a somewhat different skillset working with somewhat different software, but there's not that much difference.

rbranson 16y ago

Working for any primarily software driven company is going to be challenging. Working in an expensed IT department is what most developers do, and the work is pretty pedestrian. This seems to provide the most clear line of delineation in software development.

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groaner 16y ago

As someone who has only dabbled in web programming and done webdev-ish work at a company that doesn't "get" the web, I was in shock to see how much I didn't know that was really the bare minimum: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/72394/what-should-a-developer-know-before-building-a-public-web-site http://stackoverflow.com/questions/72394/what-should-a-devel...

geekfactor 16y ago
I've come across a few of those "bare minimum you need to know to do X" posts on SO and on one hand I think they can be great pointers to the best reference material in a given field. On the other hand I worry that these kinds of lists promote an impractical approach to mastering a field that is at odds with being a "Hacker". Think of it as being like Waterfall Subject Mastery versus Lean Subject Mastery. In Waterfall Subject Mastery you try to anticipate what you need to know up front, learn a bunch of stuff, then try to apply it to a problem. There are two problems with this model: First, you really don't know what you need to know. Second, you won't really understand it as well in the abstract. With Lean Subject Mastery OTOH, you pick a problem and crank on it until you run into a wall. Then do some learning until you can overcome the wall. At first the walls will be many and frequent. But over time your baseline of competency is increased and you actually become productive in the new technology. What's great about the lean approach is that when it comes time to learn about a specific topic, you have a much better context for understanding it, and thus the effort to learn it is greatly reduced. And because you have an active project, you can put your learning into practice more quickly and thus retention is increased. The secret, though, to making LSM really work well is to commit to learning a bit more than just what you need to get over the wall. This is the difference between truly learning and being an eternal cargo culter. Don't just start banging against the OAuth library; try to understand how OAuth works. Just do it in the context of a real-world problem. Don't get me wrong. I'm not against education and learning for learning's sake, I'm just more for efficiency and getting stuff done.
- astrofinch 16y ago
  Another advantage of just-in-time learning is that forgetting is less of a problem. You don't have to worry about forgetting in between the time you learn it and the time you use it, and the fact that you've used it both helps you understand it better and gives you a working example to use as a reference. (Am I the only one who looks at their old code to see how they did something?) Probably the best is to sort of skim over the stuff you're supposed to know at first and then refer to it when you're reminded of it in your everyday work. Like the breadth-first approach Steve Yegge advocates for math: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers... The only problem I've found with this approach in practice is that skimming makes me antsy.

edw519 16y ago

But upon studying CSS, HTML and Javascript over the last month, I can honestly say I’m humbled. About half the time, I feel humbled whenever I encounter some new technology. The other half, I wonder why anyone bothered. The trick is knowing which half is which.

jaspero 16y ago

I appreciate the author for recognizing web development. I often stumble upon my 'programming' friends who think web development and especially front-end is boring and trivial. I have hard time explaining how important and how complex things can get. It's something my fellow hard-core programmer friends will never understand. I love my job and what I do. Web Development rules!

jemfinch 16y ago

Yes, it's hard. Unnecessarily hard, which is why I hate when I have to do it. The complexity of web development is not intrinsic to the problem, but an extrinsic reality imposed by widely differing implementations of a number of overengineered technologies.

jordanlev 16y ago
Well, if you expand your definition of "the problem" to "how do we enable people all over the world to interact with this information on any computing platform over an untrustworthy connection running on low-end hardware", then I think the chaos and technology soup is a little more necessary to things being where they're at now. So no, it's not technically necessary, but politically/economically it is.

iamwil 16y ago

It's not the sort of thing we should have pride in--that web programming is hard. For me, it goes to show that web front-end programming has a long way to go to make it better for developers. We're still looking for X to do to front end web programming that Rails did for back end web programming.

wh-uws 16y ago
I believe Jquery is doing at least some of that

csomar 16y ago

I think the main difficulty for Web Development is the separation between the Front-End and the Back-End. In Desktop development, the two are linked together, so if you want to handle a button click, you do that in the back-end and no other hassles. However, for Web Development, you'll need something called HTTP POST or GET and you want to improve it with AJAX (and make sure that it still works even without JavaScript). The user input become sensitive, and you have to take into account many other thing to secure your server. Still, Web Programming is fund. Having a server that answer requests is funny, for me. The author found Web Programming is hard, because it underestimated it.

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pocoloco 16y ago

I'm currently working on a set of SOAP web services using tomcat, cxf, mysql, and hibernate among others. I decided to do a switch from embedded to web development about a year and a half ago after being laid off. My paycheck is smaller but I now work on a whole new set of problems. After working about 10 years in embedded and everything around it, I felt that I needed a change. It was as if I was solving the same problems over and over. And don't get me started in the state of the tools. I remember thanking the heavens when we switched platforms to PowerPC and ELDK. At first I did not know were to start in web development. But I did decide to concentrate on the back end quite early. At first I approached each technology separately, mostly because of my ignorance. For example, I saw that tomcat was very popular, so I decided to take a look into it. But I quickly realized that I needed a birds eye view of the whole web service stack and not its individual components. At least not yet. I started to look into frameworks. After realizing that there are lots of those and that I learn about a new one almost every week, I had to narrow my search. I've been working and learning Groovy on Grails which is all based on the JVM since then. What sold it to me was the fact that Groovy is a language very similar to Python, which I know, and that Grails is a web framework that integrates all the necessary technologies to get a decent site up and running thanks in big part to the amount of plugins available for it. Like grayhairmomma says, it's a humbling experience.

weej 16y ago
Interesting. I'm considering doing the exact opposite (10 years web/server-side development - switching to embedded). Currently, I'm taking some extension engineering classes at UC Irvine while still working full-time. Any ideas on where to start to get my foot in the door in the embedded world? I was thinking newbie kernel bugs and eventually Linux drivers.
- deleted 16y ago
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- pocoloco 16y ago
  The linux drivers idea is good particularly if you want to learn about communication with embedded system. But there are other approaches too. You'll need to ask yourself how low-level do you want to go. For example: Do you want to work on a system that has an OS, utilities, filesystem, etc such as the ELDK[1]? Or a little more stripped down with only the OS such as FreeRTOS[2], uClinux[3], or uC/OS[4]? Or even lower and use no OS at all. Use instead a foreground-background system--basically a forever loop. Another way of doing this is to select the hardware first according to what you would like to do. You must keep in mind that you will most likely not have access to all the debugging tools that you're used to. This translates into very expensive compilers and debuggers for the high end hardware. But these days it seems that there is something for every taste and wallet. Two particular development kits that come to mind are Arduino boards [5] and TI's MSP430 development kits [6]. I find the wireless watch development kit [7] particular interesting. I haven't used either. If you see something that you like, try to find the corresponding development kit that comes with a development board, cables, and software. A good place to start is by checking DIY or hacker magazines such as Make[8]. I hope this gives you an idea. [1] http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/ELDK http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/ELDK [2] http://www.freertos.org/ http://www.freertos.org/ [3] http://www.uclinux.org/ http://www.uclinux.org/ [4] http://micrium.com/page/home http://micrium.com/page/home [5] http://www.arduino.cc/ http://www.arduino.cc/ [6] http://focus.ti.com/mcu/docs/mcuprodoverview.tsp?sectionId=95&tabId=140&familyId=342&DCMP=MCU_other&HQS=Other+IL+msp430 http://focus.ti.com/mcu/docs/mcuprodoverview.tsp?sectionId=9... [7] http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-chronos.html http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-chronos.... [8] http://makeprojects.com/ http://makeprojects.com/

jacquesm 16y ago

Yes, web programming is hard. The amount of techniques and the haphazard way in which they interact (jsonp??) are terrible compared to 'real' software development in a controlled environment. But you really should be grateful for that. If it were easy a large number of us would not be earning what we do because things that are easy tend to devalue quickly. Remember when being able to write HTML would net you $80 / hour? Ten or fifteen years from now, when web programming is 'easy' you just might long for the times when web programming was hard but you could basically name your price if you were competent at it.

PhrosTT 16y ago

Web Programming is nigh impossible for 1 person any more. To build a legit website: 1. Mockup a pretty design in photoshop. Use color theory, design principles, UX theory, typography skills, etc. 2. Convert the design into HTML/CSS. Make it degrade gracefully, it should be cross-browser compatible, validate, be lightweight, meet accessibility standards. 3. Add unobstrusive javascript if you want, site should work without it. 4. Run YSlow, convert all images into sprites where possible, condense/minify your JS/CSS. 5. Do SEO tweaks and best practices. 6. Oh wait, does the site display well on iPads? build a mobile version and a tablet version. ... We haven't even gotten past the front end. Learn good db design, code your middle tier. Choose or roll your own framework. TONS of work. Once it works, go back and secure everything for the OWASP10 and other potential holes. Also make sure it will scale gracefully. Maybe you should optimize your cacheing scheme? Maybe tweak your php config so it runs faster. AGhghghsdhdshf%@!$^#$ it never ends!

gbog 16y ago
With all due respect, putting OWASP at the end is a big mistake, you may have to refactor a lot to secure your code.

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catshirt 16y ago

I oft encounter Java, C++ programmers, etc. who don't understand the fragility of the client. This is difficult to deal with.

petercooper 16y ago

It was funny to read this as I now find client side development ridiculously hard (I last did it frequently > 10 years ago) and difficult to get my head into, whereas even large scale Web development feels quite surmountable or even easy to me. I think it merely proves that what you keep doing, you eventually find natural.

ataranto 16y ago

"Desktop GUI can easily be made cross-platform." lol wut?

grayhairmomma 16y ago
OK, if we're talking about games, maybe not. I'm talking about your average Desktop GUI out there which can be made to work across different OS's using a GUI Toolkit such as Qt.
- ataranto 16y ago
  Yes, it's easy to make your average Desktop GUI ugly as hell across different operating systems using a GUI Toolkit such as Qt.
  - grayhairmomma 16y ago
    You read my mind. Most are ugly as hell ! That's exactly what I said on my blog, and Desktop GUI developers get away with it.
    - Knack 16y ago
      Most of the time desktop apps and web apps serve completely different purposes. Desktop apps do not intend to be flashy or beautiful, they need to be usable for getting things done. They should follow the conventions of the OS, be fast and intuitive. So when a GUI developer creates a GUI that is highly usable and not showing off with eye candy, the GUI developer has done his job properly. Saying "they get away with it" because desktop GUIs are ugly is just wrong. Web sites often need to draw attentation. They want to sell something, be interesting. They should be flashy and beautiful.
      - grayhairmomma 16y ago
        Thanks for getting me to see another point of view. Your argument makes sense !

fjabre 16y ago

Yes - it is indeed hard to make something do what it was never intended for.

arohner 16y ago

Yes, Web Programming can be hard, but it's probably harder than it needs to be. The whole ecosystem of HTML + CSS + JS + IE6 is a mess. Something along the lines of Cappuccino will help a lot. Then you're "only" left with the problems of UI/UX, scaling, security, A/B testing, big data and marketing.

jordanlev 16y ago
Until you want to do something new that Cappuccino developers didn't think of... now your ecosystem has expanded by 1 to HTML + CSS + JS + IE6 + Cappuccino :)

MarkPNeyer 16y ago

They're hard for different reasons. In my experience, games, scientific computing, trading, and 'real' web backend work (i.e. not 'move this shit into the database' but 'make the database scale to a million users') are hard because they challenge you to solve difficult problems. Web frontend and simple backend work are hard because of the pain in the ass of managing all the different languages and paradigms involved.

englishVoodoo 16y ago

Is there a need to learn it all though? I'm a designer at my place and here I do all the html/css work and a bit of jQuery fluff on top of that whenever it's quite basic. I do think that's how most places work. Of course for a developer it's necessary to have some knowledge of html primarily, but no real need for deep knowledge. Not in my, somewhat limited, experience anyway.

jallmann 16y ago

Front-end web work, at its basic level, is not hard in the traditional "let's go shopping!" sense, but what I find maddening is how unintuitive some of it is (CSS, I'm looking at you). Then you have to worry about how broken or incompatible browsers are. I think "pain in the ass" is a more apt term. When you get deeper into the UX, things like A/B, optimizing load time, scaling the backend, etc, and that is where it becomes less tedious and the domain knowledge required is more respectable.

tibbon 16y ago

Conversely, I think traditional programming seems really hard compared to RoR. I have to think about memory? I have to tell the computer what the variable type is? What are all these funny characters and symbols? I can actually crash the computer with this? What is this compiler thing and all these funny options? I'm (slowly) trying to re-learn C/C++ after getting decent with Ruby and honestly it just hurts. Few things I do need speed or system access on this level. The verbosity is painful, and you need so much (ugly code) to do so little.

Aegean 16y ago

Web programming is hard but not necessarily intuitive. That's what I dislike about it. Its a heap of different technologies put together in unstructured fashion. This applies to individual technologies as well, take CSS and see how unintuitive a syntax it has. Web programming is popular because it drives the web. I don't necessarily find it an intuitive programming experience. This way of thinking is the biggest obstacle ahead of the likes of me (hackers for pleasure) for business success, i.e. primarily focusing on what's interesting from an engineering perspective. This approach is sure to fail in business because people always care about the end result. Technology is just a tool to get there. I guess part of the problem is when you study computer science or engineering in university, you try to learn the best engineering approaches out there and improve on your engineering skills. Then you face real life where the result matters. I cannot really say CSS or javascript is the best technology out there, but they play a crucial part driving the web.

donaq 16y ago

I've not done any embedded stuff, but I've had jobs doing low level c/c++ to interface with poorly documented serial devices passing bit-masked instruction codes and status codes around and I'm now doing web programming and man, all I can say is this: Nothing is easy. If it looks easy for some reason, someone has probably done a lot of difficult work for you previously.

curiousyogurt 16y ago

I made the jump from Objective-C/Cocoa development to web app development after Startup School this year. Two things surprised me when I really got down to coding my initial project. First, the sheer number of technologies involved in developing my web app. For me, that's Ruby on Rails, Javascript, jQuery, Ajax, HTML, CSS. Second, the lack of integration between the various technologies was surprising. I often knew what I wanted a particular page to do, and the solution was to learn a new technology, and then figure out how to shuffle data between the new technology and those technologies I was already using. Integration problems also crop up in the form of mismatches between technologies. For example, I use bignum integers in my code; but ran into all sorts of interesting problems: Ruby/Sqlite work fine; but as soon as I uploaded the app to Heroku, I uncovered issues with how these integers were being stored in the PostgreSQL. And Javascript needs special routines if it is going to handle bignums. I haven't encountered this sort of mismatch on the desktop. That said, now that I've got a working app, I think the learning curve was in some ways (though not all ways) less steep than the desktop. A couple of reasons for this, I think: 1) The communities share code prolifically. It is not that there is no code sharing going on in desktop development, but code sharing seems much more prevalent in web development. As a new web developer, this makes my job a lot easier not only because I can just plug in code, but also because I can read that code and learn from it. 2) You can get minimal results quite quickly, which is very encouraging. Again, you can get minimal results quickly on the desktop, but the standards are different on the web. In my experience, a desktop app needs a lot more to be minimally functional than a web app, probably because the level of complexity is different. Yes, web apps can be just as complex as desktop apps; but I think a minimally functional web app is in many ways less complex than a minimally functional desktop app. Just think about all the menus, help files, and other accoutrements you need to get a desktop app minimally functional; web apps can get away with less. 3) The web technologies I depend on are more modern. Compared to Objective-C/Cocoa, Ruby is like a dream. Javascript and less so, but only because it seems more like what I'm used to on the desktop. What can I say, I like syntactic sugar and the readability that comes with it. So, perhaps web programming is hard, but there are several ways travelling the path is made easier - maybe even easier than on the desktop.

ibagrak 16y ago

I am not sure which particular flavor of "embedded" the author is referring to, but the argument, in my view, is completely off the mark, and here is why: The main challenge of embedded is that you are in charge of controlling and managing everything. The developer is closer to the hardware and the cost of things breaking is far higher because you cannot for one second forget about some part of the technology stack that's below you. Everything is suspect, and nothing can be ignored. On the web, you get used to your automatic garbage collection, your GUI toolkits, your nice browser sandbox with infinite memory that gets automagically replenished, your in-browser JavaScript debugger and all that jazz. You get to enjoy none of it in the embedded systems I've worked with. Fixing embedded systems in the field is freaking hard, so the quality of code matters is in a completely different dimension from what's on the web today. Now, I am not talking about Linksys router or your iPhone. That's just a fraction of "embedded" devices. I am talking about things that don't have a TCP/IP stack (or any connection to the outside world), don't have a GUI, and are installed at the contractor rate of $1,000/hr and must exist in the field for 10-20 years. There are millions of these devices shipping every month, and they are all around us. Are you telling me these systems are easier to design than a webpage that can be twiddled with at your whim a million times a day? Don't downvote just yet! Just so you know where I am coming from: I am a product manager for a 100K LOC embedded stack that runs in 128K of flash and 8K of RAM. It's all C code, no OS, no toolkits, no MMUs, no garbage collection and no dynamic memory allocation. These devices get 15 years on a single battery and go inside your house. I've also had good exposure (not an expert) to the online technologies the author mentions. Yes, things may be tough to learn (I don't actually believe they are), but the web is a lot more forgiving of mistakes too.

grayhairmomma 16y ago
No doubt, your embedded world presents incredibly difficult problems -- arguably much trickier ones than most web jobs out there. Keep in mind, as the OP and author, I'm comparing the "average" embedded job or desktop software job to the "average" web job. Perhaps I should have made this distinction clearer in the blog article. Most employed embedded engineers do not work on problems as tough as the ones which you describe. But to me, the biggest challenge with web is the unforgiving avalanche of emerging new technologies a practicing professional must keep abreast of, literally during every spare second of their life, if he or she is to remain employed !! This unrelenting blizzard of new algorithms, new languages, new frameworks, new design methodologies is just another typical day in the life of a highly competent and employable web engineer. The resource-limited embedded problems at your company are "old school". I'm not saying they're easy, but do the tools and technologies needed to solve such problems change much through the years ?

mfukar 16y ago

Yeah, web programmers are regular geniuses.

siculars 16y ago

When people complain to me about so and so technology related I tell them to relax, breath and consider the millions of things that need to go right in order for you to watch the latest Lady Gaga video on youtube. I am constantly reminded of this by Louis CK http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk