5 ms·

Twenty years ago I was the lead architect of a web application -- I'm 48 now, for the ageists who would like to dismiss based upon that -- that was a power gene

Twenty years ago I was the lead architect of a web application -- I'm 48 now, for the ageists who would like to dismiss based upon that -- that was a power generation monitoring and control panel for distributed power across the US. We were one of the first users in the world of the XMLHttpRequest ActiveX object that the MSXML team released through subterfuge (I know because we hit every defect head first). Since then I directed development on a number of absurdly rich and powerful platforms across telecom and the financial world. We were leading the respective industries when everyone was pushing Java, Flash, XAML/WinForms, etc at various junctures (each coming and faltering). We had a better than native mobile "app" using web tech. I was one of the early and vigorous public proponents of SVG. These applications, going back up to two decades ago, demolish the overwhelming bulk of web apps people are working on today in design complexity, actual functionality, and so on. Yeah, I have a pretty good notion about "modern web technology", and often it feels like farce. Like it's a parody and I'm left wondering if I should say something because I missed the joke. The amazing self-congratulatory praise about, again, trivial nonsense just boggles.

robertoandred 6y ago
Did you direct your developers to use Notepad?
aniforprez 6y ago
So your comment can basically be boiled down to "old man yells at cloud" And no none of the problems that are being solved can be done in notepad
- bfgoodrich 6y ago
  Yeah, something like that... Or, and maybe this is just my old man dementia talking, millions of extremely low-skill developers have flooded into the market, primarily building "web apps". An endless procession of "make trivial stuff easy for really incompetent developers" solutions appear to pander to them -- and their brother-in-arms "make trivial stuff seem complex and engineer-ee" solutions -- and this is a group that finds each of these variations on an obsolete theme revolutionary. Humorous that multiple people have been triggered by the notepad comment. Yet...many extremely rich pages and apps have been built in exactly such a manner! That this is seen as outlandish is pretty telling.
  - nightski 6y ago
    The fact that you are so trivially dismissing all of the complexities of the web leads me to believe you in fact have very little actual experience. If you are half as experienced as you say you would have more substance to back up your claims. Maybe start a blog and share your god like experience and wisdom with all of us plebs.
    - bfgoodrich 6y ago
      There is enormous complexity in the field. But, and this is a big but, 99% of the advocacy and "innovation" is in the easiest, most trivial 5% (rough numbers). That I'm pointing out how absurdly circular this is in no universe denigrates the entire realm. But of course it makes criticism easier to pretend it is. I had no idea my comment would make so many so insecure.
      - nightski 6y ago
        No need for insults or calling people insecure when all I asked for is examples/substance to back your claims. Let's see some screenshots of these cutting edge applications developed 15 years ago. I'd love to see how you made them rich, interactive, and work across a wide variety of devices (mobile, tablets, workstations) with varying screen densities. I'd also be curious how performant these applications were, how much data was being conveyed on screen, etc... Maybe a blog post detailing the architecture and how you achieve all of the concerns of the modern web using bare JS from 15 years ago.
        wolco2 6y ago
        You sound like someone who is at the beginning of the learning curve. Nothing wrong with that but don't be so hostile. People used tables for positioning and as containers. More data was present compared to whitespace and mobile reduced sites. People had different screensizes back than. How do you deal with that? You take a 3x3 cell. You cut a picture into 9 slices. You take the top, left, right and bottom images and make them a background at 100% width (top/bottom) or height. That is the basics of a simple flexibile container.

robertoandred 6y ago

Did you direct your developers to use Notepad?

aniforprez 6y ago

So your comment can basically be boiled down to "old man yells at cloud" And no none of the problems that are being solved can be done in notepad

bfgoodrich 6y ago
Yeah, something like that... Or, and maybe this is just my old man dementia talking, millions of extremely low-skill developers have flooded into the market, primarily building "web apps". An endless procession of "make trivial stuff easy for really incompetent developers" solutions appear to pander to them -- and their brother-in-arms "make trivial stuff seem complex and engineer-ee" solutions -- and this is a group that finds each of these variations on an obsolete theme revolutionary. Humorous that multiple people have been triggered by the notepad comment. Yet...many extremely rich pages and apps have been built in exactly such a manner! That this is seen as outlandish is pretty telling.
- nightski 6y ago
  The fact that you are so trivially dismissing all of the complexities of the web leads me to believe you in fact have very little actual experience. If you are half as experienced as you say you would have more substance to back up your claims. Maybe start a blog and share your god like experience and wisdom with all of us plebs.
  - bfgoodrich 6y ago
    There is enormous complexity in the field. But, and this is a big but, 99% of the advocacy and "innovation" is in the easiest, most trivial 5% (rough numbers). That I'm pointing out how absurdly circular this is in no universe denigrates the entire realm. But of course it makes criticism easier to pretend it is. I had no idea my comment would make so many so insecure.
    - nightski 6y ago
      No need for insults or calling people insecure when all I asked for is examples/substance to back your claims. Let's see some screenshots of these cutting edge applications developed 15 years ago. I'd love to see how you made them rich, interactive, and work across a wide variety of devices (mobile, tablets, workstations) with varying screen densities. I'd also be curious how performant these applications were, how much data was being conveyed on screen, etc... Maybe a blog post detailing the architecture and how you achieve all of the concerns of the modern web using bare JS from 15 years ago.
      - wolco2 6y ago
        You sound like someone who is at the beginning of the learning curve. Nothing wrong with that but don't be so hostile. People used tables for positioning and as containers. More data was present compared to whitespace and mobile reduced sites. People had different screensizes back than. How do you deal with that? You take a 3x3 cell. You cut a picture into 9 slices. You take the top, left, right and bottom images and make them a background at 100% width (top/bottom) or height. That is the basics of a simple flexibile container.