6 ms·

The problem isn't Safari as much, which pioneered HTML5, and is the most power-efficient browser on any platform I've seen. The problem is web devs. Web develo

The problem isn't Safari as much, which pioneered HTML5, and is the most power-efficient browser on any platform I've seen. The problem is web devs. Web developers have increasingly the attitude of "I don't want to learn how to make apps, I want to use HTML/CSS/JS for all apps I make", and this plays directly into Google's interests, which benefits from everything being web, because it has its tentacles all over the web (through search, analytics, ads, dns, hosting and so on). So Google keeps adding questionable features to Chrome and pushing them as standards, including bizarre things like Bluetooth and USB access from web apps, and consistently trying to paint Safari as crap and outdated, and Firefox as stale and out of touch. And unfortunately, it's clearly working. I'm a developer, and among other platforms I also target the web, and let's be honest, web devs are among the least educated, least sophisticated, most entitled and most whiny bunch there is. I'll get the downvotes for saying this, because many of them are right here on this site, but it needs to be said. It's increasingly rare to see even a decent web site these days that isn't some horror show cobbled together from megabytes (literally) of JS frameworks and JSON, if you wanna know why, here's why. We've created a monster and that monster now wants to eat all platforms, so everything everywhere including on your desktop, laptop, tablet and phone, is just tons of React/Angular spaghetti and you better like it.

jlnthws 5y ago
This is the best answer. Web devs blindly following edgy Chrome trends which are nothing more than a way to slow down Apple's revenue (which is fair game). App Store revenue was over $70B last year, with a 20% increase every year. Let me put it into words for you: seventy billion dollars. This is more than the total revenue of Intel, HP, Walt Disney, Unilever, FedEx or Pfizer, from the App Store alone. Most of that revenue comes from iOS apps. There is no way Apple would implement every new web standards mandated by its main competitor just to lose some of that revenue. Web devs should stop whining and come back to earth.
- norman784 5y ago
  Isn't all about revenue, I hope one day we will have native apps again, now also desktop apps are Chrome (electron), IHMO in this case I think Apple is right, push more for native apps (not wallet gardens), The web browsers for sure are the most battle tested apps out there, but they use a huge amount of resources (ram) in order to show your app, if you push for native apps then your possibilities are endless, you don't need to wait till the browser vendor implement some feature, also notifications are the worst thing, there's a lot of naive people that accepted those and cannot find how to disable them, even I struggled a bit to find that the notifications that someone got in his computer came from the browser, windows doesn't tell that in the notification center.
- pacifier007 5y ago
  Sure, your Apple overlords are always right. Said like a true fanboy.
lionkor 5y ago
Oh wow, I could not agree more. I've always struggled to put it into words, but > web devs are among the least educated, least sophisticated, most entitled and most whiny bunch there is This is exactly what I see. I'm a C/C++ developer, and recently started to re-make my website[0] (very WIP) together with my partner, and I've had a few web-devs and other devs tell me that it's really fast (i didn't notice because I'm used to sites like HN), and I just said "it doesnt use js", and I kid you not, at least one or two couldn't even believe that(???). It's crazy how simple you can make a website, with just standard html and css. I don't understand the push for frameworks and other js stuff, honestly. You said it - Megabytes. That's all you're really adding when all you want is a simple little website. Of course you need it for interactivity, and any kind of account system will get more complicated, but the amount of sites that are just a webapp is horrifying. [0]: https://kortlepel.com/ https://kortlepel.com/
- Dah00n 5y ago
  You mention a simple site with HTML and CSS. That is actually quite funny in a discussion about Safari as CSS is one of the areas that Safari is behind other browsers. A site with those frameworks would very likely work better in Safari than one without them (but yes I dislike them too which is one of the reasons I dislike Safari). https://caniuse.com/ https://caniuse.com/
  - yourenotsmart 5y ago
    You claim Safari is so behind in CSS that it's "quite funny" to discuss making a simple HTML and CSS site in it. And you didn't bother to name even one important missing CSS feature. Very low effort. If you want to be taken seriously, bring some facts and examples next time, not just generic internet flamebait.
    - Scottopherson 5y ago
      > web devs are among the least educated, least sophisticated, most entitled and most whiny bunch there is Of course, you're not spitting out generic flamebait with no backing evidence. That would be very low effort.
HunchedOver 5y ago
In poor defence of web devs; often they are passed nonsensical designs & requirements on shoestring time budgets. Most would like not to do horror shows, but are forced by industry conditions. Now-days web devs are very rarely the ones making decisions beyond "how do we achieve this render within too little days?". Don't blame the builders when the architects won't acknowledge the laws of physics.
OscarDC 5y ago
I'm kind of taking the bait in your message. but just saying things like: > let's be honest, web devs are among the least educated, least sophisticated, most entitled is just plain wrong and unnecessarily outrageous. There is a huge pool of front-end web developers when compared to other "specializations" and many person coming to it from other professions, so I guess you could easily have a poor experience with some if you're unlucky, yet I both work with JS-people and C++-people and I cannot really say that one is less "educated" or even less "sophisticated" (whatever that means) than the other. For sure, front-end devs are often less interested by the lower level technical details of a platform but they know how to code a maintainable and readable application with a complex state and a complex often-changing business logic and are even for the most part not afraid to learn another language, e.g. for personal projects: in my close colleagues some worked with elixir, another switched to go, I enjoy C++ and Rust... At least in the bigger companies I worked with, JS and C++ devs also went to the same schools, they just had different interests in programming. --- As for the "this plays directly into Google's interests" part, sure, I agree with that sentence. But even considering this, I and most people I know would agree that launching a web application leads to much less friction than running a native app: nothing to install/uninstall, easy interoperability with other websites, easy to share a given page with others, easy to copy/paste anything, automatic plugin support and it's also easier to modify and update features through user scripts... I know this is not the more popular opinion here but I personally am happy for this continued push towards the web platform, even if does not come from pure intentions.
burlesona 5y ago
I think there are a few reasons for this: (1) Web dev is easier and more productive to learn incrementally than just about anything else - I personally learned how to do HTML and CSS long before I learned any other programming. That was the gateway that eventually led me into the CS field. A lot of others follow that path, but perhaps don't take it as far. (2) Web dev is so ubiquitous and in such high demand that companies are willing to hire anyone who "knows enough to be dangerous" with this tech. That's actually a *good thing* IMO since it means a lot of people are getting good jobs with the chance to learn and grow into a career, instead of being stuck in worse jobs. But it does reinforce point 1 and lead to web devs skewing towards junior devs and away from formal CS education. (3) Hackers are heroes in our culture. The agile, lean startup, MVP, indie hacker, low-code, etc. trends are all movements celebrating people who can just hack shit together that works right now as being fundamentally superior to artful engineering that builds elegant things at high cost and requiring much more time. (4) General cultural trend toward "influence" as a career driver. There's almost nothing that opens doors for people today like having a popular blog or YouTube channel does, and peddling simple angry click-bait rants to the masses is an easier path to build a following than careful and considerate thought leadership. All of these combine to create the mass of "whiny web devs" that you're complaining about. Finally, to be fair, web dev is such a vast field encompassing so many people, I think you'd be surprised how many people working in web development (including myself, for example), share your exhaustion with the hipster-script-kiddies who think that building things just for Chrome is fine, that framework churn is exciting, that electron is just as better than native, etc. So I think your criticism is on point and justified, just be mindful that you're painting with a very broad brush and there are loads of web developers who aren't on this whiny "chrome is the only computing platform" bandwagon.
pacifier007 5y ago
So you're mad because web developers are taking your JERBS. Got it.
spideymans 5y ago
Thank you for saying this. I wouldn't have said it myself, but as someone who has been both a native and web developer, you are spot on.

jlnthws 5y ago

This is the best answer. Web devs blindly following edgy Chrome trends which are nothing more than a way to slow down Apple's revenue (which is fair game). App Store revenue was over $70B last year, with a 20% increase every year. Let me put it into words for you: seventy billion dollars. This is more than the total revenue of Intel, HP, Walt Disney, Unilever, FedEx or Pfizer, from the App Store alone. Most of that revenue comes from iOS apps. There is no way Apple would implement every new web standards mandated by its main competitor just to lose some of that revenue. Web devs should stop whining and come back to earth.

norman784 5y ago
Isn't all about revenue, I hope one day we will have native apps again, now also desktop apps are Chrome (electron), IHMO in this case I think Apple is right, push more for native apps (not wallet gardens), The web browsers for sure are the most battle tested apps out there, but they use a huge amount of resources (ram) in order to show your app, if you push for native apps then your possibilities are endless, you don't need to wait till the browser vendor implement some feature, also notifications are the worst thing, there's a lot of naive people that accepted those and cannot find how to disable them, even I struggled a bit to find that the notifications that someone got in his computer came from the browser, windows doesn't tell that in the notification center.
pacifier007 5y ago
Sure, your Apple overlords are always right. Said like a true fanboy.

lionkor 5y ago

Oh wow, I could not agree more. I've always struggled to put it into words, but > web devs are among the least educated, least sophisticated, most entitled and most whiny bunch there is This is exactly what I see. I'm a C/C++ developer, and recently started to re-make my website[0] (very WIP) together with my partner, and I've had a few web-devs and other devs tell me that it's really fast (i didn't notice because I'm used to sites like HN), and I just said "it doesnt use js", and I kid you not, at least one or two couldn't even believe that(???). It's crazy how simple you can make a website, with just standard html and css. I don't understand the push for frameworks and other js stuff, honestly. You said it - Megabytes. That's all you're really adding when all you want is a simple little website. Of course you need it for interactivity, and any kind of account system will get more complicated, but the amount of sites that are just a webapp is horrifying. [0]: https://kortlepel.com/ https://kortlepel.com/

Dah00n 5y ago
You mention a simple site with HTML and CSS. That is actually quite funny in a discussion about Safari as CSS is one of the areas that Safari is behind other browsers. A site with those frameworks would very likely work better in Safari than one without them (but yes I dislike them too which is one of the reasons I dislike Safari). https://caniuse.com/ https://caniuse.com/
- yourenotsmart 5y ago
  You claim Safari is so behind in CSS that it's "quite funny" to discuss making a simple HTML and CSS site in it. And you didn't bother to name even one important missing CSS feature. Very low effort. If you want to be taken seriously, bring some facts and examples next time, not just generic internet flamebait.
  - Scottopherson 5y ago
    > web devs are among the least educated, least sophisticated, most entitled and most whiny bunch there is Of course, you're not spitting out generic flamebait with no backing evidence. That would be very low effort.

HunchedOver 5y ago

In poor defence of web devs; often they are passed nonsensical designs & requirements on shoestring time budgets. Most would like not to do horror shows, but are forced by industry conditions. Now-days web devs are very rarely the ones making decisions beyond "how do we achieve this render within too little days?". Don't blame the builders when the architects won't acknowledge the laws of physics.

OscarDC 5y ago

I'm kind of taking the bait in your message. but just saying things like: > let's be honest, web devs are among the least educated, least sophisticated, most entitled is just plain wrong and unnecessarily outrageous. There is a huge pool of front-end web developers when compared to other "specializations" and many person coming to it from other professions, so I guess you could easily have a poor experience with some if you're unlucky, yet I both work with JS-people and C++-people and I cannot really say that one is less "educated" or even less "sophisticated" (whatever that means) than the other. For sure, front-end devs are often less interested by the lower level technical details of a platform but they know how to code a maintainable and readable application with a complex state and a complex often-changing business logic and are even for the most part not afraid to learn another language, e.g. for personal projects: in my close colleagues some worked with elixir, another switched to go, I enjoy C++ and Rust... At least in the bigger companies I worked with, JS and C++ devs also went to the same schools, they just had different interests in programming. --- As for the "this plays directly into Google's interests" part, sure, I agree with that sentence. But even considering this, I and most people I know would agree that launching a web application leads to much less friction than running a native app: nothing to install/uninstall, easy interoperability with other websites, easy to share a given page with others, easy to copy/paste anything, automatic plugin support and it's also easier to modify and update features through user scripts... I know this is not the more popular opinion here but I personally am happy for this continued push towards the web platform, even if does not come from pure intentions.

burlesona 5y ago

I think there are a few reasons for this: (1) Web dev is easier and more productive to learn incrementally than just about anything else - I personally learned how to do HTML and CSS long before I learned any other programming. That was the gateway that eventually led me into the CS field. A lot of others follow that path, but perhaps don't take it as far. (2) Web dev is so ubiquitous and in such high demand that companies are willing to hire anyone who "knows enough to be dangerous" with this tech. That's actually a *good thing* IMO since it means a lot of people are getting good jobs with the chance to learn and grow into a career, instead of being stuck in worse jobs. But it does reinforce point 1 and lead to web devs skewing towards junior devs and away from formal CS education. (3) Hackers are heroes in our culture. The agile, lean startup, MVP, indie hacker, low-code, etc. trends are all movements celebrating people who can just hack shit together that works right now as being fundamentally superior to artful engineering that builds elegant things at high cost and requiring much more time. (4) General cultural trend toward "influence" as a career driver. There's almost nothing that opens doors for people today like having a popular blog or YouTube channel does, and peddling simple angry click-bait rants to the masses is an easier path to build a following than careful and considerate thought leadership. All of these combine to create the mass of "whiny web devs" that you're complaining about. Finally, to be fair, web dev is such a vast field encompassing so many people, I think you'd be surprised how many people working in web development (including myself, for example), share your exhaustion with the hipster-script-kiddies who think that building things just for Chrome is fine, that framework churn is exciting, that electron is just as better than native, etc. So I think your criticism is on point and justified, just be mindful that you're painting with a very broad brush and there are loads of web developers who aren't on this whiny "chrome is the only computing platform" bandwagon.

pacifier007 5y ago

So you're mad because web developers are taking your JERBS. Got it.

spideymans 5y ago

Thank you for saying this. I wouldn't have said it myself, but as someone who has been both a native and web developer, you are spot on.