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> Web dev should START with it's underpinnings, not gloss them over as complicated I disagree here. We don't even start by teaching car mechanics about that fu

> Web dev should START with it's underpinnings, not gloss them over as complicated I disagree here. We don't even start by teaching car mechanics about that fuel injection cycles, we start with "take the wheels off and put them back on again".

wepple 4y ago
I’d argue that learning some basics about how a web browser locates and communicates with a server is pretty basic, it’s the user experience. It’s how the pedal connects to a throttle cable which rotates a plate in the throttle body and allows more air into the manifold, which results in more fuel injected and bigger combustion which means higher RPM. Not overly complicated, but fundamental and should be learnt pretty early on.
MaxBarraclough 4y ago
> We don't even start by teaching car mechanics about that fuel injection cycles, we start with "take the wheels off and put them back on again". I imagine that changes depending on whether you're training to be a car mechanic, or studying to be a mechanical engineer. Similarly some people have learned to program by starting out with assembly, although this approach isn't common today.
- Dudeman112 4y ago
  I get a feeling this is one of the reasons why the world of programming is such a shitshow. There isn't a proper distinction between the mechanical engineer vs car mechanic equivalent. Everyone and their mom is a "software engineer", regardless of just tinkering / doing the car mechanic equivalent or being one of the maybe sub-1% of people out there that does anything similar to engineering (aka validating their designs with scientific knowledge and industry/legislation requirements). The discipline is in its infancy, so there's a hotpot of needs that are being mixed all together.
jeroenhd 4y ago
If we're going by car metaphors, in this case HTTP would be the wheels of the car, though. It's what makes the web pages appear in your page. HTTP is the wheels, HTML is the chassis, CSS is the paint and JS is the instrument panel. APIs are your roads and JS/CSS web frameworks are the upholstery and infotainment panel, nice pretty features that are easy to modify and customise, carried along by the rest of the stack. I wouldn't expect web devs to read the browser source code to see how the sausage actually gets made, the fuel injection cycle so to say. However if you can't tell a HEAD from a GET or learn about Content-Type, Content-Security-Policy and all the other headers that will make or break your applicantion in practice, you're severely limiting yourself.
- josephg 4y ago
  Yep; but its worse. A lack of knowledge doesn't just stop you from building some applications. If you don't know what you're doing, its really easy to accidentally end up with security vulnerabilities in the software you make. I don't want my data ending up in yet more have-I-been-pwned dumps because beginners don't learn the basics. Eg, lots of stack overflow answers recommend setting "Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *" to "fix" certain errors. Cross-origin messages are disabled by default in modern browsers for a good reason. No matter how convenient it is, you should understand the implications before opening flood gates like that.

wepple 4y ago

I’d argue that learning some basics about how a web browser locates and communicates with a server is pretty basic, it’s the user experience. It’s how the pedal connects to a throttle cable which rotates a plate in the throttle body and allows more air into the manifold, which results in more fuel injected and bigger combustion which means higher RPM. Not overly complicated, but fundamental and should be learnt pretty early on.

MaxBarraclough 4y ago

> We don't even start by teaching car mechanics about that fuel injection cycles, we start with "take the wheels off and put them back on again". I imagine that changes depending on whether you're training to be a car mechanic, or studying to be a mechanical engineer. Similarly some people have learned to program by starting out with assembly, although this approach isn't common today.

Dudeman112 4y ago
I get a feeling this is one of the reasons why the world of programming is such a shitshow. There isn't a proper distinction between the mechanical engineer vs car mechanic equivalent. Everyone and their mom is a "software engineer", regardless of just tinkering / doing the car mechanic equivalent or being one of the maybe sub-1% of people out there that does anything similar to engineering (aka validating their designs with scientific knowledge and industry/legislation requirements). The discipline is in its infancy, so there's a hotpot of needs that are being mixed all together.

jeroenhd 4y ago

If we're going by car metaphors, in this case HTTP would be the wheels of the car, though. It's what makes the web pages appear in your page. HTTP is the wheels, HTML is the chassis, CSS is the paint and JS is the instrument panel. APIs are your roads and JS/CSS web frameworks are the upholstery and infotainment panel, nice pretty features that are easy to modify and customise, carried along by the rest of the stack. I wouldn't expect web devs to read the browser source code to see how the sausage actually gets made, the fuel injection cycle so to say. However if you can't tell a HEAD from a GET or learn about Content-Type, Content-Security-Policy and all the other headers that will make or break your applicantion in practice, you're severely limiting yourself.

josephg 4y ago
Yep; but its worse. A lack of knowledge doesn't just stop you from building some applications. If you don't know what you're doing, its really easy to accidentally end up with security vulnerabilities in the software you make. I don't want my data ending up in yet more have-I-been-pwned dumps because beginners don't learn the basics. Eg, lots of stack overflow answers recommend setting "Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *" to "fix" certain errors. Cross-origin messages are disabled by default in modern browsers for a good reason. No matter how convenient it is, you should understand the implications before opening flood gates like that.