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"Am I out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong." This is an old, tired take that boils down to "we should be ashamed for wanting nice things." If onl

"Am I out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong." This is an old, tired take that boils down to "we should be ashamed for wanting nice things." If only everyone would just accept simple websites like HackerNews! This is backwards, it is user-blaming. It turns out that the web is an incredible platform that has revolutionized the world, and thousands of people have worked hard to build tools that make it easier to develop on. "Web fundamentals" can't give you Google Docs.

morelisp 4y ago
Users don't want this shit, startups do.
- phailhaus 4y ago
  This is an incredibly broad statement based on practically nothing. You don't think it's weird that most of the largest, most successful websites have mountains of tooling and frameworks to help them remain performant and reliable? All these tools either help the user directly, or solve real problems for companies to help them build more quickly. I also think you grossly overestimate the average user's abilities. They literally cannot tell what is possible and what is not. They don't want simple, they want something to solve everything, as easily as possible.
  - swatcoder 4y ago
    > You don't think it's weird that most of the largest, most successful websites have mountains of tooling and frameworks to help them remain performant and reliable? I don't fully agree with the person you're responding too, but it feels like you're making their point for them with this. Users are engaging with a tool or some content for themselves and today. Startups are the ones dreaming of standing among the "largest, most successful websites" someday. Users don't care how efficient or inefficient your development process is, or how much technical debt you carry, or how many concurrent users or requests you can run, or how scalable you are if things go well. If your service stands up and works for them today, none of those things are relevant to them at all. That's not to say that the startups concerns aren't critical to making sure that the service is still capable tomorrow and the day after, and that the company doesn't collapse under bad process and inefficiencies, and that the service maintains utility rather than becoming data and stale. They're valid concerns. But the users are so far removed from those concerns that it can be legitimately frustrating when pursuit of those long-term concerns degrades their immediate experience.
    - phailhaus 4y ago
      > long-term concerns And that's it. If you want to ever reach those long-term goals, you need robust tooling.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    You don't think that it's weird that most of the largest, most successfull companies have mountains of office politics? Clearly this means that office politics is good for your company Largest economies in Europe have the oldest and most drafty, poorly insulated housing stock. Therefore shitty housing stock must be good for the economy. Largest economies in the world have the most pollution. Therefore pollution must be good for the economy. Backwards reasoning.
    - nawgz 4y ago
      Strawman He argues tooling is a necessary but not sufficient* condition to performant web apps that solve meaningful user-facing problems You argue he claimed correlation is causation *Edit: had necessary and sufficient backwards
    - phailhaus 4y ago
      You're arguing that correlation does not imply causation. Fair. So tell me: how would you manage to build a website like Facebook without robust JS tooling? The answer tends to be "wellll I hate most of these features anyways, let's get rid of them and then it can be as simple as HackerNews!" But obviously, millions of people use those features every day and like them. The tooling solves a real problem.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        There are industries that use real robust tooling to run banks, build databases, control surgical robots. They don't choose Javascript, it has all the robustness of a wet noodle. Desktop and Mobile application are reasonably robust, have very complex software and could do everything Facebook does trivially. All this 'robust tooling' has evolved because we are trying to shove an application into a browser, and despite decades of effort. it still kinda sucks. If Apple, Microsoft and various distributions of Linux pulled the finger out of their collective asses and agreed on a half-decent, cross-platform GUI software package in 2005, none of this JS madness would exist.
        HeyImAlex 4y ago
  - morelisp 4y ago
    Free money solutionism's finally dying, dude. Better learn to solve actual problems instead of problematizing what you can barely do.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cxr 4y ago
> "Web fundamentals" can't give you Google Docs. There's real irony in this statement, since you can't get much more fundamental than that. WorldWideWeb.app (Nexus) was created as a read-write client for both navigating and authoring content. Not only are modern Web apps not a necessary precondition for that, but neither JS nor any form of mobile code are necessary, either. (The thing that Docs does wrong where "fundamentals" are concerned is its de-emphasis on the importance/role of the URL and making every Docs doc a sort of second-class publication that exists in this "other" kind of space—i.e., Google Drive and the Docs editor, which you always get a sense of being "inside", instead of the content just being out there on the Web.)
- phailhaus 4y ago
  People want to be able to author and share docs, directly in the browser and share with no effort. You cannot do this without JS, and the level of complexity is sufficient that you need robust tooling in order to manage it.
  - cxr 4y ago
    You can do this directly in the browser* without JS—in exactly the way shown by the example I just gave: by using a browser that is capable of editing and sharing docs (directly). * If someone really wanted to be a stickler, they could point out that that you've set up Google Docs to fail your own rubric, since it involves indirect editing. The browser itself has no direct role in the editing process. It only manages to do so by fetching and executing the minified bundle on the Docs site.
    - trs8080 4y ago
      So your solution is to write a browser so you don't have to write JS? Supposing I just want to create an internal tool that allows me to collaborate in realtime with my colleagues on a document (multiple cursors, everyone editing at once) and I have to do it in an existing browser because I don't write C++ and only have a few weeks to deliver - how would I do this without JS? Also, it needs to work on Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS in FF, Chrome, and Safari.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
You can have simple websites without them being ugly

morelisp 4y ago

Users don't want this shit, startups do.

phailhaus 4y ago
This is an incredibly broad statement based on practically nothing. You don't think it's weird that most of the largest, most successful websites have mountains of tooling and frameworks to help them remain performant and reliable? All these tools either help the user directly, or solve real problems for companies to help them build more quickly. I also think you grossly overestimate the average user's abilities. They literally cannot tell what is possible and what is not. They don't want simple, they want something to solve everything, as easily as possible.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  > You don't think it's weird that most of the largest, most successful websites have mountains of tooling and frameworks to help them remain performant and reliable? I don't fully agree with the person you're responding too, but it feels like you're making their point for them with this. Users are engaging with a tool or some content for themselves and today. Startups are the ones dreaming of standing among the "largest, most successful websites" someday. Users don't care how efficient or inefficient your development process is, or how much technical debt you carry, or how many concurrent users or requests you can run, or how scalable you are if things go well. If your service stands up and works for them today, none of those things are relevant to them at all. That's not to say that the startups concerns aren't critical to making sure that the service is still capable tomorrow and the day after, and that the company doesn't collapse under bad process and inefficiencies, and that the service maintains utility rather than becoming data and stale. They're valid concerns. But the users are so far removed from those concerns that it can be legitimately frustrating when pursuit of those long-term concerns degrades their immediate experience.
  - phailhaus 4y ago
    > long-term concerns And that's it. If you want to ever reach those long-term goals, you need robust tooling.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  You don't think that it's weird that most of the largest, most successfull companies have mountains of office politics? Clearly this means that office politics is good for your company Largest economies in Europe have the oldest and most drafty, poorly insulated housing stock. Therefore shitty housing stock must be good for the economy. Largest economies in the world have the most pollution. Therefore pollution must be good for the economy. Backwards reasoning.
  - nawgz 4y ago
    Strawman He argues tooling is a necessary but not sufficient* condition to performant web apps that solve meaningful user-facing problems You argue he claimed correlation is causation *Edit: had necessary and sufficient backwards
  - phailhaus 4y ago
    You're arguing that correlation does not imply causation. Fair. So tell me: how would you manage to build a website like Facebook without robust JS tooling? The answer tends to be "wellll I hate most of these features anyways, let's get rid of them and then it can be as simple as HackerNews!" But obviously, millions of people use those features every day and like them. The tooling solves a real problem.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      There are industries that use real robust tooling to run banks, build databases, control surgical robots. They don't choose Javascript, it has all the robustness of a wet noodle. Desktop and Mobile application are reasonably robust, have very complex software and could do everything Facebook does trivially. All this 'robust tooling' has evolved because we are trying to shove an application into a browser, and despite decades of effort. it still kinda sucks. If Apple, Microsoft and various distributions of Linux pulled the finger out of their collective asses and agreed on a half-decent, cross-platform GUI software package in 2005, none of this JS madness would exist.
      - HeyImAlex 4y ago
- morelisp 4y ago
  Free money solutionism's finally dying, dude. Better learn to solve actual problems instead of problematizing what you can barely do.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cxr 4y ago

> "Web fundamentals" can't give you Google Docs. There's real irony in this statement, since you can't get much more fundamental than that. WorldWideWeb.app (Nexus) was created as a read-write client for both navigating and authoring content. Not only are modern Web apps not a necessary precondition for that, but neither JS nor any form of mobile code are necessary, either. (The thing that Docs does wrong where "fundamentals" are concerned is its de-emphasis on the importance/role of the URL and making every Docs doc a sort of second-class publication that exists in this "other" kind of space—i.e., Google Drive and the Docs editor, which you always get a sense of being "inside", instead of the content just being out there on the Web.)

phailhaus 4y ago
People want to be able to author and share docs, directly in the browser and share with no effort. You cannot do this without JS, and the level of complexity is sufficient that you need robust tooling in order to manage it.
- cxr 4y ago
  You can do this directly in the browser* without JS—in exactly the way shown by the example I just gave: by using a browser that is capable of editing and sharing docs (directly). * If someone really wanted to be a stickler, they could point out that that you've set up Google Docs to fail your own rubric, since it involves indirect editing. The browser itself has no direct role in the editing process. It only manages to do so by fetching and executing the minified bundle on the Docs site.
  - trs8080 4y ago
    So your solution is to write a browser so you don't have to write JS? Supposing I just want to create an internal tool that allows me to collaborate in realtime with my colleagues on a document (multiple cursors, everyone editing at once) and I have to do it in an existing browser because I don't write C++ and only have a few weeks to deliver - how would I do this without JS? Also, it needs to work on Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS in FF, Chrome, and Safari.

jokethrowaway 4y ago

You can have simple websites without them being ugly