5 ms·

> technologically retarded hellscape The modern web seems pretty great to me. Why do you feel that way?

by parasti 4y ago

nico_h 4y ago
You must have a very good ad blocker.
- plasticchris 4y ago
  It was certainly an eye opener when I went to help a friend with their computer and saw the web without ad blockers for the first time in years. I had no idea.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    Worse, if they have been infested with malware that may inject additional ads into sites like Amazon... Actually made me a fan of chromebooks for anyone that doesn't actually need more than that.
    - pb7 4y ago
      Are you sure those aren't just Amazon ads? They generated $31B in ad revenue last year.
      - tracker1 4y ago
        In this case of memory, it was definitely malware... though I couldn't really speak to Amazon today if ublock/privacy-guard/pihole catch them.
usednet 4y ago
Censorship, mandatory KYC and ID verification, mass surveillance, ridiculous amounts of ads, everything is a subscription service and my god damn oven needs a login and ethernet connection…
- ghaff 4y ago
  That seems to be a complaint, at least in part, about a terminal-based world which only the "right" people had the ability to access vs. a commercialized Eternal September where all the plebes (and scammers/grifters) have access. I'm pretty sure that a terminal line world that somehow had the same access and usage as today's GUIs/Web would find other ways of introducing the same problems.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    Rel: Usenet spam
  - thewebcount 4y ago
    Yeah, this is the same thinking that calls Unix with it’s incomprehensible set of pun-filled commands with thousands of conflicting flags “the bazaar” and the relatively-easy-to-use and discoverable GUIs of the world “the cathedral”. It’s elitism at its worst.
kkfx 4y ago
Is pretty as a prison dressed to be nice. Is pretty for instance if you do not need to do anything than consume someone else provided contents and your favorite services do not cease to exists or change usage terms overnight. Google reader was nice, a day Google kill it, GitHub seems to be nice for some cohort of users, a day a political move between some countries makes your account locked, a day your ebook reader+service cease to exists with all books you never own but being convinced of the contrary, a day your smart vacuum cleaner stop to work because an AWS service have issues etc. That's how pretty it is. Pretty to capture you, ugly once you discover you are trapped and than it's too late. Oh, sure in mere tech terms you might run webapps locally, they are still NOT AT ALL pretty behind sugar-eye graphics, since integrate things, bend things is a nightmare that demand a gazillion SLoC for anything, while on classic CLI or better systems like Emacs you can do it in a snap. Not only: anything you'll learn on classic systems is valuable normally for a lifetime and more, anything you learn for the modern web might be valid for few years but generally last far less and no, you can't advance, you can only remain afloat keep learning the new crap on and on.
- pb7 4y ago
  You seem to have a lot of complaints about the internet and they may even be valid concerns on their own, but I fail to see how this relates to CLI vs. GUI. Google Reader would still be dead if you interacted with it via CLI. GitHub would still be dead if their servers shut down. Maybe you're equating CLI with some "good old days" that you fondly remember?
  - kkfx 4y ago
    CLIs are family of UIs, whose name is normally used to identify TUIs at a whole, while GUIs tend to identify ONLY modern GUIs, so ignoring the classic Documenti UIs and that's the trick. My point is: - modern TUIs, called by most CLIs, compared to modern GUIs (widget based GUIs and WebUIs) are more powerful because AT LEAST they allow limited easy user extensibility and composability (scripts and unix IPCs); - classic GUIs, in the sense of document UIs, like Emacs, like old Xerox Tioga etc, on contrary can be called 2D CLIs in modern lingo and they are FAR superior both of TUIs and modern GUIs because they are "graphical" and they are even more extensible and composable than TUIs. That's is. Modern developers regularly push toward classic GUIs without knowing them, think for instance how popular Notebook UIs have became. WebUI themselves as a "more like documents" widgets-based GUIs. Still are are far behind classic document UIs.
throwaway09223 4y ago
The modern web is primarily distinguished by its custom ui/media, as opposed to the old school web which put textual information first and allowed clients more control over presentation. The problems this creates are: * Accessibility - I can't change presentation to make things easier for me to consume * Inspectability - I can't search, index, etc. Information is hidden behind js driven interfaces that only present bits at a time. * Uniformity - I don't want to deal with a deluge of clever interfaces. I want the data only, and I want control over how I will present the data to myself. * Buggy - All these custom JS driven interfaces means a never ending deluge of weird interaction bugs, most of which we just ignore. Pages are needlessly slow or error prone.
- ehutch79 4y ago
  You don't get out much do you? Not if you consider that a hellscape.
  - spac 4y ago
    I find this comment absolutely inappropriate for this forum.
    - trasz 4y ago
      There are two ways to read that comment. One is like you say. The other - as “someone who doesn’t go out much”, this actually resonates, in a weird way: “the Unix way” resulted in user having a proper control and their environment being predictable and thus trustworthy. Compared to that, the web is not only technologically inferior (Chromium LoC alone is enough to tell), but also as unreliable and unpredictable as many other things IRL.
jesusofnazarath 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MisterTea 4y ago
> The modern web seems pretty great to me. Why do you feel that way? A quote I once heard about the modern web browser: "I want this program to do everything my computer already does." Imagine a simple hypertext markup language which tells a program how to render the text, link to different text or sites and perhaps paint some images on a screen. Seems pretty strait forward. Now make that program into a worse computer. This is what makes many people nauseous when they attempt to build "modern web" things. I heard a great comparison of game dev to web dev: "You write programs to reach goals or a finish line. game dev feels like you're building and fine tuning a race car. Web dev feels like you're running a marathon in the rain and everyone is throwing garbage at you while booing."
- parasti 4y ago
  There's only one problem with that comparison: web development and game development aren't exclusive to each other. Those days are long gone, thanks to WASM and WebGL. For a game developer, the modern web browser is just another platform to deploy to. One that has less friction in many ways. You don't have to ship an executable and lead the user to and through your installer, and then make them log in through your custom login flow where the password manager doesn't work - you just provide a link to a login form that redirects to a WASM build of your game. Your user already knows how to use the browser.

> technologically retarded hellscape The modern web seems pretty great to me. Why do you feel that way?

nico_h 4y ago

You must have a very good ad blocker.

plasticchris 4y ago
It was certainly an eye opener when I went to help a friend with their computer and saw the web without ad blockers for the first time in years. I had no idea.
- tracker1 4y ago
  Worse, if they have been infested with malware that may inject additional ads into sites like Amazon... Actually made me a fan of chromebooks for anyone that doesn't actually need more than that.
  - pb7 4y ago
    Are you sure those aren't just Amazon ads? They generated $31B in ad revenue last year.
    - tracker1 4y ago
      In this case of memory, it was definitely malware... though I couldn't really speak to Amazon today if ublock/privacy-guard/pihole catch them.

usednet 4y ago

Censorship, mandatory KYC and ID verification, mass surveillance, ridiculous amounts of ads, everything is a subscription service and my god damn oven needs a login and ethernet connection…

ghaff 4y ago
That seems to be a complaint, at least in part, about a terminal-based world which only the "right" people had the ability to access vs. a commercialized Eternal September where all the plebes (and scammers/grifters) have access. I'm pretty sure that a terminal line world that somehow had the same access and usage as today's GUIs/Web would find other ways of introducing the same problems.
- tracker1 4y ago
  Rel: Usenet spam
- thewebcount 4y ago
  Yeah, this is the same thinking that calls Unix with it’s incomprehensible set of pun-filled commands with thousands of conflicting flags “the bazaar” and the relatively-easy-to-use and discoverable GUIs of the world “the cathedral”. It’s elitism at its worst.

kkfx 4y ago

Is pretty as a prison dressed to be nice. Is pretty for instance if you do not need to do anything than consume someone else provided contents and your favorite services do not cease to exists or change usage terms overnight. Google reader was nice, a day Google kill it, GitHub seems to be nice for some cohort of users, a day a political move between some countries makes your account locked, a day your ebook reader+service cease to exists with all books you never own but being convinced of the contrary, a day your smart vacuum cleaner stop to work because an AWS service have issues etc. That's how pretty it is. Pretty to capture you, ugly once you discover you are trapped and than it's too late. Oh, sure in mere tech terms you might run webapps locally, they are still NOT AT ALL pretty behind sugar-eye graphics, since integrate things, bend things is a nightmare that demand a gazillion SLoC for anything, while on classic CLI or better systems like Emacs you can do it in a snap. Not only: anything you'll learn on classic systems is valuable normally for a lifetime and more, anything you learn for the modern web might be valid for few years but generally last far less and no, you can't advance, you can only remain afloat keep learning the new crap on and on.

pb7 4y ago
You seem to have a lot of complaints about the internet and they may even be valid concerns on their own, but I fail to see how this relates to CLI vs. GUI. Google Reader would still be dead if you interacted with it via CLI. GitHub would still be dead if their servers shut down. Maybe you're equating CLI with some "good old days" that you fondly remember?
- kkfx 4y ago
  CLIs are family of UIs, whose name is normally used to identify TUIs at a whole, while GUIs tend to identify ONLY modern GUIs, so ignoring the classic Documenti UIs and that's the trick. My point is: - modern TUIs, called by most CLIs, compared to modern GUIs (widget based GUIs and WebUIs) are more powerful because AT LEAST they allow limited easy user extensibility and composability (scripts and unix IPCs); - classic GUIs, in the sense of document UIs, like Emacs, like old Xerox Tioga etc, on contrary can be called 2D CLIs in modern lingo and they are FAR superior both of TUIs and modern GUIs because they are "graphical" and they are even more extensible and composable than TUIs. That's is. Modern developers regularly push toward classic GUIs without knowing them, think for instance how popular Notebook UIs have became. WebUI themselves as a "more like documents" widgets-based GUIs. Still are are far behind classic document UIs.

throwaway09223 4y ago

The modern web is primarily distinguished by its custom ui/media, as opposed to the old school web which put textual information first and allowed clients more control over presentation. The problems this creates are: * Accessibility - I can't change presentation to make things easier for me to consume * Inspectability - I can't search, index, etc. Information is hidden behind js driven interfaces that only present bits at a time. * Uniformity - I don't want to deal with a deluge of clever interfaces. I want the data only, and I want control over how I will present the data to myself. * Buggy - All these custom JS driven interfaces means a never ending deluge of weird interaction bugs, most of which we just ignore. Pages are needlessly slow or error prone.

ehutch79 4y ago
You don't get out much do you? Not if you consider that a hellscape.
- spac 4y ago
  I find this comment absolutely inappropriate for this forum.
  - trasz 4y ago
    There are two ways to read that comment. One is like you say. The other - as “someone who doesn’t go out much”, this actually resonates, in a weird way: “the Unix way” resulted in user having a proper control and their environment being predictable and thus trustworthy. Compared to that, the web is not only technologically inferior (Chromium LoC alone is enough to tell), but also as unreliable and unpredictable as many other things IRL.

jesusofnazarath 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

MisterTea 4y ago

> The modern web seems pretty great to me. Why do you feel that way? A quote I once heard about the modern web browser: "I want this program to do everything my computer already does." Imagine a simple hypertext markup language which tells a program how to render the text, link to different text or sites and perhaps paint some images on a screen. Seems pretty strait forward. Now make that program into a worse computer. This is what makes many people nauseous when they attempt to build "modern web" things. I heard a great comparison of game dev to web dev: "You write programs to reach goals or a finish line. game dev feels like you're building and fine tuning a race car. Web dev feels like you're running a marathon in the rain and everyone is throwing garbage at you while booing."

parasti 4y ago
There's only one problem with that comparison: web development and game development aren't exclusive to each other. Those days are long gone, thanks to WASM and WebGL. For a game developer, the modern web browser is just another platform to deploy to. One that has less friction in many ways. You don't have to ship an executable and lead the user to and through your installer, and then make them log in through your custom login flow where the password manager doesn't work - you just provide a link to a login form that redirects to a WASM build of your game. Your user already knows how to use the browser.