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This is what blows my mind about web stuff. You needed to completely change framework and even languages 3 times in not even 30 years?! Just to keep things mai

This is what blows my mind about web stuff. You needed to completely change framework and even languages 3 times in not even 30 years?! Just to keep things maintainable? I don't feel that it's the same for other area's of programming: desktop apps, embedded stuff. Maybe I'm wrong...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
z3t4 3y ago
A website made in 1999 still work today, the browser is like an OS and the concensus is that you should never break userland, eg. You don't break the web. Then there are as many frameworks that there are developers.
- oaiey 3y ago
  Which is good ... and bad at once. Think only about how nice could be the JavaScript API if we would allow it to break. Or CSS. Or HTML. But completely agreeing with your point. Underrated quality of browsers.
revelio 3y ago
Sure it is. Win16 -> Win32 (only partly backwards compatible) -> .NET WinForms -> WPF -> WinUI 2 -> WinUI 3 (with of course Java and Electron being in the mix too) ... or ... Motif -> GTK 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 (all backwards incompatible) ... or ... macOS Classic -> Carbon -> Cocoa/ObjC -> Cocoa/Swift The browser is actually one of the more stable environments out there with a lot of the churn being on the server side and optional JS frameworks as people oscillate around trying to figure out the best way to wrangle a document renderer into being an app platform.
- mickeyp 3y ago
  A Delphi app written in Delphi 4 in the mid/late 90s would still run just fine on the latest version of Windows today. Win32 works just fine even today.
  - revelio 3y ago
    I used to love Delphi but I'd expect most people still consider code written in it to be tech debt. How many new projects are being started in it today? Sadly Delphi became debt at the same time Win32 did. Win32 "works" in the modern era only as long as you restrict yourself to opening a blank window and putting a D3D surface in it. Very few apps use it beyond the absolutely minimum level required anymore, because it's just a giant pile of horrendous tech debt. It's so tech debty that Microsoft have tried numerous times to kill it completely; their failure to pay off their debts doesn't make it non-debt however. How many new apps are using comctl32 widgets and WinINet these days? They all ignore it as much as possible and rely heavily on fat wrappers or shipping reimplementations for the rest. I mean that was like 50% of the value of Delphi as a product - it wrapped Win32 in an API layer that made it actually digestable.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

z3t4 3y ago

A website made in 1999 still work today, the browser is like an OS and the concensus is that you should never break userland, eg. You don't break the web. Then there are as many frameworks that there are developers.

oaiey 3y ago
Which is good ... and bad at once. Think only about how nice could be the JavaScript API if we would allow it to break. Or CSS. Or HTML. But completely agreeing with your point. Underrated quality of browsers.

revelio 3y ago

Sure it is. Win16 -> Win32 (only partly backwards compatible) -> .NET WinForms -> WPF -> WinUI 2 -> WinUI 3 (with of course Java and Electron being in the mix too) ... or ... Motif -> GTK 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 (all backwards incompatible) ... or ... macOS Classic -> Carbon -> Cocoa/ObjC -> Cocoa/Swift The browser is actually one of the more stable environments out there with a lot of the churn being on the server side and optional JS frameworks as people oscillate around trying to figure out the best way to wrangle a document renderer into being an app platform.

mickeyp 3y ago
A Delphi app written in Delphi 4 in the mid/late 90s would still run just fine on the latest version of Windows today. Win32 works just fine even today.
- revelio 3y ago
  I used to love Delphi but I'd expect most people still consider code written in it to be tech debt. How many new projects are being started in it today? Sadly Delphi became debt at the same time Win32 did. Win32 "works" in the modern era only as long as you restrict yourself to opening a blank window and putting a D3D surface in it. Very few apps use it beyond the absolutely minimum level required anymore, because it's just a giant pile of horrendous tech debt. It's so tech debty that Microsoft have tried numerous times to kill it completely; their failure to pay off their debts doesn't make it non-debt however. How many new apps are using comctl32 widgets and WinINet these days? They all ignore it as much as possible and rely heavily on fat wrappers or shipping reimplementations for the rest. I mean that was like 50% of the value of Delphi as a product - it wrapped Win32 in an API layer that made it actually digestable.