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Web browsers. The idea of "programming with markup language" meant a focus on writing text in order to get anything to work. There were some initial attempts at

Web browsers. The idea of "programming with markup language" meant a focus on writing text in order to get anything to work. There were some initial attempts at trying to make a WYSIWYG to wrestle with html and javascript, and later css, but the underlying markup, and bizarre web page rendering rules, made WYSIWYGs horrible for making anything other than the ugliest Geocities pages. As more and more programs moved from native to the web, programmers were forced to write more code by hand. Eventually by 2010 there began a "coder culture" where technology was seen as inferior if it wasn't 10,000 lines written by hand with 20 frameworks that no single person could completely comprehend. Add to that the fact that programmers were rapidly becoming bootcamp-driven MBA dropouts looking to get a startup off the ground, and the culture gets ever more ingrained by people who don't know the history of what came before or how easy things used to be or why.

crazygringo 3y ago
Yup, web browsers are the answer. All the VB-style development and developers moved to the web, but the web's layout paradigm is fundamentally reflowing-resizeable-document-based, not the drawable, draggable absolute positioning of dialog box controls. Not to mention the fact that code was now split into three languages on the front end and one or two on the back end. You can't just write code to respond to a button click to read from the database, because now you need an API and authentication and all that...
- xxs 3y ago
  >draggable absolute positioning of dialog box controls. Delphi had layout, so did Java (many of them). Resizable was always a thing, aside for the extremely lazy development with null layouts by some programmers. VB used to be considered a lame/toy language with its "onerror resume next" paradigm.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  No chunk of them moved on to app development for iOS/Mac?
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Honestly, not really. I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but VB was never used for "traditional" app development in the first place -- you weren't going to write a Photoshop or Word in VB, or even something small like a CD ripper or a music player, since it was so cumbersome to access any of the Win32 API's -- and performance wasn't anywhere close to C/C++ either. VB was used for business apps that connected to databases, and those apps really did just entirely move to the web. It was such a gigantic benefit that web apps were inherently cross-platform, didn't have to be installed or deal with different versions of binaries, and could add new features instantly for everyone. And Microsoft inadvertently hastened the transition by making VB.NET backwards-incompatible with VB6, at just the time that web apps had become capable enough. Since all this software was going to need to be rewritten to some degree anyways, might as well rewrite it for the web sooner than later, and get all those new benefits.
    - steve1977 3y ago
      I have some doubts about the actual benefits of web apps, especially for corporate software. In such settings, software distribution is a long-solved problem, also clients are usually not that heterogeneous.
- somsak2 3y ago
  We've had the ability to use a single language across both FE and BE for quite a while now. That's not the problem.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    I was talking about the time when people made the transition from VB6 to the web. There was no single language back then. Node.js wasn't even an idea at that point. And regardless, you've still got to learn HTML and CSS and often SQL.
    - antod 3y ago
      In the VB6 era, you could write JScript ASP Classic pages and have JS in the browser (provided you weren't doing the more proper DCOM stuff behind the ASP pages). I worked somewhere doing that on NT4, but IIS 5 in W2K broke it somehow. Or for really perverse IE only stuff, VBScript in ASP and VBScript in the browser.
paulddraper 3y ago
> 10,000 lines written by hand with 20 frameworks Do you prefer more lines written by hand? Or more frameworks? Because those are meant to offset each other.
grishka 3y ago
Flash also allowed you to drag controls onto a canvas and double-click them to write code — for the web. It's this modern misguided effort to turn glorified word processors into operating systems that ruined it, together with Adobe killing Flash.
- somsak2 3y ago
  *Apple killing Flash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash
  - grishka 3y ago
    Adobe also did its part. They could've open-sourced Flash Player instead of acting how they did. Thankfully, Ruffle is a thing and is improving compatibility rapidly. Runs on iPhones too.

crazygringo 3y ago

Yup, web browsers are the answer. All the VB-style development and developers moved to the web, but the web's layout paradigm is fundamentally reflowing-resizeable-document-based, not the drawable, draggable absolute positioning of dialog box controls. Not to mention the fact that code was now split into three languages on the front end and one or two on the back end. You can't just write code to respond to a button click to read from the database, because now you need an API and authentication and all that...

xxs 3y ago
>draggable absolute positioning of dialog box controls. Delphi had layout, so did Java (many of them). Resizable was always a thing, aside for the extremely lazy development with null layouts by some programmers. VB used to be considered a lame/toy language with its "onerror resume next" paradigm.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MichaelZuo 3y ago
No chunk of them moved on to app development for iOS/Mac?
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Honestly, not really. I'm sure there are a few exceptions, but VB was never used for "traditional" app development in the first place -- you weren't going to write a Photoshop or Word in VB, or even something small like a CD ripper or a music player, since it was so cumbersome to access any of the Win32 API's -- and performance wasn't anywhere close to C/C++ either. VB was used for business apps that connected to databases, and those apps really did just entirely move to the web. It was such a gigantic benefit that web apps were inherently cross-platform, didn't have to be installed or deal with different versions of binaries, and could add new features instantly for everyone. And Microsoft inadvertently hastened the transition by making VB.NET backwards-incompatible with VB6, at just the time that web apps had become capable enough. Since all this software was going to need to be rewritten to some degree anyways, might as well rewrite it for the web sooner than later, and get all those new benefits.
  - steve1977 3y ago
    I have some doubts about the actual benefits of web apps, especially for corporate software. In such settings, software distribution is a long-solved problem, also clients are usually not that heterogeneous.
somsak2 3y ago
We've had the ability to use a single language across both FE and BE for quite a while now. That's not the problem.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  I was talking about the time when people made the transition from VB6 to the web. There was no single language back then. Node.js wasn't even an idea at that point. And regardless, you've still got to learn HTML and CSS and often SQL.
  - antod 3y ago
    In the VB6 era, you could write JScript ASP Classic pages and have JS in the browser (provided you weren't doing the more proper DCOM stuff behind the ASP pages). I worked somewhere doing that on NT4, but IIS 5 in W2K broke it somehow. Or for really perverse IE only stuff, VBScript in ASP and VBScript in the browser.

paulddraper 3y ago

> 10,000 lines written by hand with 20 frameworks Do you prefer more lines written by hand? Or more frameworks? Because those are meant to offset each other.

grishka 3y ago

Flash also allowed you to drag controls onto a canvas and double-click them to write code — for the web. It's this modern misguided effort to turn glorified word processors into operating systems that ruined it, together with Adobe killing Flash.

somsak2 3y ago
*Apple killing Flash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash
- grishka 3y ago
  Adobe also did its part. They could've open-sourced Flash Player instead of acting how they did. Thankfully, Ruffle is a thing and is improving compatibility rapidly. Runs on iPhones too.