4 ms·

I don't think it's possible to end this debate unless one of you finally names an example. Please provide a screenshot or at least a name of an UI/application f

by ffsm8 2y ago

I don't think it's possible to end this debate unless one of you finally names an example. Please provide a screenshot or at least a name of an UI/application from before 2000 that's not braindead easy to implement with pure html/trivial css and simple click handlers. If you can provide one, I'll yield to your point. Otherwise you're just high on nostalgia and comparing today's complexities caused by a vastly bigger scope to yesteryears simple realities, where multi-platform, i18n, animations, dynamic rerendering, etc pretty much wasn't a thing... entirely If you remove all these features, you end with a simple html file with inline css. And that's easier then it was in the 90s.

coldtea 2y ago
>Please provide a screenshot or at least a name of an UI/application from before 2000 that's not braindead easy to implement with pure html/trivial css and simple click handlers. I'm not sure what exactly you think "UI/applications from before 2000" looked like and were. You do know that, e.g. Word, Excel, Photoshop, Logic, WinAmp, Paint, Framemaker, 3ds Max, Final Draft, Lotus Domino/Agenda, Visio, QuickBooks, Cinema 4D, Encarta, Dreamweaver, ACDSee, Real Player, Outlook, AIM, ICQ, FL Studio, Maya, WinRar, WinZip, InDesign, Quark Xpress, Cubase, and countless others, commercial and freeware, including full featured KDE and Gnome DEs were made before 2000, right?
- ffsm8 2y ago
  Oh yes, i do know that. but do YOU know how they looked back then? because they're literally just toolbars with buttons on em and canvas frames which are just fricking images / application logic! rendering these viewports/canvases are challenging for sure -- back then just like today, because thats where where the domain logic goes. the UI back then were fucking trivial, youre deluding yourself if you think anything else. Lets go through your first examples one-by-one, as the theme continues i will stop at some point. * Word: literally just 1 menu/text, 2 rows of icons. And a range picker. you can do that within ~15 minutes even as a beginner. https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/97-98-11f3805bab5fd5b644b1d1bbd72dcdca-w98-2014-09-13-22-20-41.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/97-98-11f3805bab5... * Excel: same as word, with the addition of a grid in the body. the challenge is in chaining together the cells. trivial as hell -- as long as you ignore the application/domain logic, which would've been just as complicated back then. https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/57db2161e19c9e95d86ab25be9c8b127f205eb8ff365fdb218ecfbadbcba2aa2.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/57db2161e19c9e95d... * slightly challenging for someone that hasn't encountered flex. extremely easy -- albeit time consuming just because of the quantity of buttons. still doable within <1h. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/old-software/graphic-software/adobe-photoshop/adobe-photoshop-5-5-preview.png https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/old-software/graphi... * logic: once again, the challenge is in the domain. the UI itself is just buttons in rows. trivially done by simple flex rows. https://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/mt/MT_93_04_notator_logi_large.jpg https://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/mt/MT_93_04_no... * winamp 2.5: once again, trivial to do. creating this UI -- without the domain logic of actually playing the music etc behind it -- can be done within <1h. https://preterhuman.net/software/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/winamp25-680x445.jpg https://preterhuman.net/software/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/... It goes on and on. Every single example youre citing is just rows and rows of icons. Thats extremely easy to implement with pure html and trivial css. give any of these UIs to an experienced frontend dev and they'll provide you with a click dummy within 15 minutes to 3hours, depending on the quantity of elements on it. I'd be pointless, precisely because nobody cares about such trivial UIs anymore... But hey, whatever floats your boat, right? And everything I wrote here is ignoring the fact that every one of your example was the opposite of easy back in the 90s. They were developed by whole teams over years to get to that point, despite what was claimed initially. And duplicating this with html5 is trivial, that itself should tell you how much easier it's gotten if you just don't chase the hippest tech that's fotm right now
  - adastra22 2y ago
    In ignoring this subthread because you introduced the “pre-2k” filter which I never mentioned and turned this into a no-true-Scotsman debate.
    - ffsm8 2y ago
      ...what? how is 90s not pre 2k? you do know what timeperiod the 90s is, right? oooh, i see. you edited it out of your initial comment back then and i didn't notice. I guess you realized how dumb that statement was and couldn't man up to it.
      - adastra22 2y ago
        Am I taking crazy pills? I never mentioned the 90's! Here's my original post, which is unedited: > Developers like you and I are a dying breed. We remember writing applications for operating systems that had straightforward APIs, and OS developers that worked hard to ensure any app which used those APIs would not break. > Most "full-stack" developers I know that write web apps have literally never written a line of C++ in their life, let alone written a rich text editor using an object oriented desktop GUI API. > They don't know it's not supposed to hurt. HN doesn't allow editing comments outside of a very short edit window.

by ffsm8 2y ago

coldtea 2y ago

>Please provide a screenshot or at least a name of an UI/application from before 2000 that's not braindead easy to implement with pure html/trivial css and simple click handlers. I'm not sure what exactly you think "UI/applications from before 2000" looked like and were. You do know that, e.g. Word, Excel, Photoshop, Logic, WinAmp, Paint, Framemaker, 3ds Max, Final Draft, Lotus Domino/Agenda, Visio, QuickBooks, Cinema 4D, Encarta, Dreamweaver, ACDSee, Real Player, Outlook, AIM, ICQ, FL Studio, Maya, WinRar, WinZip, InDesign, Quark Xpress, Cubase, and countless others, commercial and freeware, including full featured KDE and Gnome DEs were made before 2000, right?

ffsm8 2y ago
Oh yes, i do know that. but do YOU know how they looked back then? because they're literally just toolbars with buttons on em and canvas frames which are just fricking images / application logic! rendering these viewports/canvases are challenging for sure -- back then just like today, because thats where where the domain logic goes. the UI back then were fucking trivial, youre deluding yourself if you think anything else. Lets go through your first examples one-by-one, as the theme continues i will stop at some point. * Word: literally just 1 menu/text, 2 rows of icons. And a range picker. you can do that within ~15 minutes even as a beginner. https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/97-98-11f3805bab5fd5b644b1d1bbd72dcdca-w98-2014-09-13-22-20-41.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/97-98-11f3805bab5... * Excel: same as word, with the addition of a grid in the body. the challenge is in chaining together the cells. trivial as hell -- as long as you ignore the application/domain logic, which would've been just as complicated back then. https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/57db2161e19c9e95d86ab25be9c8b127f205eb8ff365fdb218ecfbadbcba2aa2.png https://winworldpc.com/res/img/screenshots/57db2161e19c9e95d... * slightly challenging for someone that hasn't encountered flex. extremely easy -- albeit time consuming just because of the quantity of buttons. still doable within <1h. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/old-software/graphic-software/adobe-photoshop/adobe-photoshop-5-5-preview.png https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/uploaded/old-software/graphi... * logic: once again, the challenge is in the domain. the UI itself is just buttons in rows. trivially done by simple flex rows. https://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/mt/MT_93_04_notator_logi_large.jpg https://www.muzines.co.uk/images_mag/articles/mt/MT_93_04_no... * winamp 2.5: once again, trivial to do. creating this UI -- without the domain logic of actually playing the music etc behind it -- can be done within <1h. https://preterhuman.net/software/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/winamp25-680x445.jpg https://preterhuman.net/software/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/... It goes on and on. Every single example youre citing is just rows and rows of icons. Thats extremely easy to implement with pure html and trivial css. give any of these UIs to an experienced frontend dev and they'll provide you with a click dummy within 15 minutes to 3hours, depending on the quantity of elements on it. I'd be pointless, precisely because nobody cares about such trivial UIs anymore... But hey, whatever floats your boat, right? And everything I wrote here is ignoring the fact that every one of your example was the opposite of easy back in the 90s. They were developed by whole teams over years to get to that point, despite what was claimed initially. And duplicating this with html5 is trivial, that itself should tell you how much easier it's gotten if you just don't chase the hippest tech that's fotm right now
- adastra22 2y ago
  In ignoring this subthread because you introduced the “pre-2k” filter which I never mentioned and turned this into a no-true-Scotsman debate.
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    ...what? how is 90s not pre 2k? you do know what timeperiod the 90s is, right? oooh, i see. you edited it out of your initial comment back then and i didn't notice. I guess you realized how dumb that statement was and couldn't man up to it.
    - adastra22 2y ago
      Am I taking crazy pills? I never mentioned the 90's! Here's my original post, which is unedited: > Developers like you and I are a dying breed. We remember writing applications for operating systems that had straightforward APIs, and OS developers that worked hard to ensure any app which used those APIs would not break. > Most "full-stack" developers I know that write web apps have literally never written a line of C++ in their life, let alone written a rich text editor using an object oriented desktop GUI API. > They don't know it's not supposed to hurt. HN doesn't allow editing comments outside of a very short edit window.