4 ms·

I wouldn't personally mind if the pace of innovation changed to being far slower, but I would be concerned if the pace of CVE and bug fixing decayed badly. I d

by ggm 2y ago

I wouldn't personally mind if the pace of innovation changed to being far slower, but I would be concerned if the pace of CVE and bug fixing decayed badly. I don't think most of the innovation has done very much. I realise this is deprecating the sunk wow factor and deprecating the future wow factor, but in the end, its HTML mostly for me. In fact, if the primary function of code work for the next 5-10 years was to remove code, I'd be pretty much in favour.

mcfedr 2y ago
Do you even remember the IE6 days? - this opinion seems quite widespread but the open web is great for all of us.
- viraptor 2y ago
  There's a huge gap between ie6 and what's happening now. I don't think anyone arguing for slowing down what's been happening for the last (let's say) 10 years is talking about the stupidity of ie6. Ie10 has been out for 12 years now!
  - bruce511 2y ago
    >> There's a huge gap between ie6 and what's happening now. Yes. The fast paced development, and rich environment we see now is sooooo much better than the stagnation of IE6. Cutting funding essentially returns us to the IE6 monoculture with no progress. I, for one, am not advocating a return.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      > Cutting funding essentially returns us to the IE6 monoculture with no progress. 1. It doesn't return us to monoculture - Monoculture of ie6 gave us multiple browsers, which recently all merged into Chrome. We already have a monoculture which will now lose funding. 2. We're not losing any of that progress. Actual documented standards exist now, all players implement the same basics, and you can create most websites without browser specific quirks. That's not going away. 3. We've had so much progress that Electron is its own massive OS now. We could do with a bit less progress and a bit more "how do we make this mess maintainable".
    - asadotzler 2y ago
      IE 6 gave us web apps with XMLHttpReques. IE 6 was amazing and developers loved it. It kicked the pants off of Netscape and earlier IEs.
      - bruce511 2y ago
        Yes, it added a lot of new things snd gained 100% market share. Then did absolutely nothing for years and years. The web basically stagnated because once you have 100% there's no incentive to even fix bugs.
bobajeff 2y ago
Yeah I'm of the mind that most browser innovation has been adding APIs for app development. If all that stuff was split off from the browser and left to electron apps then it would be far less attack surface for exploits.
- Seattle3503 2y ago
  I like having an open platform for app development, even if it's got some rough edges.
  - bobajeff 2y ago
    I love the web as an application platform too. However I don't believe it's right to continually hang all of the complexity of a application runtime on what should be a relatively simple client for things that people actually use it for such as forums, watching videos and reading articles. The costs are just too high.
- socalgal2 2y ago
  Um, no? Electron is insecure. Apps made with it can do far more harm to your machine then a webpage.
stickfigure 2y ago
I wrote HTML in the 90s. Modern standards like flexbox are objectively better than the float hacks and tables we used before. The geocities aesthetic is cute but it is extremely limited. The web is now a competitor for native apps. That would never have been possible without the fast pace of innovation. Don't knock it.
- hereonout2 2y ago
  Yep it's an odd take! I was last a "web developer" almost two decades ago, but dipping back in on a few occasions I am always appreciative of how much innovation has happened since then. The world before the huge investment in browser technology was dark. Tables and spacers for meaningful layout and flash or shockwave for anything interactive. I remember a time when css based drop down menus were seen as some sort of state of the art.
  - mediumsmart 2y ago
    > I remember a time when css based drop down menus were seen as some sort of state of the art. They still are on mobile for navigation - full screen sans js
    - psychoslave 2y ago
      Yes, presenting a large catalog of products (a few hundreds), for discovery purpose an efficient menu is still a big challenge in term of UX and technical implementation all the more when portability, accessibility, and cross-devices is taken into account. Things that definitely look like trivial banality at shallow level often end up to need a lot of attention on many concurrent details.
  - graycat 2y ago
    Uh, a guess is that 1+ billion people are already good at using "drop down menus" along with check boxes, radio buttons, single line text boxes, multiline text boxes, push buttons, links. So, when those user interface controls are sufficient for the purpose, using something else might reduce the collection of happy users. The Web site of my bank stays close to such now classic controls.
asadotzler 2y ago
So, just let native proprietary platforms take over? It's fine to plow massive investment into Android and iOS but the web is undeserving?
- psychoslave 2y ago
  That raises the question why we ended up with such small set of platforms, both being under the umbrella of the same country (no matter which particular one, that's not the point). And then the technical aspects looks several order lower in term of meaningfulness than anything that will influence it at geological level.

by ggm 2y ago

mcfedr 2y ago

Do you even remember the IE6 days? - this opinion seems quite widespread but the open web is great for all of us.

viraptor 2y ago
There's a huge gap between ie6 and what's happening now. I don't think anyone arguing for slowing down what's been happening for the last (let's say) 10 years is talking about the stupidity of ie6. Ie10 has been out for 12 years now!
- bruce511 2y ago
  >> There's a huge gap between ie6 and what's happening now. Yes. The fast paced development, and rich environment we see now is sooooo much better than the stagnation of IE6. Cutting funding essentially returns us to the IE6 monoculture with no progress. I, for one, am not advocating a return.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    > Cutting funding essentially returns us to the IE6 monoculture with no progress. 1. It doesn't return us to monoculture - Monoculture of ie6 gave us multiple browsers, which recently all merged into Chrome. We already have a monoculture which will now lose funding. 2. We're not losing any of that progress. Actual documented standards exist now, all players implement the same basics, and you can create most websites without browser specific quirks. That's not going away. 3. We've had so much progress that Electron is its own massive OS now. We could do with a bit less progress and a bit more "how do we make this mess maintainable".
  - asadotzler 2y ago
    IE 6 gave us web apps with XMLHttpReques. IE 6 was amazing and developers loved it. It kicked the pants off of Netscape and earlier IEs.
    - bruce511 2y ago
      Yes, it added a lot of new things snd gained 100% market share. Then did absolutely nothing for years and years. The web basically stagnated because once you have 100% there's no incentive to even fix bugs.

bobajeff 2y ago

Yeah I'm of the mind that most browser innovation has been adding APIs for app development. If all that stuff was split off from the browser and left to electron apps then it would be far less attack surface for exploits.

Seattle3503 2y ago
I like having an open platform for app development, even if it's got some rough edges.
- bobajeff 2y ago
  I love the web as an application platform too. However I don't believe it's right to continually hang all of the complexity of a application runtime on what should be a relatively simple client for things that people actually use it for such as forums, watching videos and reading articles. The costs are just too high.
socalgal2 2y ago
Um, no? Electron is insecure. Apps made with it can do far more harm to your machine then a webpage.

stickfigure 2y ago

I wrote HTML in the 90s. Modern standards like flexbox are objectively better than the float hacks and tables we used before. The geocities aesthetic is cute but it is extremely limited. The web is now a competitor for native apps. That would never have been possible without the fast pace of innovation. Don't knock it.

hereonout2 2y ago
Yep it's an odd take! I was last a "web developer" almost two decades ago, but dipping back in on a few occasions I am always appreciative of how much innovation has happened since then. The world before the huge investment in browser technology was dark. Tables and spacers for meaningful layout and flash or shockwave for anything interactive. I remember a time when css based drop down menus were seen as some sort of state of the art.
- mediumsmart 2y ago
  > I remember a time when css based drop down menus were seen as some sort of state of the art. They still are on mobile for navigation - full screen sans js
  - psychoslave 2y ago
    Yes, presenting a large catalog of products (a few hundreds), for discovery purpose an efficient menu is still a big challenge in term of UX and technical implementation all the more when portability, accessibility, and cross-devices is taken into account. Things that definitely look like trivial banality at shallow level often end up to need a lot of attention on many concurrent details.
- graycat 2y ago
  Uh, a guess is that 1+ billion people are already good at using "drop down menus" along with check boxes, radio buttons, single line text boxes, multiline text boxes, push buttons, links. So, when those user interface controls are sufficient for the purpose, using something else might reduce the collection of happy users. The Web site of my bank stays close to such now classic controls.

asadotzler 2y ago

So, just let native proprietary platforms take over? It's fine to plow massive investment into Android and iOS but the web is undeserving?

psychoslave 2y ago
That raises the question why we ended up with such small set of platforms, both being under the umbrella of the same country (no matter which particular one, that's not the point). And then the technical aspects looks several order lower in term of meaningfulness than anything that will influence it at geological level.