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It said simple web pages, not web apps. Web apps that use APIs are basically in the same boat as a phone app. Constantly moving API target and platform requirem

by ehnto 1y ago

It said simple web pages, not web apps. Web apps that use APIs are basically in the same boat as a phone app. Constantly moving API target and platform requirements ever changing.

cylemons 1y ago
Just like simple webpages, simple desktop and mobile apps last a long time too. It is only when working on complex applications that use cutting edge apis that churn is a problem
- kqr 1y ago
  > mobile apps last a long time too Really? How come half of the apps I've used in the past are listed in the app store as "not compatible with this device, but they can be installed on $device_gone_to_rest_in_drawer_14_years_ago"? I'm genuinely curious! I thought it was aggressive deprecation of mobile OS APIs that made old apps no longer work on new phones.
  - cylemons 1y ago
    Have you tried installing APKs directly?
- swiftcoder 1y ago
  Both Apple and Google start stripping apps out of the store once they stop shipping updates. And Apple in particular deprecates APIs like they are going out of business. Not to mention things like the whole 32->64bit transition that dropped all previous iOS apps (and on the MacOS side of things, we've had 4x of those in the past 25 years - classic->OSX, powerpc->intel, 32->64bit, intel->M series)
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Google is really the more strict of the two here. On the App Store you can get away with shipping an update from an old version of Xcode once every couple of years, while Google will boot you if you don’t increase your SDK target (which entails updating your whole toolchain and probably several dependencies too) once every year. Deprecations are pretty soft and many of the APIs deprecated well over a decade ago still technically function. The major platform transitions are harder breaks but are pretty rare. We’re not going to another architecture shift or bit increase for a long time.
snowwrestler 1y ago
Ok but what is serving the simple web page? Do we think that software has been patched or rewritten over the last few decades? I feel like there is a category error here where people think a website is the HTML that lands in your browser. When actually it is also the technology that received your request and sent the HTML. Even if it’s the same “flat” HTML sitting on the server, a web application is still sending it. And yes, those require maintenance.
- ehnto 1y ago
  Of course, but some technologies are more mature and stable, and maintaining those amounts to set and forget security updates, not rewriting functionality to keep up with changing features etc. It's not a dichotomy though. If you build with cutting edge platforms, you'll suffer churn as things change underneath you. It's a choice you should make with awareness, but there's no right answer. I prefer stable mature platforms for professional settings, because you can focus on the business problems and not the technology problems. It's the more fiscally responsible choice as well, given lower platform churn means less work that has no direct business value.
swiftcoder 1y ago
Have we actually had any big webapi deprecations? I mean, I guess the death of Flash / Java Applets / ActiveX / etc count, but in the javascript world, doesn't feel like we've actually had that many breaking changes
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  Sure we have. Off the top of my head, and relevant to this article, the websql api was deprecated after 2-3 years of support.
  - swiftcoder 1y ago
    I guess so. Since WebSQL got sniped well before standardisation (and Mozilla never implemented it in the first place), I wasn’t really counting it
  - afiori 1y ago
    More like it was moved to a library

by ehnto 1y ago

It said simple web pages, not web apps. Web apps that use APIs are basically in the same boat as a phone app. Constantly moving API target and platform requirements ever changing.

cylemons 1y ago

Just like simple webpages, simple desktop and mobile apps last a long time too. It is only when working on complex applications that use cutting edge apis that churn is a problem

kqr 1y ago
> mobile apps last a long time too Really? How come half of the apps I've used in the past are listed in the app store as "not compatible with this device, but they can be installed on $device_gone_to_rest_in_drawer_14_years_ago"? I'm genuinely curious! I thought it was aggressive deprecation of mobile OS APIs that made old apps no longer work on new phones.
- cylemons 1y ago
  Have you tried installing APKs directly?
swiftcoder 1y ago
Both Apple and Google start stripping apps out of the store once they stop shipping updates. And Apple in particular deprecates APIs like they are going out of business. Not to mention things like the whole 32->64bit transition that dropped all previous iOS apps (and on the MacOS side of things, we've had 4x of those in the past 25 years - classic->OSX, powerpc->intel, 32->64bit, intel->M series)
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Google is really the more strict of the two here. On the App Store you can get away with shipping an update from an old version of Xcode once every couple of years, while Google will boot you if you don’t increase your SDK target (which entails updating your whole toolchain and probably several dependencies too) once every year. Deprecations are pretty soft and many of the APIs deprecated well over a decade ago still technically function. The major platform transitions are harder breaks but are pretty rare. We’re not going to another architecture shift or bit increase for a long time.

snowwrestler 1y ago

Ok but what is serving the simple web page? Do we think that software has been patched or rewritten over the last few decades? I feel like there is a category error here where people think a website is the HTML that lands in your browser. When actually it is also the technology that received your request and sent the HTML. Even if it’s the same “flat” HTML sitting on the server, a web application is still sending it. And yes, those require maintenance.

ehnto 1y ago
Of course, but some technologies are more mature and stable, and maintaining those amounts to set and forget security updates, not rewriting functionality to keep up with changing features etc. It's not a dichotomy though. If you build with cutting edge platforms, you'll suffer churn as things change underneath you. It's a choice you should make with awareness, but there's no right answer. I prefer stable mature platforms for professional settings, because you can focus on the business problems and not the technology problems. It's the more fiscally responsible choice as well, given lower platform churn means less work that has no direct business value.

swiftcoder 1y ago

Have we actually had any big webapi deprecations? I mean, I guess the death of Flash / Java Applets / ActiveX / etc count, but in the javascript world, doesn't feel like we've actually had that many breaking changes

pcthrowaway 1y ago
Sure we have. Off the top of my head, and relevant to this article, the websql api was deprecated after 2-3 years of support.
- swiftcoder 1y ago
  I guess so. Since WebSQL got sniped well before standardisation (and Mozilla never implemented it in the first place), I wasn’t really counting it
- afiori 1y ago
  More like it was moved to a library