4 ms·

I keep wondering why we can't have 2000s software on today's hardware. Maybe because browsers are de facto required to build apps?

ryandrake 7mo ago
We could, but most of the 2000s developers are gone. Or, we no longer have developers left with 2000s attitudes and approaches to software development.
- balamatom 7mo ago
  Real talk. Well, some of the "old school" has left the market of natural causes since the 2000s. That only leaves the rest of 'em. Wer dey go, and what are your top 3 reasons for how the values of the 2000s era failed to transmit to the next generation of developers?
  - kps 7mo ago
    There's no market for it.
    - balamatom 7mo ago
      Not real talk. To have a market for something you need people to find it valuable. What drove the shift in values?
      - ekaryotic 7mo ago
        could have been a pressure to decrease wages, decreasing quality in exchange for increased quantity of code.
        balamatom 6mo ago
        Alright, if we were to replace "quantity of code" with something like "feature velocity", I might agree that something like that could be the case. Of course, then the next question is: how was this accomplished? I mean, we're talking people's values here - i.e. the preferences of economic actors - IIUC the phenomenon underlying the entire market model? Are those so flimsy so as to be completely overwritten in a generation's time? Is this something that happens every generation?
- tcmart14 7mo ago
  I think that is a little bit unfair. I think plenty of developers, myself included wouldn't mind or would like to do native applications. Every time someone does those, a mountain of people ask "why" and "this shoulda/coulda been a web app." And some of that is somewhat reasonable. It's easier to achieve decent-ish cross platform. But also tons of consumers also just don't wanna download and install applications unless it comes from an App Store. And even then, it's iffy. Or most often the case, it's a requirement of the founders/upper management/c-suite. And lets be honest, when tons of jobs ask for reactive experience or vue.js, what motivates developers to learn GTK or Qt or Winforms or WinUI3?
  - asyx 7mo ago
    Yep. I graduated in 2017 and jobs were already mostly web. I’d love to work on native applications but nobody is hiring for that and of course because nobody is hiring for that I don’t have a job like that and the Qt I learnt in university is not gonna get any more relevant over time but I don’t have a good reason to keep that skill up to date and if I have to solve a problem I might as well write a TUI or CLI application because that’s easier than Qt or whatever…
- QuiEgo 7mo ago
  It's also reasonable from a business point of view to say "we can't justify the investment to optimize our software in the current environment." I assume this is what's happening - people are trying to get their products in customers hands as quickly as possible, and everything else is secondary once it's "good enough." I suspect it's less about developers and more about business needs. Perhaps the math will change if the hardware market stagnates and people are keeping computers and phones for 10 years. Perhaps it will even become a product differentiator again. Perhaps I'm delusional :).
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
ponector 7mo ago
The software is optimized for the machines used by developers. If you have latest MacBook pro max super ultra you are fine. Contrary, I've been issued a virtual machine with 4 cores and no GPU. It takes 15 seconds for web app to render a table in the browser.

ryandrake 7mo ago

We could, but most of the 2000s developers are gone. Or, we no longer have developers left with 2000s attitudes and approaches to software development.

balamatom 7mo ago
Real talk. Well, some of the "old school" has left the market of natural causes since the 2000s. That only leaves the rest of 'em. Wer dey go, and what are your top 3 reasons for how the values of the 2000s era failed to transmit to the next generation of developers?
- kps 7mo ago
  There's no market for it.
  - balamatom 7mo ago
    Not real talk. To have a market for something you need people to find it valuable. What drove the shift in values?
    - ekaryotic 7mo ago
      could have been a pressure to decrease wages, decreasing quality in exchange for increased quantity of code.
      - balamatom 6mo ago
        Alright, if we were to replace "quantity of code" with something like "feature velocity", I might agree that something like that could be the case. Of course, then the next question is: how was this accomplished? I mean, we're talking people's values here - i.e. the preferences of economic actors - IIUC the phenomenon underlying the entire market model? Are those so flimsy so as to be completely overwritten in a generation's time? Is this something that happens every generation?
tcmart14 7mo ago
I think that is a little bit unfair. I think plenty of developers, myself included wouldn't mind or would like to do native applications. Every time someone does those, a mountain of people ask "why" and "this shoulda/coulda been a web app." And some of that is somewhat reasonable. It's easier to achieve decent-ish cross platform. But also tons of consumers also just don't wanna download and install applications unless it comes from an App Store. And even then, it's iffy. Or most often the case, it's a requirement of the founders/upper management/c-suite. And lets be honest, when tons of jobs ask for reactive experience or vue.js, what motivates developers to learn GTK or Qt or Winforms or WinUI3?
- asyx 7mo ago
  Yep. I graduated in 2017 and jobs were already mostly web. I’d love to work on native applications but nobody is hiring for that and of course because nobody is hiring for that I don’t have a job like that and the Qt I learnt in university is not gonna get any more relevant over time but I don’t have a good reason to keep that skill up to date and if I have to solve a problem I might as well write a TUI or CLI application because that’s easier than Qt or whatever…
QuiEgo 7mo ago
It's also reasonable from a business point of view to say "we can't justify the investment to optimize our software in the current environment." I assume this is what's happening - people are trying to get their products in customers hands as quickly as possible, and everything else is secondary once it's "good enough." I suspect it's less about developers and more about business needs. Perhaps the math will change if the hardware market stagnates and people are keeping computers and phones for 10 years. Perhaps it will even become a product differentiator again. Perhaps I'm delusional :).

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

ponector 7mo ago

The software is optimized for the machines used by developers. If you have latest MacBook pro max super ultra you are fine. Contrary, I've been issued a virtual machine with 4 cores and no GPU. It takes 15 seconds for web app to render a table in the browser.