4 ms·

Isn't the OP describing the world as the older generation wanted it to be? If you had asked some programming luminaries in the early 80s what they expected fro

Isn't the OP describing the world as the older generation wanted it to be? If you had asked some programming luminaries in the early 80s what they expected from programming 30 years later, they would have said "it will be more abstract, higher-level, with less direct knowledge of the underlying hardware required. Software should be write-once run-anywhere and shouldn't require arcane knowledge of the lower levels of the stack, and this will be a good thing." Well, guess what, here we are. I'm afraid I can't remember the source of the quote, but this is analogous to the belief that "the advancement of a civilization can be measured in the number of things a person can make happen without needing to understand how". Web development is, for the most part, write-once run-anywhere, from an x86-on-steroids desktop PC to a pocket-sized RISC device (even for people with very small pockets). Frameworks abstract away a lot of complexity and a modern developer is more of a builder than a wizard, and this is a good thing. If you had told those 80s programmers that programming in the future would have been less like electronic brain surgery and more like building with Lego, they would have, I think, been quite pleased at the notion. Thirty years of software engineering research and practise have gone into making it this easy to build stuff. I wonder if perhaps the fact that development now looks pretty similar to development 30 years ago causes people to overlook just how much has changed; it's also true that despite things getting easier, there are still plenty of frustrations in modern development that a programmer from the 80s would recognise.

zxcdw 14y ago
While I think it is great that we can now do things with ease without having to worry about all the details, I also think it limits us when doing things. This is not a problem in entreprise/commercial software development because it gives more control for the manages over the developers and the development process, thus reducing complexity of the process. However, this is a problem for us who are driven by curiosity and the joy of creative problem solving. Demoscene[1] is a good example of this. Back in the day when people wanted to create great looking audiovisual works of art, they had to program them for the computer. There were no movie/3D/CGI editors to do the job with. The whole scene revolved around the technical limitations and beating them. People formed groups which competed against others by creating ever-more stunning effects with more and more content on the screen. Now, new people wonder why do people bother doing the art by programming some obscure old machine? Sure it would be easier to use Sony Vegas for visuals and FL Studio for audio? But hese people miss the point. Some people are not driven to play with these things in order to create art. They are driven by their desire to do creative problem solving. These days the scene has lost it's appeal in public because there's nothing special in stunning graphics on screen. And very few people really care about the fact that some of the works are created within very tight technical constraints[2][3]. All this is gone and "dead" though. Not only demoscene, but the spirit of ceative problem solving within technical constraints. This is the problem I have. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWcbj7ksqwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWcbj7ksqwE [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DjBq2O0XXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DjBq2O0XXk
- dasil003 14y ago
  People are still pushing the boundaries in every direction, it's just not as easy to see in one place, and not as amazing because we are desensitized to it. I mean we'll never be amazed again the way we were by Doom when it first came out, but don't tell John Carmack he's not trying to squeeze out every ounce of performance from today's hardware.
  - zxcdw 14y ago
    People are always pushing the boundaries somewhere. These days there's much less space for it though. Another interesting domain in which creative problem solving rules the game is computer security. But it too is going away once we move away from C and C++ based infrastructure.
    - rjknight 14y ago
      Before computers, people had to figure out incredibly inventive ways of producing sound and video effects in music and movies. Just consider what it took to create some of the great audiovisual works of the pre-1980s! But computers came along and ruined all of that by making it easier, replacing the interface to the microphone or the camera with a computer. This has always happened, it will always continue to happen, but the creativity will move elsewhere. It won't be too long before people are lamenting the loss of computer programming almost entirely, but by then the creative people will have moved on to, say, synthetic biology or some new system that can be 'hacked'.
dasil003 14y ago
> Web development is, for the most part, write-once run-anywhere, from an x86-on-steroids desktop PC to a pocket-sized RISC device (even for people with very small pockets) I find it shocking how so many old-timers fail to see how amazing the web is in terms of being the first de-facto cross-platform cross-media technology, and instead lament the loss of powerful proprietary GUI toolkits. I mean sure portable HTML/CSS/Javascript is incredibly difficult and it's full of warts, but it's pretty minor considering the accessibility of something that can be accessed on any device running any OS, by people with any disability. Yeah, so the win32 API was more elegant for throwing up a toolbar GUI, big fucking whoop; it's like Louis CK's bit about complaining about the Internet on an airplane, total blindness to the accomplishments in front of us.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  I fall into this camp. I like the promise of the web, but many web apps just feel janky compared to their native counterparts, much like Java never felt quite right compared to native apps. But this time, nobody seems to really care, because it runs in the browser. Plus, re-inventing things in the browser passes for innovation ("ssh client in JS!") around here.
  - dasil003 14y ago
    Whether people care or not is a moot point though. The fact is that web standards continue to evolve whereas GUI toolkits can never become truly cross-platform and installation-free. The web is never best-of-breed, but its advantages are unassailable.

zxcdw 14y ago

While I think it is great that we can now do things with ease without having to worry about all the details, I also think it limits us when doing things. This is not a problem in entreprise/commercial software development because it gives more control for the manages over the developers and the development process, thus reducing complexity of the process. However, this is a problem for us who are driven by curiosity and the joy of creative problem solving. Demoscene[1] is a good example of this. Back in the day when people wanted to create great looking audiovisual works of art, they had to program them for the computer. There were no movie/3D/CGI editors to do the job with. The whole scene revolved around the technical limitations and beating them. People formed groups which competed against others by creating ever-more stunning effects with more and more content on the screen. Now, new people wonder why do people bother doing the art by programming some obscure old machine? Sure it would be easier to use Sony Vegas for visuals and FL Studio for audio? But hese people miss the point. Some people are not driven to play with these things in order to create art. They are driven by their desire to do creative problem solving. These days the scene has lost it's appeal in public because there's nothing special in stunning graphics on screen. And very few people really care about the fact that some of the works are created within very tight technical constraints[2][3]. All this is gone and "dead" though. Not only demoscene, but the spirit of ceative problem solving within technical constraints. This is the problem I have. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWcbj7ksqwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWcbj7ksqwE [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DjBq2O0XXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DjBq2O0XXk

dasil003 14y ago
People are still pushing the boundaries in every direction, it's just not as easy to see in one place, and not as amazing because we are desensitized to it. I mean we'll never be amazed again the way we were by Doom when it first came out, but don't tell John Carmack he's not trying to squeeze out every ounce of performance from today's hardware.
- zxcdw 14y ago
  People are always pushing the boundaries somewhere. These days there's much less space for it though. Another interesting domain in which creative problem solving rules the game is computer security. But it too is going away once we move away from C and C++ based infrastructure.
  - rjknight 14y ago
    Before computers, people had to figure out incredibly inventive ways of producing sound and video effects in music and movies. Just consider what it took to create some of the great audiovisual works of the pre-1980s! But computers came along and ruined all of that by making it easier, replacing the interface to the microphone or the camera with a computer. This has always happened, it will always continue to happen, but the creativity will move elsewhere. It won't be too long before people are lamenting the loss of computer programming almost entirely, but by then the creative people will have moved on to, say, synthetic biology or some new system that can be 'hacked'.

dasil003 14y ago

> Web development is, for the most part, write-once run-anywhere, from an x86-on-steroids desktop PC to a pocket-sized RISC device (even for people with very small pockets) I find it shocking how so many old-timers fail to see how amazing the web is in terms of being the first de-facto cross-platform cross-media technology, and instead lament the loss of powerful proprietary GUI toolkits. I mean sure portable HTML/CSS/Javascript is incredibly difficult and it's full of warts, but it's pretty minor considering the accessibility of something that can be accessed on any device running any OS, by people with any disability. Yeah, so the win32 API was more elegant for throwing up a toolbar GUI, big fucking whoop; it's like Louis CK's bit about complaining about the Internet on an airplane, total blindness to the accomplishments in front of us.

mattgreenrocks 14y ago
I fall into this camp. I like the promise of the web, but many web apps just feel janky compared to their native counterparts, much like Java never felt quite right compared to native apps. But this time, nobody seems to really care, because it runs in the browser. Plus, re-inventing things in the browser passes for innovation ("ssh client in JS!") around here.
- dasil003 14y ago
  Whether people care or not is a moot point though. The fact is that web standards continue to evolve whereas GUI toolkits can never become truly cross-platform and installation-free. The web is never best-of-breed, but its advantages are unassailable.