21 ms·

Web Development: A Crazy World

383 points by cygwin98 14y ago

thewarrior 14y ago
Thats the reason why its more important to learn the fundamental ideas behind the frameworks and not just the syntactic sugar . A deep understanding of any one will help in easily picking up any of the newer ones.
damian2000 14y ago
Sounds like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis
yjh0502 14y ago
Maybe this post is the original one: http://tilomitra.com/the-crazy-world-of-code/ http://tilomitra.com/the-crazy-world-of-code/
- cygwin98 14y ago
  OP here. Added this link to my blog post. Thanks for the tip.
mipapage 14y ago
Recently redid a WP site a neighbor had for his small business. Single page flat html using bootstrap. What fun that was! So refreshingly simple.
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- klodolph 14y ago
  Tshinghua University is in Beijing. "BBS" and "forum" are approximately synonyms.
adamors 14y ago
Living in a bubble.
davidw 14y ago
Most of the 'mess' I see is the current state of Javascript frameworks, which are in the Cambrian explosion phase of things. I'd just use Rails as a default for most things I do these days, and if it's not a good fit, evaluate other technology.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  I was just about to post "Cambrian explosion" as an metaphor for the state of javascript libraries. There are good reasons to get the HTML formatting off the server and into the client, so the new style JS is all going in the right direction. So another metaphor: All these frameworks are trying to solve the right problem in the right direction - which one will win out eventually - who knows, but even if you hitch a ride on one that stops half way, you are half way closer to the right destination than if you wait.
  - redeemedfadi 14y ago
    What will be funny is when we move everything back to server-side once we don't have network latency/bandwidth issues.
    - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
      Really? transmitting just the data and letting the client handle the display and interaction seems a much more natural split. It alos makes my server software conceptually simpler - which is always nice
      - metaphorm 14y ago
        I agree. Separation of concerns is a very good design pattern. MVC server frameworks (like Rails and Django) have already separated out the concern of displaying data to the user with their template systems. its a very reasonable next step to just migrate the entire template system off the server and let the client do it. This has gigantic performance increases for servers under heavy load, and it puts the display logic in a domain that is more naturally suited to dealing with it (JavaScript and the DOM instead of treating HTML as just a string). The pattern also promotes the use of RESTful APIs for data access from the server, which has the wonderful bonus of allowing you to make your data publicly accessible for free if you want to.
pkorzeniewski 14y ago
Just choose the right tool for the job. Beside that, variety is a good thing, isn't it?
- coldtea 14y ago
  No, variety also means: 1) scattering of effort (each framework gets less total attention by fewer people), 2) duplication of effort (besides what is unique in each, tons of effort is spend in implementing mostly the same things), 3) Many half-finished frameworks 4) Worse documentation and less books/manuals/video tutorials (see 1, 2) 5) Less chances of getting an answer to a framework problem in forums/irc/SO (again: scattering of resources). 6) Less vibrant ecosystems around the framework (if each of 10 frameworks has 10% of the market, it's not as good a business to invest in making plugins as something that has 30-40%). Same for hosting offerings, support, etc. So you want variety but not too much. 2-3 big players would be mighty fine. 10 players of equal size, not so much.
  - cygwin98 14y ago
    Agree. The current war of numerous Javascript MVC frameworks reminds me of the situation of Python Web Framework a few years ago, the community was confused by so many choices to select from. In the end, nobody wins, even the ultimate winner Django lost the opportunity to become mainstream. In that sense, the merging of Rails and Merb seemed to be a wise and successful strategic move in hindsight.
    - metaphorm 14y ago
      Django is pretty mainstream. Its not as popular as Rails but its hardly a maverick. I think the reason why Python never went all in on a single web framework is just because the Python community itself is much larger and more diverse than the Ruby community. Consequently there were alot more opinions and alot more people willing to develop those opinions into separate projects. Maybe you're right that there are advantages to converging on a single framework, but I'm not so sure. Rails is omakase, so if there's some part of it you don't like its not really easy or a good idea to change it, and you don't have any other options in Ruby. Django is also omakase but if there's some part of Django that you really disagree with you can just move to web.py or flask or pyramid. these are all built on the common core of Python's wsgi module so these are just different opinions on how to accomplish the same task.
the1 14y ago
W in Wordpress stands for web scale.
jakozaur 14y ago
http://zef.me/4235/pick-your-battles http://zef.me/4235/pick-your-battles Pick technologies which are most suitable for the job, not the most "hyped" ones. Also don't forget that sometimes the latest technologies comes with innovation tax, you may be the first to solve some issues, because of the small ecosystem.
kenkam 14y ago
I agree and can see where OP is coming from. As a Chinese, I notice the difference in how we approach problems. Let me make an analogy: Chinese and western dude learns guitar. The Chinese player will worry about the scales, the hammer on/off drills, chord drills, picking drills, and maybe practice a song and focus on technicalities; western dude would pick a guitar, learn a few chords to play a song, realise that to play more songs he/she must practice hammer ons, etc, but everything is so that he can play more songs. They have never had to worry about drills. It's a means to an end. Web frameworks are just drills to choose from. Pick the one you need and move on. With experience, you'll be able to tell what is good and what is not. Why worry about which framework is "best"? It doesn't matter. If WP template and jquery solves the problem then why is he even talking about Haskell?
- stkni 14y ago
  You're right but I think this is a bit strong and perhaps a little generalist. Anyway, IMHO it DOES matter which is best for you because if you choose the wrong one, and you're project is big and complicated enough, you'll spend a long time dicking about trying to fix the 'deficiencies' of your poor technology choice later. So in some sense the OP is right too. IMHO, as with many things, a little moderation in both is the key. Do just enough analysis to meet your requirements, and future proof your choices, and then leave the crazy web world where you found it.
- lastmayday 14y ago
  Agree~
- rartichoke 14y ago
  I has nothing to do with being Chinese or not. I'm a "western dude" and I feel like it's my job to evaluate all of those things because picking the right tool IS my job. If I don't then I am doing a disservice to myself and clients. I wouldn't want to get surgery by a doctor who said "well, I can do the operation in 5 minutes instead of 5 hours if I knew how to use Hyper Awesome Super Laser but sorry, I don't know how to use that technology".
- arash_milani 14y ago
DodgyEggplant 14y ago
any human (or even nature) domain knowledge is enormously detailed rich, with countless sub-domains, methodologies and references beyond the scope of a single person. And thanks god for that.
purephase 14y ago
While some might complain or worry, this is what makes this field so fascinating. A myriad of options, toolsets and methodologies means that it is alive, open and thriving. Imagine is Adobe, Oracle or MS had won the Flash/Flex, Java or ActiveX battles, where would we have been today? As much as I use Chrome (and love it), I can't help but admire the work done by Mozilla to rescue the Netscape codebase and mould it into Firefox. I think they deserve a lot of the accolades that enables this zany ecosystem to thrive.
- dgesang 14y ago
  > Imagine is Adobe, Oracle or MS had won the Flash/Flex, Java or ActiveX battles, where would we have been today? I don't know what 'would have been', but I know that we would not be where we are today (in a positive sense) without those companies and the many many technologies and products they have provided us with (even though some of them can only serve as bad examples).
  - purephase 14y ago
    I'm not bashing them as a whole, just some of their technology decisions. To be honest, I've always felt that MS gets a bad rap. As much as it was anti-competitive, bundling IE in Windows enabled users to download alternative browsers. Obviously, there are other ways to do it but I doubt many users would have gone down that road with higher technical obstacles. As for Oracle, not much can redeem them. Flash had it's day, but I wish Adobe would let it die already.
    - dgesang 14y ago
      > As for Oracle, not much can redeem them. If anything. :) > I wish Adobe would let it die already. I know many here can't accept the truth that Flash had, has and will have its place on the Internet. There was a need for such a technology and there still is. I will be here for another 5-15 years or so, so we should make the best out of it instead of screaming 'DIE ALREADY'. But as always, there is plenty of room for improvements. :) FYI: Adobe donated Flex to the ASF a while ago and the mailing list is already the most active on ASF. It is actively developed and people are quite motivated.
chrismorgan 14y ago
As you can see, he hadn't heard of Python.
- conradfr 14y ago
  Which version of Python ? Django or Flask ? Django ORM or SQLAlchemy ?
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    There are only two practical choices right now, both for Python 2: 1) Django 2) Flask + SQLAlchemy Not that much choice, is there?
    - metaperl 14y ago
      I like web2py's DAL
    - chrismorgan 14y ago
      With Django 1.5 (final just about to be released, hopefully within a week) supporting Python 3, you're not tied to Python 2. There are other good options, too. Here's one, also conveniently Python 3 compatible: (3) Pyramid with (a) SQLAlchemy; (b) ZODB; (c) something else—whatever you want! I'm actually working on a Pyramid + traversal + ZODB project just at present. It's very instructive when once you have become used to URL routing and pattern matching (I've worked with Django hitherto).
Torn 14y ago
As with all technology choices, you've got to draw the line somewhere - new and risky, or old and proven, or somewhere in between. What matters these days is probably how well you and your team already know the technology, how good the documentation is, community size/takeup, how quick the devs are to respond to issues, and how mature and stable the API is from release to release. How popular/old the technology is also counts for more if you're looking to hire people with experience in it. MVC on the client is becoming more and more important, once you start slapping a lot of js on a page it can quickly become un-maintainable. We went with Backbone as Ember was changing too quickly in backwards-incompatible ways. MVC on the server (Django/Rails/Express/whatever) still has a place - you want something serving restful data / html skeletons and mapping urls to responses. In my day job that's Spring MVC because that's what people here know and it ain't broke. Frontend language choice: Learning JS seems to be the natural choice here. Things that compile to JS e.g. CoffeeScript or DART might also work for you; I don't have experience with them but I'd imagine debugging problems in the resulting js would be a pain until browsers support them natively.
- Kototama 14y ago
  I used to develop with JavaScript, and JavaScript with Backbone before we switched to ClojureScript. Backbone helped me to better structured my code but I found it also brings its own problems. There is a quite a lot of boilerplate code and views composed of other views were for me hard to manage. I also wrote some macros to use Backbone from Clojure but the mismatch between object/mutable and functional/immutable is too high. Finally the approach from http://clojurescriptone.com/ http://clojurescriptone.com/ seems promising. It uses a simple yet flexible event dispatcher. Add that a templating engine and you are done. Debugging ClojureScript within the browser is harder than normal JavaScript but it's easy nonetheless to find what generated JS functions corresponds to your ClojureScript code. If you compile in debug mode you can set a breakpoint as usual. Compiling ClojureScript adds a bit of overhead to the workflow but I compiled it continuously in the background via Emacs and forget about it, it just popups when an error occurs. In general I found ClojureScript much cleaner than JavaScript and it's easier for me to write cleaner code with it when the data manipulation or the logic is not trivial.
saltcod 14y ago
Wow. Fantastic piece. This is precisely how I see the ecosystem too. If I've learned anything: 1. Focus on something —Rails, Python, Javascript, WordPress, something 2. Learn to actually program — any language will do
- skeletonjelly 14y ago
  Maybe this is a side effect of this current day and age being a specialist society? Everyone needs something to differentiate themselves from the crowd, and Javascript being such a recent growth in setting a "standard" with regards to frameworks and tools makes for a good incubator for specialists.
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anons2011 14y ago
Quite amusing and very true. Just had a little look at Handlebars - writing 3 to 4 times as much to generate very little. Also reminds me of this tongue in cheek site : http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/ http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/
- spuz 14y ago
  3 to 4 times as much as what?
- equator 14y ago
  Heh... https://github.com/impressivewebs/HTML9-Responsive-Boilerstrap-js/issues https://github.com/impressivewebs/HTML9-Responsive-Boilerstr...
42tree 14y ago
This piece first appeared as a comment on this page in ENGLISH in July 2012: http://www.zemanta.com/blog/i-bet-you-over-engineered-your-startup/ http://www.zemanta.com/blog/i-bet-you-over-engineered-your-s... while the author claimed to have it translated from Chinese back to English, surprisingly almost exactly the same as the original English version. I guess English-Chinese-English translation has reached an amazing stage!
- cygwin98 14y ago
  OP here. I've updated my blog to credit eranation (author of the original English post) and relevant links. I was not aware of the existence of the original English post and thought that I should share it as lots of us suffers the same frustration. I guess English-Chinese-English translation has reached an amazing stage! I would take it as a compliment as my 'unofficial English version' isn't too far off.
  - 42tree 14y ago
    Yes, it is a compliment :) btw, if it is possible can you also show the link to the Chinese version?
- ttflee 14y ago
  > I guess English-Chinese-English translation has reached an amazing stage! It's a misunderstanding and/or an illusion. Most of the technological terms, e.g. jquery, node, ember.js etc, were merely copied from English to Chinese without translation. And BTW the retro-translation reads as if it was translated with Google translate service, which explains the low quality of translation.
raverbashing 14y ago
Yes, this The amount of 'meetoo.js' is amazing(ly bad) Because of course everybody has to have "MVC responsive html5 cascading containers with chocolate covering" Not to mention most of these are underdocumented, bug-ridden, too specific, etc Need a js library? JQuery. period (and don't get me started with mootools, I need to ship, not swim around their docs figuring out how to do what in jquery is easy ) And focus on the backend, a competent backend development will eat your whatever.js "specialist" except for the most specific cases
- bungle 14y ago
  > And focus on the backend, a competent backend development will eat your whatever.js "specialist" except for the most specific cases These days backend is pretty straight forward, mature, and usually easy compared to client side.
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    True, for CRUD apps (which are most of them) Still, the back end sees complexity the front-end doesn't. (it is mostly irrelevant for the Facebook frontend if they have hundreds or millions of servers - it certainly has an effect though)
- marknutter 14y ago
  > Need a js library? JQuery. period Sure, if you love writing the same boiler plate code over and over again to make sure your dom is updated and your data is synced. JS frameworks are solving a problem, whether or not people like that there are so many out there. We are in the early days, and of course there's going to be a lot of competition. A few will rise to the top and become standards. You know, there were quite a few competing JS libraries before JQuery became so popular..
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    What I mean is "don't use a jQuery competitor (or jQuery 'sized' tool) in place of jQuery" Sure, if you need something else/more use it, still I've been burned by those "wonderful js frameworks" and I'll make sure to not use them unless needed and thoroughly evaluated.
rpeden 14y ago
I've found that a large subset of programmers share the same trait as a large subset of photographers: they become so obsessed with tools that they lose sight of the fact that the end product is what matters at the end of the day. For example: there are many people who spend thousands on cameras and gear, and still take terrible photos. There are many developers who spend a lot of time keeping up with what they think is the latest trend, and yet they never finish any projects that get used. Then you have the photographers who take great shots no matter what gear they use, and developers who write and ship great code and products using Java and other unsexy languages. Can better tools help you be more productive? Absolutely. But if you spend all of your time worrying that you're not using the latest and great tools, you won't get much done, and you won't be satisfied with what you do get done. I have 15 cameras and unfinished projects in 10 languages that demonstrate that. My advice? Sit back, pick technology a couple of steps behind the bleeding edge, and focus on results. Choosing Ember over Backbone isn't going to cause your project to fail; building the wrong thing or failing to finish, however, will.
- smutticus 14y ago
  "A bad carpenter blames his tools." -- Unknown
  - _pmf_ 14y ago
    Carpenters with bad tools often permanently lose fingers.
  - __alexs 14y ago
    A good carpenter blames himself for using the wrong tools and gets new ones?
    - amouat 14y ago
      A good carpenter knows how to use his tools and which ones to use for the appropriate task.
    - analyst74 14y ago
beefsack 14y ago
Call me a masochist, but I love the huge amount of selection, I love how passionate people are about their own solutions meaning they rapidly improve, and I love getting my hands dirty with pretty much anything I can get my hands on. It's great having too many tools in your toolbox.
- baak 14y ago
  That last sentence conjured an image of a person trying to drag a giant toolbox with him everywhere for some reason :) I do tend to disagree with the sentiment though. The initial time investment per tool is steep. Also, the tools' values deteriorate rather rapidly. Languages/Frameworks will become less used over time as something new replaces them (generally), and even your specific skills with a language will get worse over time if you aren't using it.
davedx 14y ago
I've been wanting to use one of the new JavaScript frameworks on a new project, after dabbling with backbone and getting lost very quickly trying to clean up zombie views/events. My latest project is a front end site to a JSON API, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity, but after discussing it with my client we both decided not to. Because I know what I'm doing best in PHP. So the site is going to do REST queries, but on the backend. We still have the ability to use the API in other clients, and we could in the future use shinyFrameworkOf2013.js, but for now we're building something we know will work.
ChrisArchitect 14y ago
I like this because it demonstrates the complexity that can possibly be involved with some serious web development projects. Also, I think it is the skill/ability to make the decision between these tools and platforms and know that you only need some etc - is what separates the good educated developers from the rest.
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lhnz 14y ago
This has been my experience, too. But I think it's wrong to jump to the conclusion that because going too far and having to learn too much is a bad use of time that you should just stick to one or two things. This is black-and-white thinking and I think in this case, your response should be in the context of the problems you face and the career you are building. We do need to move along with technologies if we want to stay relevant. But you need to know what's a fashion and what's worth adding to your skillset. After leaving University I mainly knew Java but I learnt PHP and JavaScript because I wanted a web development job; later on I felt that none of the cool startups were using PHP and all of its warts had become very apparent to me so I picked up Python which seemed a lot more elegant. (However this was more a case of fashion that gave me access to higher-impact and higher-salary jobs. My actual needs to code in a general-purpose language with nice libraries isn't a worthy goal in itself.) Currently I am working entirely in Node.JS and I don't consider myself to be drinking the Kool Aid because it made more sense to stick to one programming language and I needed long-running processes. I do have to be careful to not add too many libraries, however. There is so much activity in the JavaScript world currently. I say you should focus on your career and wherever you see that leading you. To a certain extent programming languages and libraries will come and go (they will coalesce on principles so this is worth paying attention to), but architecture remains the same, social structures and positions remain the same, and sales remains the same. Apply yourself where you can see the maximum potential for personal growth and personal growth that doesn't slip (as it will when you have spent 20 years programming using the library X and everybody else switches to Y.)
bane 14y ago
It blows my mind sometimes, looking at a web page made of mostly simple text and a few images, to view the source and see page after page after page of CSS and javascript just to make something that looks only slightly better than http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/T...
- inigoesdr 14y ago
  "Slightly better" is a subjective assertion. Especially in the webdev world where the pace of design and functionality improvements tend to move so fast. Granted, you may display the same/similar information in a text-only page, such as your example. But you won't be engaging users much or creating a site that people will want to see & return to, which is where the money that is spent on webdev work generally comes from.
arbuge 14y ago
He left out Basic. Bill Gates is still using that one according to his Reddit AMA yesterday.
rsobers 14y ago
Marco Arment gave a great talk at Webstock about how he uses PHP and MySQL because they're battle-tested and he knows them inside-out. I think many of us could use a dose of Marco's pragmatism. It's worked out really well for him.
- marknutter 14y ago
  I sincerely hope nobody reads this anecdote and decides to use PHP and MySQL based on it.
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danso 14y ago
I'm far from an expert coder compared to most on here...but...what's the big deal? Once you've grokked server-side code and framework, is it really that hard to move from Rails to Sinatra or even to Django? Once you know databases, how hard is it to switch from SQLite to Postgres or to even Mongo? Same goes with Javascript frameworks. Now, I'm referring to the scope of what a web-developer needs to know to interface with these technologies...obviously, a database engineer is expected to dive deep and know all the quirks/limitations of NoSQL vs SQL. Is the complaint that "Oh shit, I don't know if I can learn new syntax?" Or is it more, "The hiring market is segmented by too many technologies for me to claim to be an expert at?"
- hipsters_unite 14y ago
  > "The hiring market is segmented by too many technologies for me to claim to be an expert at?" I think that's a concern to many new programmers (myself included) when looking at the pace these tools and frameworks are coming out and then maturing.
  - jmcdonald-ut 14y ago
    As a computer science major this doesn't worry me at all. Learning the fundamentals, the theory, and the overall science leads me to believe we will be just fine on the market. As an intern I use PHP on a day to day basis. At school classes have been fairly language agnostic, switching from C++, C#, Java, PHP, and others. I have classes that force you to do all your work in the terminal, and some that allow you to use powerful IDEs. Furthermore, I have classes that you rarely even touch a computer (Algorithms, which should be more aptly named Algorithms II since Algorithms & Data Structures is a pre-req). In my experience, switching tools/languages/frameworks isn't as hindering as lacking core engineering skills.
  - metaphorm 14y ago
    some companies hire only for particular skills and experience with the technology they already use. these companies are looking for quick and dirty hires to do work on day 1. other companies hire for the human himself/herself and will understand that a good hire will be able to learn new technology at a rapid pace and the important things have to do with learning ability, perspective, and drive.
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tterrace 14y ago
I would try explaining those concerns to a client to see just how silly and nonsensical they are.
snake_plissken 14y ago
fvckin A+ on this.
timonv 14y ago
Web Development is fine, it's the Javascript, and especially the frontend world that's the problem. Why do we bother with a language that's inconcise, lacks so many common, useful functions (enumerals, strings, etc), and general doesn't do what we want it to do? In spite of fundamental problems, people try to address them with custom solutions. Those are inherently very PERSONAL solutions - because everyone wants to do it well and better - bound to raise discussion and competition at some point. That's what's happening. People are trying to fix something broken with their own, idealistic ideas. There's nothing wrong with that, don't get me wrong, but I think we all know that we can do better on a more fundamental level.
- otibom 14y ago
  Is it very hard to fork Firefox or Chromium and replace the JS engine by luaJIT, pypy or even llvm ?
- marknutter 14y ago
  I'm shocked nobody has pointed this out, but we "bother" with javascript because it runs in browsers, and browsers are ubiquitous. Why does everyone who has personal issues with Javascript or web development in general seem to forget that it has become popular because of the webs ubiquity and the promise of cross-platform development?
  - timonv 14y ago
    And that's exactly the problem. The promise has been there for _years_, it just never has been made up to. Sure, cross-platform development is cool, you can do that in Java. I can also do it in Ruby, Go, Rust, Clojure, Erlang or Haskell. And those solutions don't feel like a duct tape on a drainpipe. It's still the same as it was 10 years ago, we can't wrap our head around a solution that works for all browsers, hence, we can't just make the language concise, let alone change it fundamentally to solve the more actual problems of front end development. And then, if frameworks don't have to fix a language in their own way, we can get something real going. In any case, I just can't wrap my head around the discrepancy as to why-the-fuck-still.
artursapek 14y ago
1. Go to Home Depot. 2. Pick the tools you like. Get a good hammer, saw, adjustable square. 3. Leave Home Depot and go get good with them. 4. If something breaks or doesn't perform a task you need, go back to Home Depot to supplement your toolbox.
- jzwinck 14y ago
  You forgot the laser-guided dado cutter, and the telescoping illuminated wet-dry vac with AM/FM radio.
  - artursapek 14y ago
    Who can spend time in the shop without a nice ball game on the AM radio!
- johnmw 14y ago
  What if your job is to build model aircraft? (Kidding, its a nice analogy but I think its also good to do some research on the tools you might need first or you might waste a lot of time. I once wasted a month of development time because I picked the wrong toolbox for the job).
  - artursapek 14y ago
    Sure. But the point of this thread is, don't run over to Home Depot as soon as the shiny new hammers arrive.
- analyst74 14y ago
  alternative step 4: If something breaks, hammer it until it looks like a nail.
  - metaphorm 14y ago
    only for PHP developers
blablabla123 14y ago
The original post shows definitely one thing: decision making is an important skill. Obviously every framework has its pros and cons. But always focussing on the cons and restlessy looking for even hotter solutions makes you more worry about technology choice than about your code. It makes you worry more about whether you did a sane technology choice than it makes you solve actual problems. At the end of the day it is better to focus on one chosen technology and get the most out of it. If its cons matter, one will see soon enough and learn how to circumvent. This gives deeper understanding of the technologies and give tools to solve problems.
nahname 14y ago
Learn technologies that are popular, such as jQuery. The community will help make this easy. You will use jQuery on almost every project, so this will be time well spent. Master components that are core, such as JavaScript. You will use JavaScript on every project. A true understanding will be essential to everything you choose to do with it. It amazes me how many developers do web development without ever trying to learn how to write effective JavaScript. Lastly, do something just for fun. Programming is fun, enjoy it once in a while. Try a new language you will probably never use. Use a new framework or library. Look into something old. It is amazing how many old things are new again. Do all this and the web won't be such a scary place.
metaperl 14y ago
qooxdoo solved all the problems of web development long ago in a single simple uniform complete way. As long as you arent forced to use apologetic strap-on technologies, I see no reason to look elsewhere.
bpatrianakos 14y ago
I think its so great that we have so many new toys and such innovation going on in the world of the web. I remember when I was first starting out as a developer (when I was 10, it was 1996, I wasn't very good) all we had was HTML and CGI scripting. CSS was the new hotness that no one understood and PHP was just learning to crawl. Those two technologies were all there was and I don't remember other developers ever going nuts like an adoloscent girl at a Beatles concert over any of the stuff that was coming out then. It really is nuts how we push all this latest and greatest stuff only to abandon it next week. I remember just about a year or two ago the HN community was in absolute love (like 'The Notebook' style, forever and ever, everlasting love) with Rails - even more so than now. There were endless debates over its merits and its pitfalls and I watched as the people who took those debates the most personally agonized over every small bit of the development process while those who didn't really care as much just built stuff. It really is great that these new toys are coming out but what I see as the real problem is that we lose sight over one particular piece of the bigger picture. We forget to ask ourselves "Does this solve my or my users' problem(s)"? Even when we do ask that question we then get caught up over minutia like the elegance of code and performing between two competing tools. That stuff doesn't matter yet! What matters is that you grasp the concepts the tool promotes and can use it effectively. Beyond that there's usually not much difference in the "elegance" or performance of your code between two tools and it usually comes down to subjective views and how you work. Even if you do choose the "optimal" tools you're most likely fucking up some other part of your codebase anyway. None of us write perfect code. That's why refactoring is a thing. Are you stuck when it comes time to choose handlebars or mustache? Can't decide between Ember and Backbone? Is Rails or Sinatra better? CodeIgniter or Laravel? Thinking of using Django over... uh... whatever the competitor to Django is? Then you've got your head stuck way too far up your ass and focusing on the wrong thing. I don't mean to offend with that crack - I too have had my head up my developer ass many times before and all it got me was a 'Hello World' page in a project that was stalled before it even started. So my point is that using the new hotness is fun and challenging and it can do you a lot of good but the moment you stop developing and start chasing the new hotness you've become kind of a tech groupie rather than a developer.
OldSchool 14y ago
Maybe part of the problem is that "design" has been forced to merge with "engineering." That and everyone seems to want to discover a language or framework like it's an Indy band. "I was using _____ before it became popular." That credential and $5 gets your coffee at Starbucks. Let's face it. If the high-paying gig comes along and, god-forbid, demands .net or PHP, you're not going to argue, you're going to quickly adapt and get it done right? That's because all these things solve basically the same problem and it's a problem that you're used to solving.
cglee 14y ago
The analysis paralysis on which tools to use really comes from lack of focus on which problems you wish to work on. Many people are either told what problem to work on (employees), or have an unclear focus (I just want a job, any job!). Therefore, they feel they need to learn and use every tool so that they can be prepared for "choosing the right tool for the job". The solution is to focus on projects of your choosing. When it's clear that your problem is a nail, you can tackle it with any tool that can pound with force: hammer, mallet or shoe heel will all work; frozen cucumber will not. In other words, there are clear wrong choices - get rid of those and pick one of the right ones. The paralysis melts away once you have a problem around which to frame your analysis. Another beautiful thing about web development: you can learn to use a hammer (let's say, Rails) and you can use that hammer to pound a million nails. It's a fallacy to think that you have to learn everything, every methodology, so you can be prepared for some ambiguous future project, in hopes of solving some unforeseen problem. This approach has another great side effect: you won't be easily side tracked by the new shiny thing that promises async evented dilly every few months. If it doesn’t solve YOUR problem, move on.
mattjaynes 14y ago
I love how YouTube approached this: Choose the simplest and most stable tools and use those. It's a great strategy for developers that want to ship. Otherwise one can easily be lured by the siren calls of new tech. I've certainly fallen victim to this temptation, but I've found that as I let go of the new pretty things and focus more on using the old boring workhorses of the interwebs, I get a ton more done. Plain vanilla seems boring - but it's bad-ass in web architecture. We forget that YouTube had plenty of competitors that were well ahead them before they dominated. They kept things simple and solid and that allowed them to scale. It's certainly not the only reason they won, but I'd bet it's a huge part of it. --- For more on YouTube's stack, see: http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/3/26/7-years-of-youtube-scalability-lessons-in-30-minutes.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/3/26/7-years-of-youtube...
indubitably 14y ago
I think this is evidence that we’re in a golden age of web development. It’s the opposite of monoculture, and it’s awesome.
SonicSoul 14y ago
I don't agree with this rant. Just becuase 50 libraries exist doesn't mean you have to be an expert in all of them or even use all of them. I think it's great that so many frameworks are sprouting up, and once you've been around long enough, it shouldn't take more than a weekend to try one, see the benefits, and use it or learn from it and move on. Since when is having more choice bad? I've been out of web development for a number of years, and it is delightful to have all these options now. I am loving working with knockout.js and looking forward to trying ember next.
- acuozzo 14y ago
  > Since when is having more choice bad? http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...
tosh 14y ago
I like many of the state of the art frameworks, especially backbone.js and I'm really thankful for how much impact they had on making complexity in web apps manageable. That said I absolutely agree with you regarding the fragmentation problem which seems more like a stack problem to me. For me personally it looks like what the web desperately needs is a common ground for how widgets work and behave. Web Components look like what we will get and I really can't wait to see that happen: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcomponents/raw-file/tip/explainer/index.html https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcomponents/raw-file/tip/explainer/... Here are some examples from Dart Web UI (web component polyfills for Dart) http://www.dartlang.org/articles/dart-web-components/ http://www.dartlang.org/articles/dart-web-components/ Also here is a great article about the web stack fragmentation that you might be interested in: http://zef.me/4835/dart-web-fragmentation-vs-web-development-fragmentation http://zef.me/4835/dart-web-fragmentation-vs-web-development... Exciting times, Thomas
jccodez 14y ago
To quote Jamie Zawinski: "At the end of the day, ship the fucking thing! It’s great to rewrite your code and make it cleaner and by the third time it’ll actually be pretty. But that’s not the point—you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products."
- octix 14y ago
  Yeah, I bet he'd say the same thing to his car service technician, just fix the f*king thing, use duck tape if needed...
gfodor 14y ago
Not only can you waste time over-analyzing the number of choices, you can waste time discussing the choices. Like this thread. Back to work!
nej 14y ago
Architecture is not as important if you're building an app that will scale slowly. But if you're betting on scalability to make money, then the story is very different. Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV_GIGzXrvA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV_GIGzXrvA
readme 14y ago
I hope that there aren't any actual web developers who think like that on a daily basis and that it's meant as humor. You don't need to use technology invented yesterday to write good software. Infact, most of the "blue chip" technology out there: Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and the relevant frameworks used in those languaes (Spring, Django, Symfony, Rails, etc...) is being updated all the time. Another advantage of not using the latest, hottest, tech, is that there will be several gigs of mailing list archives out on the net of people's past problems (also, stack overflow will be filled to the brim) with answers, to your common pitfalls. Go with X.js + HipsterDB and you're gonna have a bad time when you run into a problem, because it's just so new that you're likely one of the first to run into it. The article ended with "I just used wordpress and copy pasted some jquery" -- I approve. The bottom line is getting shit done, not being a hipster.
octix 14y ago
Adopting new technologies doesn't always mean you try to follow trends or be cool. There are plenty of reasons that new ways of doing things come up all the time(be more productive is one of them). You may start slowly, but with time it pays off. I mean teams that can evaluate new trends and see if they get any benefits or not... I personally think "just ship the damn thing" is BS, I'm pro delivering often, but good quality of product/service starts in back-end, again I'm not saying it should be perfect, but it MUST be open for new changes and be ready to scale... no one wants to wake up and be impotent with number of users they have, if you don't expect to scale, why are you doing this in 1st place?
waltz 14y ago
how about copy a line?
dgesang 14y ago
Reminds me of this: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SteveFulton/20120926/178364/Not_Flash_The_Still_Angsty_Zeitgeist_Of_HTML5_Technology_Burnout.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SteveFulton/20120926/178364/N...
BigBlueSaw 14y ago
I tend to pick the environment/framework/library that has the functionality already written that I happen to need at the time.
mephju 14y ago
Yeah, lots of technologies out there. Personally I consider learning a technology as an investment. And with my investments I prefer them to be low risk. That's why I only choose technologies which are definitely going to last a while. Sometimes it's hard to decide if a particular technology will persist. I usually look for support and endorsement of big players in the industry and sufficient user adoption. Right now I am contemplating using angular.js. I think it would be low risk to learn since it will probably last a while because of Google's involvement and already wide usage. Other safe options include Twitter Bootstrap, Node.js, Android and jQuery and ? I would like to read a blog post about what Hacker News considers to be safe options to learn. Anyone interested in writing one?
deleted 14y ago
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383 points by cygwin98 14y ago

Thats the reason why its more important to learn the fundamental ideas behind the frameworks and not just the syntactic sugar . A deep understanding of any one will help in easily picking up any of the newer ones.

damian2000 14y ago

Sounds like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

yjh0502 14y ago

Maybe this post is the original one: http://tilomitra.com/the-crazy-world-of-code/ http://tilomitra.com/the-crazy-world-of-code/

cygwin98 14y ago
OP here. Added this link to my blog post. Thanks for the tip.

mipapage 14y ago

Recently redid a WP site a neighbor had for his small business. Single page flat html using bootstrap. What fun that was! So refreshingly simple.

deleted 14y ago

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klodolph 14y ago
Tshinghua University is in Beijing. "BBS" and "forum" are approximately synonyms.

adamors 14y ago

Living in a bubble.

davidw 14y ago

Most of the 'mess' I see is the current state of Javascript frameworks, which are in the Cambrian explosion phase of things. I'd just use Rails as a default for most things I do these days, and if it's not a good fit, evaluate other technology.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
I was just about to post "Cambrian explosion" as an metaphor for the state of javascript libraries. There are good reasons to get the HTML formatting off the server and into the client, so the new style JS is all going in the right direction. So another metaphor: All these frameworks are trying to solve the right problem in the right direction - which one will win out eventually - who knows, but even if you hitch a ride on one that stops half way, you are half way closer to the right destination than if you wait.
- redeemedfadi 14y ago
  What will be funny is when we move everything back to server-side once we don't have network latency/bandwidth issues.
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    Really? transmitting just the data and letting the client handle the display and interaction seems a much more natural split. It alos makes my server software conceptually simpler - which is always nice
    - metaphorm 14y ago
      I agree. Separation of concerns is a very good design pattern. MVC server frameworks (like Rails and Django) have already separated out the concern of displaying data to the user with their template systems. its a very reasonable next step to just migrate the entire template system off the server and let the client do it. This has gigantic performance increases for servers under heavy load, and it puts the display logic in a domain that is more naturally suited to dealing with it (JavaScript and the DOM instead of treating HTML as just a string). The pattern also promotes the use of RESTful APIs for data access from the server, which has the wonderful bonus of allowing you to make your data publicly accessible for free if you want to.

pkorzeniewski 14y ago

Just choose the right tool for the job. Beside that, variety is a good thing, isn't it?

coldtea 14y ago
No, variety also means: 1) scattering of effort (each framework gets less total attention by fewer people), 2) duplication of effort (besides what is unique in each, tons of effort is spend in implementing mostly the same things), 3) Many half-finished frameworks 4) Worse documentation and less books/manuals/video tutorials (see 1, 2) 5) Less chances of getting an answer to a framework problem in forums/irc/SO (again: scattering of resources). 6) Less vibrant ecosystems around the framework (if each of 10 frameworks has 10% of the market, it's not as good a business to invest in making plugins as something that has 30-40%). Same for hosting offerings, support, etc. So you want variety but not too much. 2-3 big players would be mighty fine. 10 players of equal size, not so much.
- cygwin98 14y ago
  Agree. The current war of numerous Javascript MVC frameworks reminds me of the situation of Python Web Framework a few years ago, the community was confused by so many choices to select from. In the end, nobody wins, even the ultimate winner Django lost the opportunity to become mainstream. In that sense, the merging of Rails and Merb seemed to be a wise and successful strategic move in hindsight.
  - metaphorm 14y ago
    Django is pretty mainstream. Its not as popular as Rails but its hardly a maverick. I think the reason why Python never went all in on a single web framework is just because the Python community itself is much larger and more diverse than the Ruby community. Consequently there were alot more opinions and alot more people willing to develop those opinions into separate projects. Maybe you're right that there are advantages to converging on a single framework, but I'm not so sure. Rails is omakase, so if there's some part of it you don't like its not really easy or a good idea to change it, and you don't have any other options in Ruby. Django is also omakase but if there's some part of Django that you really disagree with you can just move to web.py or flask or pyramid. these are all built on the common core of Python's wsgi module so these are just different opinions on how to accomplish the same task.

the1 14y ago

W in Wordpress stands for web scale.

jakozaur 14y ago

http://zef.me/4235/pick-your-battles http://zef.me/4235/pick-your-battles Pick technologies which are most suitable for the job, not the most "hyped" ones. Also don't forget that sometimes the latest technologies comes with innovation tax, you may be the first to solve some issues, because of the small ecosystem.

kenkam 14y ago

I agree and can see where OP is coming from. As a Chinese, I notice the difference in how we approach problems. Let me make an analogy: Chinese and western dude learns guitar. The Chinese player will worry about the scales, the hammer on/off drills, chord drills, picking drills, and maybe practice a song and focus on technicalities; western dude would pick a guitar, learn a few chords to play a song, realise that to play more songs he/she must practice hammer ons, etc, but everything is so that he can play more songs. They have never had to worry about drills. It's a means to an end. Web frameworks are just drills to choose from. Pick the one you need and move on. With experience, you'll be able to tell what is good and what is not. Why worry about which framework is "best"? It doesn't matter. If WP template and jquery solves the problem then why is he even talking about Haskell?

stkni 14y ago
You're right but I think this is a bit strong and perhaps a little generalist. Anyway, IMHO it DOES matter which is best for you because if you choose the wrong one, and you're project is big and complicated enough, you'll spend a long time dicking about trying to fix the 'deficiencies' of your poor technology choice later. So in some sense the OP is right too. IMHO, as with many things, a little moderation in both is the key. Do just enough analysis to meet your requirements, and future proof your choices, and then leave the crazy web world where you found it.
lastmayday 14y ago
Agree~
rartichoke 14y ago
I has nothing to do with being Chinese or not. I'm a "western dude" and I feel like it's my job to evaluate all of those things because picking the right tool IS my job. If I don't then I am doing a disservice to myself and clients. I wouldn't want to get surgery by a doctor who said "well, I can do the operation in 5 minutes instead of 5 hours if I knew how to use Hyper Awesome Super Laser but sorry, I don't know how to use that technology".
arash_milani 14y ago

DodgyEggplant 14y ago

any human (or even nature) domain knowledge is enormously detailed rich, with countless sub-domains, methodologies and references beyond the scope of a single person. And thanks god for that.

purephase 14y ago

While some might complain or worry, this is what makes this field so fascinating. A myriad of options, toolsets and methodologies means that it is alive, open and thriving. Imagine is Adobe, Oracle or MS had won the Flash/Flex, Java or ActiveX battles, where would we have been today? As much as I use Chrome (and love it), I can't help but admire the work done by Mozilla to rescue the Netscape codebase and mould it into Firefox. I think they deserve a lot of the accolades that enables this zany ecosystem to thrive.

dgesang 14y ago
> Imagine is Adobe, Oracle or MS had won the Flash/Flex, Java or ActiveX battles, where would we have been today? I don't know what 'would have been', but I know that we would not be where we are today (in a positive sense) without those companies and the many many technologies and products they have provided us with (even though some of them can only serve as bad examples).
- purephase 14y ago
  I'm not bashing them as a whole, just some of their technology decisions. To be honest, I've always felt that MS gets a bad rap. As much as it was anti-competitive, bundling IE in Windows enabled users to download alternative browsers. Obviously, there are other ways to do it but I doubt many users would have gone down that road with higher technical obstacles. As for Oracle, not much can redeem them. Flash had it's day, but I wish Adobe would let it die already.
  - dgesang 14y ago
    > As for Oracle, not much can redeem them. If anything. :) > I wish Adobe would let it die already. I know many here can't accept the truth that Flash had, has and will have its place on the Internet. There was a need for such a technology and there still is. I will be here for another 5-15 years or so, so we should make the best out of it instead of screaming 'DIE ALREADY'. But as always, there is plenty of room for improvements. :) FYI: Adobe donated Flex to the ASF a while ago and the mailing list is already the most active on ASF. It is actively developed and people are quite motivated.

chrismorgan 14y ago

As you can see, he hadn't heard of Python.

conradfr 14y ago
Which version of Python ? Django or Flask ? Django ORM or SQLAlchemy ?
- lucian1900 14y ago
  There are only two practical choices right now, both for Python 2: 1) Django 2) Flask + SQLAlchemy Not that much choice, is there?
  - metaperl 14y ago
    I like web2py's DAL
  - chrismorgan 14y ago
    With Django 1.5 (final just about to be released, hopefully within a week) supporting Python 3, you're not tied to Python 2. There are other good options, too. Here's one, also conveniently Python 3 compatible: (3) Pyramid with (a) SQLAlchemy; (b) ZODB; (c) something else—whatever you want! I'm actually working on a Pyramid + traversal + ZODB project just at present. It's very instructive when once you have become used to URL routing and pattern matching (I've worked with Django hitherto).

Torn 14y ago

As with all technology choices, you've got to draw the line somewhere - new and risky, or old and proven, or somewhere in between. What matters these days is probably how well you and your team already know the technology, how good the documentation is, community size/takeup, how quick the devs are to respond to issues, and how mature and stable the API is from release to release. How popular/old the technology is also counts for more if you're looking to hire people with experience in it. MVC on the client is becoming more and more important, once you start slapping a lot of js on a page it can quickly become un-maintainable. We went with Backbone as Ember was changing too quickly in backwards-incompatible ways. MVC on the server (Django/Rails/Express/whatever) still has a place - you want something serving restful data / html skeletons and mapping urls to responses. In my day job that's Spring MVC because that's what people here know and it ain't broke. Frontend language choice: Learning JS seems to be the natural choice here. Things that compile to JS e.g. CoffeeScript or DART might also work for you; I don't have experience with them but I'd imagine debugging problems in the resulting js would be a pain until browsers support them natively.

Kototama 14y ago
I used to develop with JavaScript, and JavaScript with Backbone before we switched to ClojureScript. Backbone helped me to better structured my code but I found it also brings its own problems. There is a quite a lot of boilerplate code and views composed of other views were for me hard to manage. I also wrote some macros to use Backbone from Clojure but the mismatch between object/mutable and functional/immutable is too high. Finally the approach from http://clojurescriptone.com/ http://clojurescriptone.com/ seems promising. It uses a simple yet flexible event dispatcher. Add that a templating engine and you are done. Debugging ClojureScript within the browser is harder than normal JavaScript but it's easy nonetheless to find what generated JS functions corresponds to your ClojureScript code. If you compile in debug mode you can set a breakpoint as usual. Compiling ClojureScript adds a bit of overhead to the workflow but I compiled it continuously in the background via Emacs and forget about it, it just popups when an error occurs. In general I found ClojureScript much cleaner than JavaScript and it's easier for me to write cleaner code with it when the data manipulation or the logic is not trivial.

saltcod 14y ago

Wow. Fantastic piece. This is precisely how I see the ecosystem too. If I've learned anything: 1. Focus on something —Rails, Python, Javascript, WordPress, something 2. Learn to actually program — any language will do

skeletonjelly 14y ago
Maybe this is a side effect of this current day and age being a specialist society? Everyone needs something to differentiate themselves from the crowd, and Javascript being such a recent growth in setting a "standard" with regards to frameworks and tools makes for a good incubator for specialists.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

anons2011 14y ago

Quite amusing and very true. Just had a little look at Handlebars - writing 3 to 4 times as much to generate very little. Also reminds me of this tongue in cheek site : http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/ http://html9responsiveboilerstrapjs.com/

spuz 14y ago
3 to 4 times as much as what?
equator 14y ago
Heh... https://github.com/impressivewebs/HTML9-Responsive-Boilerstrap-js/issues https://github.com/impressivewebs/HTML9-Responsive-Boilerstr...

42tree 14y ago

This piece first appeared as a comment on this page in ENGLISH in July 2012: http://www.zemanta.com/blog/i-bet-you-over-engineered-your-startup/ http://www.zemanta.com/blog/i-bet-you-over-engineered-your-s... while the author claimed to have it translated from Chinese back to English, surprisingly almost exactly the same as the original English version. I guess English-Chinese-English translation has reached an amazing stage!

cygwin98 14y ago
OP here. I've updated my blog to credit eranation (author of the original English post) and relevant links. I was not aware of the existence of the original English post and thought that I should share it as lots of us suffers the same frustration. I guess English-Chinese-English translation has reached an amazing stage! I would take it as a compliment as my 'unofficial English version' isn't too far off.
- 42tree 14y ago
  Yes, it is a compliment :) btw, if it is possible can you also show the link to the Chinese version?
ttflee 14y ago
> I guess English-Chinese-English translation has reached an amazing stage! It's a misunderstanding and/or an illusion. Most of the technological terms, e.g. jquery, node, ember.js etc, were merely copied from English to Chinese without translation. And BTW the retro-translation reads as if it was translated with Google translate service, which explains the low quality of translation.

raverbashing 14y ago

Yes, this The amount of 'meetoo.js' is amazing(ly bad) Because of course everybody has to have "MVC responsive html5 cascading containers with chocolate covering" Not to mention most of these are underdocumented, bug-ridden, too specific, etc Need a js library? JQuery. period (and don't get me started with mootools, I need to ship, not swim around their docs figuring out how to do what in jquery is easy ) And focus on the backend, a competent backend development will eat your whatever.js "specialist" except for the most specific cases

bungle 14y ago
> And focus on the backend, a competent backend development will eat your whatever.js "specialist" except for the most specific cases These days backend is pretty straight forward, mature, and usually easy compared to client side.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  True, for CRUD apps (which are most of them) Still, the back end sees complexity the front-end doesn't. (it is mostly irrelevant for the Facebook frontend if they have hundreds or millions of servers - it certainly has an effect though)
marknutter 14y ago
> Need a js library? JQuery. period Sure, if you love writing the same boiler plate code over and over again to make sure your dom is updated and your data is synced. JS frameworks are solving a problem, whether or not people like that there are so many out there. We are in the early days, and of course there's going to be a lot of competition. A few will rise to the top and become standards. You know, there were quite a few competing JS libraries before JQuery became so popular..
- raverbashing 14y ago
  What I mean is "don't use a jQuery competitor (or jQuery 'sized' tool) in place of jQuery" Sure, if you need something else/more use it, still I've been burned by those "wonderful js frameworks" and I'll make sure to not use them unless needed and thoroughly evaluated.

rpeden 14y ago

I've found that a large subset of programmers share the same trait as a large subset of photographers: they become so obsessed with tools that they lose sight of the fact that the end product is what matters at the end of the day. For example: there are many people who spend thousands on cameras and gear, and still take terrible photos. There are many developers who spend a lot of time keeping up with what they think is the latest trend, and yet they never finish any projects that get used. Then you have the photographers who take great shots no matter what gear they use, and developers who write and ship great code and products using Java and other unsexy languages. Can better tools help you be more productive? Absolutely. But if you spend all of your time worrying that you're not using the latest and great tools, you won't get much done, and you won't be satisfied with what you do get done. I have 15 cameras and unfinished projects in 10 languages that demonstrate that. My advice? Sit back, pick technology a couple of steps behind the bleeding edge, and focus on results. Choosing Ember over Backbone isn't going to cause your project to fail; building the wrong thing or failing to finish, however, will.

smutticus 14y ago
"A bad carpenter blames his tools." -- Unknown
- _pmf_ 14y ago
  Carpenters with bad tools often permanently lose fingers.
- __alexs 14y ago
  A good carpenter blames himself for using the wrong tools and gets new ones?
  - amouat 14y ago
    A good carpenter knows how to use his tools and which ones to use for the appropriate task.
  - analyst74 14y ago

beefsack 14y ago

Call me a masochist, but I love the huge amount of selection, I love how passionate people are about their own solutions meaning they rapidly improve, and I love getting my hands dirty with pretty much anything I can get my hands on. It's great having too many tools in your toolbox.

baak 14y ago
That last sentence conjured an image of a person trying to drag a giant toolbox with him everywhere for some reason :) I do tend to disagree with the sentiment though. The initial time investment per tool is steep. Also, the tools' values deteriorate rather rapidly. Languages/Frameworks will become less used over time as something new replaces them (generally), and even your specific skills with a language will get worse over time if you aren't using it.

davedx 14y ago

I've been wanting to use one of the new JavaScript frameworks on a new project, after dabbling with backbone and getting lost very quickly trying to clean up zombie views/events. My latest project is a front end site to a JSON API, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity, but after discussing it with my client we both decided not to. Because I know what I'm doing best in PHP. So the site is going to do REST queries, but on the backend. We still have the ability to use the API in other clients, and we could in the future use shinyFrameworkOf2013.js, but for now we're building something we know will work.

ChrisArchitect 14y ago

I like this because it demonstrates the complexity that can possibly be involved with some serious web development projects. Also, I think it is the skill/ability to make the decision between these tools and platforms and know that you only need some etc - is what separates the good educated developers from the rest.

deleted 14y ago

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lhnz 14y ago

This has been my experience, too. But I think it's wrong to jump to the conclusion that because going too far and having to learn too much is a bad use of time that you should just stick to one or two things. This is black-and-white thinking and I think in this case, your response should be in the context of the problems you face and the career you are building. We do need to move along with technologies if we want to stay relevant. But you need to know what's a fashion and what's worth adding to your skillset. After leaving University I mainly knew Java but I learnt PHP and JavaScript because I wanted a web development job; later on I felt that none of the cool startups were using PHP and all of its warts had become very apparent to me so I picked up Python which seemed a lot more elegant. (However this was more a case of fashion that gave me access to higher-impact and higher-salary jobs. My actual needs to code in a general-purpose language with nice libraries isn't a worthy goal in itself.) Currently I am working entirely in Node.JS and I don't consider myself to be drinking the Kool Aid because it made more sense to stick to one programming language and I needed long-running processes. I do have to be careful to not add too many libraries, however. There is so much activity in the JavaScript world currently. I say you should focus on your career and wherever you see that leading you. To a certain extent programming languages and libraries will come and go (they will coalesce on principles so this is worth paying attention to), but architecture remains the same, social structures and positions remain the same, and sales remains the same. Apply yourself where you can see the maximum potential for personal growth and personal growth that doesn't slip (as it will when you have spent 20 years programming using the library X and everybody else switches to Y.)

bane 14y ago

It blows my mind sometimes, looking at a web page made of mostly simple text and a few images, to view the source and see page after page after page of CSS and javascript just to make something that looks only slightly better than http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/T...

inigoesdr 14y ago
"Slightly better" is a subjective assertion. Especially in the webdev world where the pace of design and functionality improvements tend to move so fast. Granted, you may display the same/similar information in a text-only page, such as your example. But you won't be engaging users much or creating a site that people will want to see & return to, which is where the money that is spent on webdev work generally comes from.

arbuge 14y ago

He left out Basic. Bill Gates is still using that one according to his Reddit AMA yesterday.

rsobers 14y ago

Marco Arment gave a great talk at Webstock about how he uses PHP and MySQL because they're battle-tested and he knows them inside-out. I think many of us could use a dose of Marco's pragmatism. It's worked out really well for him.

marknutter 14y ago
I sincerely hope nobody reads this anecdote and decides to use PHP and MySQL based on it.

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danso 14y ago

I'm far from an expert coder compared to most on here...but...what's the big deal? Once you've grokked server-side code and framework, is it really that hard to move from Rails to Sinatra or even to Django? Once you know databases, how hard is it to switch from SQLite to Postgres or to even Mongo? Same goes with Javascript frameworks. Now, I'm referring to the scope of what a web-developer needs to know to interface with these technologies...obviously, a database engineer is expected to dive deep and know all the quirks/limitations of NoSQL vs SQL. Is the complaint that "Oh shit, I don't know if I can learn new syntax?" Or is it more, "The hiring market is segmented by too many technologies for me to claim to be an expert at?"

hipsters_unite 14y ago
> "The hiring market is segmented by too many technologies for me to claim to be an expert at?" I think that's a concern to many new programmers (myself included) when looking at the pace these tools and frameworks are coming out and then maturing.
- jmcdonald-ut 14y ago
  As a computer science major this doesn't worry me at all. Learning the fundamentals, the theory, and the overall science leads me to believe we will be just fine on the market. As an intern I use PHP on a day to day basis. At school classes have been fairly language agnostic, switching from C++, C#, Java, PHP, and others. I have classes that force you to do all your work in the terminal, and some that allow you to use powerful IDEs. Furthermore, I have classes that you rarely even touch a computer (Algorithms, which should be more aptly named Algorithms II since Algorithms & Data Structures is a pre-req). In my experience, switching tools/languages/frameworks isn't as hindering as lacking core engineering skills.
- metaphorm 14y ago
  some companies hire only for particular skills and experience with the technology they already use. these companies are looking for quick and dirty hires to do work on day 1. other companies hire for the human himself/herself and will understand that a good hire will be able to learn new technology at a rapid pace and the important things have to do with learning ability, perspective, and drive.

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tterrace 14y ago

I would try explaining those concerns to a client to see just how silly and nonsensical they are.

snake_plissken 14y ago

fvckin A+ on this.

timonv 14y ago

Web Development is fine, it's the Javascript, and especially the frontend world that's the problem. Why do we bother with a language that's inconcise, lacks so many common, useful functions (enumerals, strings, etc), and general doesn't do what we want it to do? In spite of fundamental problems, people try to address them with custom solutions. Those are inherently very PERSONAL solutions - because everyone wants to do it well and better - bound to raise discussion and competition at some point. That's what's happening. People are trying to fix something broken with their own, idealistic ideas. There's nothing wrong with that, don't get me wrong, but I think we all know that we can do better on a more fundamental level.

otibom 14y ago
Is it very hard to fork Firefox or Chromium and replace the JS engine by luaJIT, pypy or even llvm ?
marknutter 14y ago
I'm shocked nobody has pointed this out, but we "bother" with javascript because it runs in browsers, and browsers are ubiquitous. Why does everyone who has personal issues with Javascript or web development in general seem to forget that it has become popular because of the webs ubiquity and the promise of cross-platform development?
- timonv 14y ago
  And that's exactly the problem. The promise has been there for _years_, it just never has been made up to. Sure, cross-platform development is cool, you can do that in Java. I can also do it in Ruby, Go, Rust, Clojure, Erlang or Haskell. And those solutions don't feel like a duct tape on a drainpipe. It's still the same as it was 10 years ago, we can't wrap our head around a solution that works for all browsers, hence, we can't just make the language concise, let alone change it fundamentally to solve the more actual problems of front end development. And then, if frameworks don't have to fix a language in their own way, we can get something real going. In any case, I just can't wrap my head around the discrepancy as to why-the-fuck-still.

artursapek 14y ago

1. Go to Home Depot. 2. Pick the tools you like. Get a good hammer, saw, adjustable square. 3. Leave Home Depot and go get good with them. 4. If something breaks or doesn't perform a task you need, go back to Home Depot to supplement your toolbox.

jzwinck 14y ago
You forgot the laser-guided dado cutter, and the telescoping illuminated wet-dry vac with AM/FM radio.
- artursapek 14y ago
  Who can spend time in the shop without a nice ball game on the AM radio!
johnmw 14y ago
What if your job is to build model aircraft? (Kidding, its a nice analogy but I think its also good to do some research on the tools you might need first or you might waste a lot of time. I once wasted a month of development time because I picked the wrong toolbox for the job).
- artursapek 14y ago
  Sure. But the point of this thread is, don't run over to Home Depot as soon as the shiny new hammers arrive.
analyst74 14y ago
alternative step 4: If something breaks, hammer it until it looks like a nail.
- metaphorm 14y ago
  only for PHP developers

blablabla123 14y ago

The original post shows definitely one thing: decision making is an important skill. Obviously every framework has its pros and cons. But always focussing on the cons and restlessy looking for even hotter solutions makes you more worry about technology choice than about your code. It makes you worry more about whether you did a sane technology choice than it makes you solve actual problems. At the end of the day it is better to focus on one chosen technology and get the most out of it. If its cons matter, one will see soon enough and learn how to circumvent. This gives deeper understanding of the technologies and give tools to solve problems.

nahname 14y ago

Learn technologies that are popular, such as jQuery. The community will help make this easy. You will use jQuery on almost every project, so this will be time well spent. Master components that are core, such as JavaScript. You will use JavaScript on every project. A true understanding will be essential to everything you choose to do with it. It amazes me how many developers do web development without ever trying to learn how to write effective JavaScript. Lastly, do something just for fun. Programming is fun, enjoy it once in a while. Try a new language you will probably never use. Use a new framework or library. Look into something old. It is amazing how many old things are new again. Do all this and the web won't be such a scary place.

metaperl 14y ago

qooxdoo solved all the problems of web development long ago in a single simple uniform complete way. As long as you arent forced to use apologetic strap-on technologies, I see no reason to look elsewhere.

bpatrianakos 14y ago

I think its so great that we have so many new toys and such innovation going on in the world of the web. I remember when I was first starting out as a developer (when I was 10, it was 1996, I wasn't very good) all we had was HTML and CGI scripting. CSS was the new hotness that no one understood and PHP was just learning to crawl. Those two technologies were all there was and I don't remember other developers ever going nuts like an adoloscent girl at a Beatles concert over any of the stuff that was coming out then. It really is nuts how we push all this latest and greatest stuff only to abandon it next week. I remember just about a year or two ago the HN community was in absolute love (like 'The Notebook' style, forever and ever, everlasting love) with Rails - even more so than now. There were endless debates over its merits and its pitfalls and I watched as the people who took those debates the most personally agonized over every small bit of the development process while those who didn't really care as much just built stuff. It really is great that these new toys are coming out but what I see as the real problem is that we lose sight over one particular piece of the bigger picture. We forget to ask ourselves "Does this solve my or my users' problem(s)"? Even when we do ask that question we then get caught up over minutia like the elegance of code and performing between two competing tools. That stuff doesn't matter yet! What matters is that you grasp the concepts the tool promotes and can use it effectively. Beyond that there's usually not much difference in the "elegance" or performance of your code between two tools and it usually comes down to subjective views and how you work. Even if you do choose the "optimal" tools you're most likely fucking up some other part of your codebase anyway. None of us write perfect code. That's why refactoring is a thing. Are you stuck when it comes time to choose handlebars or mustache? Can't decide between Ember and Backbone? Is Rails or Sinatra better? CodeIgniter or Laravel? Thinking of using Django over... uh... whatever the competitor to Django is? Then you've got your head stuck way too far up your ass and focusing on the wrong thing. I don't mean to offend with that crack - I too have had my head up my developer ass many times before and all it got me was a 'Hello World' page in a project that was stalled before it even started. So my point is that using the new hotness is fun and challenging and it can do you a lot of good but the moment you stop developing and start chasing the new hotness you've become kind of a tech groupie rather than a developer.

OldSchool 14y ago

Maybe part of the problem is that "design" has been forced to merge with "engineering." That and everyone seems to want to discover a language or framework like it's an Indy band. "I was using _____ before it became popular." That credential and $5 gets your coffee at Starbucks. Let's face it. If the high-paying gig comes along and, god-forbid, demands .net or PHP, you're not going to argue, you're going to quickly adapt and get it done right? That's because all these things solve basically the same problem and it's a problem that you're used to solving.

cglee 14y ago

The analysis paralysis on which tools to use really comes from lack of focus on which problems you wish to work on. Many people are either told what problem to work on (employees), or have an unclear focus (I just want a job, any job!). Therefore, they feel they need to learn and use every tool so that they can be prepared for "choosing the right tool for the job". The solution is to focus on projects of your choosing. When it's clear that your problem is a nail, you can tackle it with any tool that can pound with force: hammer, mallet or shoe heel will all work; frozen cucumber will not. In other words, there are clear wrong choices - get rid of those and pick one of the right ones. The paralysis melts away once you have a problem around which to frame your analysis. Another beautiful thing about web development: you can learn to use a hammer (let's say, Rails) and you can use that hammer to pound a million nails. It's a fallacy to think that you have to learn everything, every methodology, so you can be prepared for some ambiguous future project, in hopes of solving some unforeseen problem. This approach has another great side effect: you won't be easily side tracked by the new shiny thing that promises async evented dilly every few months. If it doesn’t solve YOUR problem, move on.

mattjaynes 14y ago

I love how YouTube approached this: Choose the simplest and most stable tools and use those. It's a great strategy for developers that want to ship. Otherwise one can easily be lured by the siren calls of new tech. I've certainly fallen victim to this temptation, but I've found that as I let go of the new pretty things and focus more on using the old boring workhorses of the interwebs, I get a ton more done. Plain vanilla seems boring - but it's bad-ass in web architecture. We forget that YouTube had plenty of competitors that were well ahead them before they dominated. They kept things simple and solid and that allowed them to scale. It's certainly not the only reason they won, but I'd bet it's a huge part of it. --- For more on YouTube's stack, see: http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/3/26/7-years-of-youtube-scalability-lessons-in-30-minutes.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/3/26/7-years-of-youtube...

indubitably 14y ago

I think this is evidence that we’re in a golden age of web development. It’s the opposite of monoculture, and it’s awesome.

SonicSoul 14y ago

I don't agree with this rant. Just becuase 50 libraries exist doesn't mean you have to be an expert in all of them or even use all of them. I think it's great that so many frameworks are sprouting up, and once you've been around long enough, it shouldn't take more than a weekend to try one, see the benefits, and use it or learn from it and move on. Since when is having more choice bad? I've been out of web development for a number of years, and it is delightful to have all these options now. I am loving working with knockout.js and looking forward to trying ember next.

acuozzo 14y ago
> Since when is having more choice bad? http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_ch...

tosh 14y ago

I like many of the state of the art frameworks, especially backbone.js and I'm really thankful for how much impact they had on making complexity in web apps manageable. That said I absolutely agree with you regarding the fragmentation problem which seems more like a stack problem to me. For me personally it looks like what the web desperately needs is a common ground for how widgets work and behave. Web Components look like what we will get and I really can't wait to see that happen: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcomponents/raw-file/tip/explainer/index.html https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcomponents/raw-file/tip/explainer/... Here are some examples from Dart Web UI (web component polyfills for Dart) http://www.dartlang.org/articles/dart-web-components/ http://www.dartlang.org/articles/dart-web-components/ Also here is a great article about the web stack fragmentation that you might be interested in: http://zef.me/4835/dart-web-fragmentation-vs-web-development-fragmentation http://zef.me/4835/dart-web-fragmentation-vs-web-development... Exciting times, Thomas

jccodez 14y ago

To quote Jamie Zawinski: "At the end of the day, ship the fucking thing! It’s great to rewrite your code and make it cleaner and by the third time it’ll actually be pretty. But that’s not the point—you’re not here to write code; you’re here to ship products."

octix 14y ago
Yeah, I bet he'd say the same thing to his car service technician, just fix the f*king thing, use duck tape if needed...

gfodor 14y ago

Not only can you waste time over-analyzing the number of choices, you can waste time discussing the choices. Like this thread. Back to work!

nej 14y ago

Architecture is not as important if you're building an app that will scale slowly. But if you're betting on scalability to make money, then the story is very different. Relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV_GIGzXrvA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV_GIGzXrvA

readme 14y ago

I hope that there aren't any actual web developers who think like that on a daily basis and that it's meant as humor. You don't need to use technology invented yesterday to write good software. Infact, most of the "blue chip" technology out there: Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and the relevant frameworks used in those languaes (Spring, Django, Symfony, Rails, etc...) is being updated all the time. Another advantage of not using the latest, hottest, tech, is that there will be several gigs of mailing list archives out on the net of people's past problems (also, stack overflow will be filled to the brim) with answers, to your common pitfalls. Go with X.js + HipsterDB and you're gonna have a bad time when you run into a problem, because it's just so new that you're likely one of the first to run into it. The article ended with "I just used wordpress and copy pasted some jquery" -- I approve. The bottom line is getting shit done, not being a hipster.

octix 14y ago

Adopting new technologies doesn't always mean you try to follow trends or be cool. There are plenty of reasons that new ways of doing things come up all the time(be more productive is one of them). You may start slowly, but with time it pays off. I mean teams that can evaluate new trends and see if they get any benefits or not... I personally think "just ship the damn thing" is BS, I'm pro delivering often, but good quality of product/service starts in back-end, again I'm not saying it should be perfect, but it MUST be open for new changes and be ready to scale... no one wants to wake up and be impotent with number of users they have, if you don't expect to scale, why are you doing this in 1st place?

waltz 14y ago

how about copy a line?

dgesang 14y ago

Reminds me of this: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SteveFulton/20120926/178364/Not_Flash_The_Still_Angsty_Zeitgeist_Of_HTML5_Technology_Burnout.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SteveFulton/20120926/178364/N...

BigBlueSaw 14y ago

I tend to pick the environment/framework/library that has the functionality already written that I happen to need at the time.

mephju 14y ago

Yeah, lots of technologies out there. Personally I consider learning a technology as an investment. And with my investments I prefer them to be low risk. That's why I only choose technologies which are definitely going to last a while. Sometimes it's hard to decide if a particular technology will persist. I usually look for support and endorsement of big players in the industry and sufficient user adoption. Right now I am contemplating using angular.js. I think it would be low risk to learn since it will probably last a while because of Google's involvement and already wide usage. Other safe options include Twitter Bootstrap, Node.js, Android and jQuery and ? I would like to read a blog post about what Hacker News considers to be safe options to learn. Anyone interested in writing one?

deleted 14y ago

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