The sorry state of the programming world as of the end of 2016 AD
dorinlazar.ro
dorinlazar.ro
"I bet this is going to be another protracted, entitled rant that boils down to 'I hate JavaScript'"
clicks
"Yep."
If you've read any of the 1000s of identical whinefests that has been upvoted on HN in the past few years, then save yourself the bother of reading this one as well.
Yes, we've got a lot of tools that solve a lot of problems, most of which an individual probably doesn't need. Sounds pretty awesome to me, actually. It means we're experimenting and making progress.
Nobody is forced to use those tools, despite what so many people claim. If you don't want to work in the same way as other developers at that company, don't accept the job. Find somewhere else. Be a freelancer.
On the other hand, if you do manage to find that magical unicorn of a job where everything is perfect, take it! I've never seen it, and I doubt it exists, but it'd be awesome if it does.
If you try to fix the problem, you'll end up in the same situation as all the people you're screaming at: Yet another tool that fixes all kinds of problems, but nobody other than yourself will actually need that exact set of problems fixed. (And you probably don't, either.)
We now know how to create a CRUD web application that scales well enough for most businesses, using little effort, with well-established authentication and session management.
Twenty years ago, writing such a thing would have been a big deal.
In twenty years (or maybe sooner), that won't even involve programming, much like clicking things in a spreadsheet doesn't feel like "real" programming anymore. Maybe we already have point-and-click applications for creating such applications. Dunno.
It's just that nobody is interested in simple CRUD applications anymore. Today, you need live data and streaming, responsive design, autocomplete for every input box etc. The interesting stuff in programming is always going to be at the edge of what's possible (or what's practical), and that will always be in a sorry state, almost by definition.
Somehow people could change the internet to suit this project to fix everything. Single files of jquery on disparate servers that connect to one frontend could transform the web and undo the big problems.
The debugger I use in Chrome is a worse experience than the Visual Basic debugger I used 20 years ago.
Programmers have very weak institutional memory.
And the real problem is not Javascript, is not, really. The problem is the HTTP + HTML model. It no longer works. And we work around it the wrong way.
I disagree strongly with this. We know how to use HTML and http very effectively. And there are ways to address the UX shortcomings of standard HTML that avoid writing reams of JavaScript.
People underestimate HTML.
I've used both the Chrome debugger and the VB debugger (so you know how old I am!) and I won't speak to your comment directly, but...
You have no idea how many times the Chrome JS debugger has saved my rear. :) I've been able to fix JS issues that used to take hours to debug in a few minutes since Chrome came out with its JS debugger.
Firefox and IE's debuggers have gotten better - but not as good as Chrome's.
And the reason I think JS debuggers aren't as good as, say, VB or Java's, is, IMHO, purely a language issue.
With an interpreted language like Javascript that allows re-definition of any function or object ("prototype") or variable, I don't think the debugging tools can get any better until the language changes (which, as the author points out, is a hard sell.)
On the other hand, it shows just how little historical knowledge programmers have that many people don't recognize that it isn't better than technology from decades ago.