[zeroq]

Wait till you hear about Typescript, you know adding types to ECMAScript, like Macromedia did some 20 years ago. :)

Being in the industry for 20+ years and starting as a teenager making games in Flash it makes really hard for me to treat webdev seriously with all their revolutionary innovations.

At work I often encounter a resistance to a tech or solution I propose, because "there hasen't been any substational contribution to the repository in a week, seems dead to me". To which I kindly respond with a question - how do you calculate hypotenuse, because it's been a long time since Pythagoras made the last commit. Meanwhile, some of my friends are still doing side jobs using CakePHP, 20 years later. :)

[Galanwe]

> how do you calculate hypotenuse, because it's been a long time since Pythagoras made the last commit.

Also, Pythagoras should be rewritten in Rust for safety.

[wg0]

Careless bastard. If safety wasn't his concern he at least should have written it with style using NextJS with tRPC using React Server Side components hydrated on the fly with edge locations in mind utilizing streaming components backed by Drizzle ORM further cemented by AuthJS. I'm sure there would have been plenty of starter kits had he tried npm create.

EDIT: RCS

[bugtodiffer]

Today I value web stuff for one thing and one thing only: they run in the best sandbox we have. I can run untrusted programs from hackernews folks without worrying! I wouldn't do that with native code of course, way too easy to hack me. But they won't waste a browser 0-day on random HN readers... Whatever can be done in the web, I usually like to do it there as no-body has to trust my code then.

[netdevnet]

> I can run untrusted programs from hackernews folks without worrying

The assumption is that native code has virtually unrestricted access to your system while JS programs don't, which is true. But if the untrusted JS program is wrapped up in web extension, in 2024, it could do almost as much damage than native code especially since most non-techies don't have much of value in their machines. The value exists on walled sites

[stevage]

> Being in the industry for 20+ years and starting as a teenager making games in Flash it makes really hard for me to treat webdev seriously with all their revolutionary innovations.

I think the framing here is unfair.

It's not that the people innovating in JS or HTML think what they're doing is "revolutionary" or has never been done before. Generally they are applying ideas that have been developed elsewhere, but are currently lacking in whatever their specific area is.

[zeroq]

Let me give you two anecdotes.

(1) Some time ago I'm at a coding interview and I'm tasked with an algorithm to calculate the biggest rectangle you can make of a set of segments. Or something similar. I'm presented with a computer, with VSCode, with an open file with some code already. I left my chair, approached the whiteboard available in the room and started thinking about how to address the problem. The interviewer was not pleased with my approach and eventually after I exchange my thought process he invited me back to the computer, asked to write some code, and when he saw I was doing for loops with vars he interrupted me, pointed at the beginning of the file which was "import lodash" and showed me the expected solution. A lot of functional mambo jumbo which was obviously very sexy at that time.

I looked at his code and asked him what's the computional complexity of his solution. He looked at the code, thought for a minute and said the session is over.

(2) About that time I was doing a web app that was a huge web form. The user could exit and resume a session at any given time so the input was stored in database and was supposed to be retrieved when the session resumed.

At one point I noticed that the initial loading time was noticeably slower, and after inspection it turned out that the init time raised from zero to about 800ms. It was the same time when our senior JS programmer with 9 years of experience shipped the code that was responsible for retrival of the data from the backend.

It was functional masterpiece. No loops, lots of map and reduce and he was very proud of it.

When I pointed out it had O(N^6) complexity and could be fixed with a simple for loop matching ids he got offended and stated that "we don't program that way anymore, functional is the future".

[stevage]

I'm not sure what the relevant moral is here. It seems to be "don't misuse functional programming"?

[asdf000333]

I'm glad to have mostly avoided frontend dev, but we've also had some bonkers backend trends like SOAP. It was like closing your eyes and wishing for a full-stack impl to appear if you write enough XML.

[zeroq]

Actually, one of the things I miss the most from AS is... E4X.

I work with ton of json, including hundreds of kubernetes definitions per project, and I really miss the ability to parse the data so swiftly and effective with native syntax.

[asdf000333]

I've never used E4X, but it at least looks like it'd make XML more tolerable.

Most XML experience I had was ejabberd and XMPP. Was thoroughly pissed off by the end of it. We ended up sending JSON over IQ messages instead because we were super done with XML, only to find that iOS's XML parser takes O(N^2) time to parse each element. Had to split the elements to make it work. 0/10 would not recommend.

[mickael]

I have been using an event XML parser to process XML on iOS (such as expat). You can processed the XML as a stream and it is very efficient.

[zeroq]

haha, reminds me of the GTA parser drama :)

[asdf000333]

This? https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times... LOL

[ww520]

Unless you are ready to maintain the product for the long term, proposing to use new tech is just resume development.

[zeroq]

A few gigs ago I joined a BigCo as a part of contractor group to build a new project. The BigCo had a staff member to bootstrap the project and build a prototype which was internally reviewed and approved. When we put our foots on the ground it was already settled that the app will be build with X, Y and Z as the core components.

Two months later that staff member left the BigCo for another organization, and when we found the actual job posting for his position the X, Y and Z were explicitly stated as nice to have for a candidate.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[pjmlp]

JavaScript 4, had it not been sabotaged.

[almostgotcaught]

> how do you calculate hypotenuse, because it's been a long time since Pythagoras made the last commit.

Asinine - everything advances and needs maintenance over time, even geometry. I invite you to try building a game without using quaternions or projective (ie non-euclidean) geometry.

Edit: does hn award points based on contrariness? Or is it just that people on hn think they're super clever with their contrary point?

[defrost]

quaternions - 1843, Hamilton

projective geometry - 1420's but big in the 19th Century.

These are things I used heavily programming earth mapping systems in the mid 1980s to mid 1990s. Principal reference text was from the 1920s.

[almostgotcaught]

... The guy I responded to is saying Pythagoras is good enough. Do you know what year Pythagoras died?

[defrost]

Does that invalidate his theorem (that he cribbed from the Babylonians)?

[IAmGraydon]

No one said it invalidated his theorem. They said it has been expanded upon.

Also, comparing web technologies to something as fundamental as the pythagorean theorem is reductionist and overall pretty ridiculous. Web technologies need maintenance. Proven mathematical formulas don’t.

[defrost]

They actually asked if I was aware what year he died.

The eponymous triangle work is just as valid as it ever was in Euclidean geometries - lot of work there. That work is just as wrong as it ever was in non-Euclidean geometries - maths is timeless like that.

> Also, comparing web technologies to something as fundamental as ...

Take that up with whomever it was that did that.

[malfmalf]

495 BC. And his Theorem is still good enough for most practical purposes, so his point stands

[luismedel]

I understand what you want to say here but...

Do you need these things to write Sokoban, Tetris or any other simple 2d game?

[IAmGraydon]

> does hn award points based on contrariness? Or is it just that people on hn think they're super clever with their contrary point?

It’s both, and seems to be a theme here. HN generally despises the mainstream, so anything that goes against that is praised with little additional thought. A great example is the recent article about “founder mode” which is definitely one of the most idiotic contrarian things I’ve ever read, but receives heaps of upvotes every time it gets posted.