Dude, comeon. The browser has evolved a lot as a platform, as has the hardware power of computers running them. Maybe we're re-writing computer history, but if that's the case then it's because we have to migrate everything to javascript and the wiser old timers want nothing to do with it.
* Do you really want to write CSS without a pre-processor?
* Do you really want to control a webpage's state without JS models in the browser?
* Do you really want to update html with individual jquery calls?
* Do you really want to write websites _without_ using jquery? Keep in mind that jquery is only 10 years old.
I'm glad that we have an open market to exchange people's ideas. Yes, a lot of it is crap, and even among the highly adopted packages there will be problems. But that's the beauty of the market-- people can vote with their feet.
>Dude, comeon. The browser has evolved a lot as a platform, as has the hardware power of computers running them.
Yes. It has evolved to counter-balance those advances in hardware power, in order to provide a sub-par 2000 native desktop application experience in a 2016 browser sandbox.
>Maybe we're re-writing computer history
Maybe?
>but if that's the case then it's because we have to migrate everything to javascript and the wiser old timers want nothing to do with it.
Err, why do we "have to"?
And what's with the "old timers" / hot young JS developers dichotomy?
We have to rewrite everything in JS because JS is the language that runs on browsers. :) If you were asking a higher-level why (why do we have to use the browser), look rer's sibling comment.
I wrote the phrase "wise old timers" with respect-- y'all truly have things to teach us. But it often feels that y'all just want to complain about how we're doing things wrong, rather than actually helping. I suspect that "old timers" is correct maybe 80% of the time, since the complainers are probably people who have years of non-JS experience and are disappointed that the new bootcampers haven't gone through their coming-of-age programming rituals. But I have a friend who is a member of the C++ master-race, so trust me, I know that gripes about browsers & JS can come from many kinds of people.
>We have to rewrite everything in JS because JS is the language that runs on browsers.
Not much of an argument. We already have 24/7 internet connected laptops, tablets and smartphones, which is were those browsers run in the first place anyway.
Perhaps we could, and I'm going on a limp here, just cut the middleman and run on the metal?
If the problem is discoverability/installation/security etc we could focus on app stores and sandboxes (which modern OSes also have both), instead of rewriting everything on the web.
>* But it often feels that y'all just want to complain about how we're doing things wrong, rather than actually helping.*
Well, you first stop someone from drowning and then you show them how to swim...
If the problem is discoverability/installation/security etc we could focus on app stores and sandboxes
To this day, I maintain that if Microsoft hadn't neglected that essential aspect of the Windows ecosystem for decades, they would probably still dominate the personal computing industry.
Right. IMHO, a lot of the reason that alternative devices, from smartphones to games consoles, took off was they solved the biggest long-standing headache for Windows users: they just wanted to get and use software to do things, not to worry about installing and configuring and updating that software or potential difficulties with removing it or how it interacted with other software.
> we could focus on app stores and sandboxes (which modern OSes also have both), instead of rewriting everything on the web.
Show me another way to write end-user applications that are cross platform, and then (if it existed prior to 1995, or even 2005) explain to me why your particular alternative didn't take over the world.
Heck, even standalone desktop and mobile apps are now being built with web technologies (react-native, Electron, etc.) rather than GUI frameworks like wxWidgets.
> Do you really want to write CSS without a pre-processor?
Not him, but yes, I absolutely do. Pre-processors mainly have the effect of forcing you to have a build tool workflow, and the nice thing about web design is that you don't need stuff like that.
They were rhetorical questions anyway :) But you're right, I get away without preprocessors when I'm doing very small projects. And a year ago my team had a 20-second SASS compilation step, that was painful. I guess I couldn't do without it because of things like: variables, nested rules, vendor prefixes, and mixins. I use a lot of mixins in scss and I feel like my code becomes more modular because of it.
> I use a lot of mixins in scss and I feel like my code becomes more modular because of it.
Well, it does, if you don't emulate the same effect with other means. But imho, needing modularity in CSS means (for most projects that are not gigantesque) that the CSS is too big anyway. It depends on what one does, specific web apps might need it. But normal web pages never.
Okay. I guess you're welcome to do that? We browser coders will just continue to go to market faster. It's pretty cool that, if you put your work in, you can make a GUI on the browser that is accessible to all desktops and phones. That's 2 billion users.
The obvious question is: what would you replace it with? Do you want to replace it all with native apps? Or do you think that this whole internet thing is overrated?
What's wrong with native apps? They use less memory, battery, and processor than an interpreted stack. They can be more responsive than the hardwired 16ms latency built into the browser. If you need network it's not hard to open a socket. The browser itself is a native app opening sockets.
In pretty much every respect, native apps are better for the user than web apps. The person that benefits the most from web apps is the developer.
I'm not taking a side here, but I would like to advocate for a fair comparison, since you have skipped all of the trade-offs in the other direction.
For example, web apps are often easier to discover, easier to update, easier to manage (since you only have one version in the wild you have to handle), easier to launch (especially for first-time users), easier to use from different platforms, more secure (debatable, but since the browser has huge companies working to keep it secure, and your native app that's just opening sockets doesn't, it probably is true), ...
There's pros and cons to both sides. Just framing the situation as "my side has these benefits, therefore there is no reason to consider your side" is not an honest discussion.
How can that possibly be true? A web app can appear in a search engine. A native app's website can appear in a search engine and in a platform App Store.
> easier to update,
because "clear your cache and reload the page" has been said by no frustrated support/technical staff, ever?
> easier to manage (since you only have one version in the wild you have to handle),
Except when there are cache issues. Or when you have multiple servers and need to upgrade them without downtime. Not to mention all the stuff required to host your app needs to handle enough scale to load not just any potential server side data but also the entire ui, possibly every time someone loads it (opposite of the cache problem above). Must be easier though, I've never heard of any web apps being unavailable because the servers were overloaded.
> easier to launch (especially for first-time users),
How is typing a or clicking a link easier than tapping/clicking an icon?
> easier to use from different platforms,
If your browser on your platform is supported. And you have the right version.
> more secure (debatable, but since the browser has huge companies working to keep it secure, and your native app that's just opening sockets doesn't, it probably is true)
This is a joke, right? Did you suddenly forget all the huge leaks of massive amounts of information from hacked web apps? Pretty much no web apps use local storage exclusively. So your attack surface is not "the browser", it's the browser, the network stack, the network itself (see: ddos on Dyn, Comodo/WoSign bullshittery to name a couple from the last month alone), your server host(s), your server os/stack, your server side app logic, your server side db/storage stack.. Do I need to go on?
> How can that possibly be true? A web app can appear in a search engine. A native app's website can appear in a search engine and in a platform App Store.
Because when I come across a web app in a search engine, I can click it, use it instantly, evaluate it, and decide to stay or leave, all within seconds. No checking if the app I found supports my platform, no click-through to my native app store, no download and installation process, no delay, instant feedback.
> because "clear your cache and reload the page" has been said by no frustrated support/technical staff, ever?
Not sure I follow. Are you asserting that native apps are easier to update than web apps?
> If your browser on your platform is supported. And you have the right version.
The combinations are smaller than the combinations of operating systems and phones one would have to worry about.
> This is a joke, right?
Is this a good way to have a productive conversation?
> Did you suddenly forget all the huge leaks of massive amounts of information from hacked web apps?
Do you think only web apps communicate with servers?
> Not sure I follow. Are you asserting that native apps are easier to update than web apps?
I'm saying the processes are more robust. You either have the old app or the new one. You're never left with half of each, and you aren't beholden to random caches about whether or not you get the update.
> The combinations are smaller than the combinations of operating systems and phones one would have to worry about.
That can't possibly be true. Most platforms have more than one browser available, and with the exception of Microsoft, browsers don't have a "use x.y.z version rendering" like platform sdks.
Edit: unless you're taking the approach of: it works with this specific platform device running browser X, so it must work with all others running X. In which case, why not take the same approach to native apps?
> Do you think only web apps communicate with servers?
Where did I say that? Nowhere.
Web apps must contact servers and any remotely useful app will have all its storage server side.
In addition, web apps rely on servers to deliver the very thing the user sees and interacts with. UI spoofing has become such an issue browser vendors are reverting back to make it harder for web pages to present native looking dialogs etc.
Native apps can operate in a client server model, but a great deal of them don't need to because their use case is for local work, and even those that do, are merely transferring data over that channel. They aren't dependent on the same channel for the very interface the user sees.
Claiming that web apps are more secure is the most ridiculous thing I've read in a long time.
I disagree. I think updating a web app is vastly more robust. You update the source, and the only possible issue you have is caching and platform compatibility (the former is a real issue, the latter is mostly alleviated by decent testing).
Updating native apps (due to the next point) is much more problematic because the number of platforms is much higher.
> Most platforms have more than one browser available
Yeah but you can't multiply the number of browsers times the number of operating systems, because Firefox on Linux and Firefox on Windows and Firefox on Android and Firefox on MacOS are (for 99% of the apps) the same target.
> Claiming that web apps are more secure is the most ridiculous thing I've read in a long time.
Are you interested in a real discussion? Or just posturing?
I agree, they are better and faster! But they're expensive, from an engineering-time point of view. I think that small teams with a new product would struggle to have solid native apps on ios, android, windows, osx and linux simultaneously.
I've also gotten a pretty bad taste in my mouth about some companies pushing a native app down my throat. TripAdvisor would only show me the first three reviews on a place if I was browsing via mobile, as a way to push me to download the app. And now that they're on my android they sent me a couple of spammy notifications before I disabled them. I wanted to treat TripAdvisor like a website, not like an app that has access to all phone.
I have gotten to hate most Android apps, constantly sending notifications - spam on the screen, phone on the desk going "ding, ding, ding" all afternoon :-(
On iOS, I've been adopting a policy of refusing the request for permission to send me notifications, unless I can think of a good reason I'd want to see them. I can always change my mind later and approve it if I need to, after all.
"What's wrong with native apps?" Can you even imagine having a native app for everything we do today in browsers? An app for each Credit Card I hold. A native app for each news site I read. A native app for every social media site. A native app for all the map searches, directions, etc. we all use. Security updates? Nightmare. Multi-OS support? forget about it. We'd all be back to a Windows monopoly. No thanks.
If a bank/credit union/etc doesn't have a native app in 2016, I doubt they have a web app that's usable on a phone either.
> A native app for each news site I read
Right, because RSS readers and aggregators aren't totally a thing.
> A native app for every social media site
Those literally exist today.
> A native app for all the map searches, directions, etc. we all use
You realise you don't need a new app for each search you want to do? I don't even understand this premise.
> Security updates? Nightmare
Right, because having half-baked web-apps with millions of user's personal data all stuck in a big fat juicy database in one spot, just waiting to be breached and spread like herpes in a brothel has worked out so fucking well.
Every major mobile platform and the two leading commercial desktop platforms have app store infrastructure which provide automatic updates of client-installed apps.
> Multi-OS support? forget about it.
Right, because no app ever has been developed cross platform, and every web app ever created works perfectly in every browser with zero effort from the developer.
> We'd all be back to a Windows monopoly.
Wat.
Edit: additionally, a number of the things you describe, i.e. news sites, aren't web-apps in the way most people think. They offer very limited if any interaction or functionality for the user except navigating to find/read other news content, and possibly leave feedback. Those sorts of things are what the web excels at, because they're essentially used for one-way content viewing.
Because you really don't need a native application to look up the time the local Thai place is open or if the local independent movie theater has a showing tonight. Installing two native apps to do that is burdensome on consumers and producers
You do remember that Windows is the dominant os for end users? Almost all ui's would have to be created for Windows, and possibly for the other operating systems also. That's probably a lot of extra work.
If developers were better about releasing quality, multi-platform software using their 1970s languages of choice, maybe we wouldn't have all moved to the browser.
> Do you really want to write CSS without a pre-processor?
Yes. The only things that are worth having one for are variables and that’s not enough to add the development overhead.
> Do you really want to control a webpage's state without JS models in the browser?
I prefer to avoid controlling a webpage’s state in the browser as much as possible.
> Do you really want to update html with individual jquery calls?
No, I want to update the DOM…
> Do you really want to write websites _without_ using jquery? Keep in mind that jquery is only 10 years old.
… without jQuery, yes, because it’s designed horribly.
These practices also happen to result in a website that is actually possible to develop and view on my computer with reasonable performance, because I’m one of those users nobody cares about who can’t afford the latest MacBook.
* Do you really want to write CSS without a pre-processor?
* Do you really want to control a webpage's state without JS models in the browser?
* Do you really want to update html with individual jquery calls?
* Do you really want to write websites _without_ using jquery? Keep in mind that jquery is only 10 years old.
I'm glad that we have an open market to exchange people's ideas. Yes, a lot of it is crap, and even among the highly adopted packages there will be problems. But that's the beauty of the market-- people can vote with their feet.
This article sums up how I feel: http://mrmrs.io/writing/2015/07/27/too-many-tools/
> "Four–fifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake." - Rudyard Kipling in 1890