OT: Flash and Javascript (Was: Taunting)

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Alexander Pánek" <alexander.panek at brainsware.org> wrote in message 
news:gvoa8d$o50$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "Alexander P?nek" <alexander.panek at brainsware.org> wrote in message 
>> news:gvlrua$16pq$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>> grauzone wrote:
>>>>> browsers. What's the big deal everyone have with Javascript?
>>> Look mah, JS and Flash combined in shiny modal windows:
>>>
>>> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/27/modal-windows-in-modern-web-design/
>>>
>>> No, I really don't want to torture you. Well, maybe a little. :P
>>
>> Oh my god, whoever wrote that should be arrested by internet police and 
>> locked away for a veeeery long time...
>
> No.
>
> You know, there are people having a different vision of "The Web" as you 
> have, and just because of that you want them to be locked away?

Don't take things so literally.

> Seriously, why do some people have to be so stubborn? We have 2009. Not 
> 1999, but 2009. It's time for some advancement. The web isn't only text & 
> some floating images inbetween anymore.
>

How is it you continue to miss this point: I am asserting that these things 
are *NOT* advancements. These are newer, yes. But "new" does *not* imply 
"better". So...ways in which modern web technology takes us *backwards* (in 
no order):

- Severely reduced responsiveness on the same hardware. (And no, I'm 
obviously not saying no new technology should ever be used that's even a 
little bit slower. I'm just saying that in these cases it's downright 
excessive.)

- Increased usage, and even encouragement, of unnecessary modality. As I 
said in another post, modality is something that should only be used when 
absolutely necessary, and minimized otherwise. Embracing it is an enormous 
interface design flaw and is one of the more common mistakes indicative of 
an amateur interface designer.

- Enormous decrease in usage of proven (and formerly-common) methods of 
static code analysis.

- Lingering after-effects of people who embraced the "(Anti-)Robustness 
Principle".

 - Decreased accessibility (ie, Flash and AJAX. And yes, these *can* be made 
accessible, but nobody bothers, and out-of-the-box the non-Flash/non-AJAX 
stuff is automatically far more accessible).

- Severely decreased ability for the programmer to utilize the same code on 
different servers (Because every server is set up to use a completely 
different subset of CGI/ASP/JVM/PHP/Perl/Ruby/etc, and unlike on the 
desktop, the programmers typically have little-to-no control over which 
one(s) the server is set up to use, and the people who do have control, IT, 
typically don't know anything about programming.) Java promoted itself as 
being "write-once-run-anywhere", but even plain old natively-compiled 
desktop apps are far more "write-once-run-anywhere" than web-server apps.

- Applications are just plain turning to shit. When people (like me) say 
that "the web should not be considered or used as an application platform", 
what they're saying (and you seem to be completely missing) is *not* that it 
"it should never happen", but rather that 
(X)HTML/CSS/JS/AJAX/PHP/HTTP/Flash/etc, as they currently are, are terrible 
foundations on which to build an application, and the results are 
accordingly inferior:  Compare any desktop application to an equivalent 
web-based version (and note I said "equivalent", so no fair comparing a 
notably bad desktop email client to Gmail). All else being equal, the web 
version is naturally going to be far worse. Sure, web apps have the benefit 
of no-install, auto-update (although that's an extremely questionable 
benefit), shared-state, etc. But none of those things are anything that 
can't be done just as well with a desktop app. And we need to be building 
the infrastructures for *that* instead of wasting our time on "clever" 
tricks that shoehorn technologies that are inherently terrible for apps into 
being...fancier.

These are *regressions*, not advancements.

> There are quite a few crafts involved when building a website, including 
> interface designers and programmers. As much as you'd give a rats ass 
> about what the designer talks about programming you shouldn't judge about 
> the interface designer's work. Since it's his craft and not yours. And, 
> please don't take this personally, but programmers are usually really 
> really bad [interface] designers. "Cobbler, stick to your last."
>

I am a software developer, first and foremost. Interface design (though not 
to be confused with graphic design) is every bit as much a part of that as 
programming (as well as a few other things). If you consider yourself first 
and foremost a programmer, then by all means, go ahead and "stick to your 
last".

> Don't get me wrong, I'm a programmer, too. I'm not really that good at 
> interface design either, but I at least try to accept new ways of doing 
> things. That's what I usually expect from other fellow programmers, but 
> people never cease to amaze me (in the negative sense).
>

Once again, while I happily embrace the new when it's good (D, ranges), 
unlike most people I'm not so blinded by the "new and shiny" to not see when 
there are clear drawbacks.

> Oh and btw: if you don't use vim, you should be arrested by flamewar 
> police and locked away for a veeeery long time...
> (See what I did there?)
>

Yes, I see the apples-to-oranges comparison you did there. A developer 
choosing to use vim affects no one but themself. A developer choosing 
AJAX/Modality/etc affects everyone who visits their site.

> I am sincerely pissed. Not at you personally, but rather the cloud of 
> ignorance gladly sharing its existense with me all the time.

Heh, this is the one opinion we very much share, though for obviously very 
different reasons ;)