[Off Topic] Any "web applicaiton developers" out there?

[Jason Mills]

Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
> I do see a strong future in web development, although I think in ways 
> it's not moving like I'd like.  The company I work for does many sites 
> that are Flash and PHP driven (again, the entertainment industry, they 
> like Flash), and it definitely doesn't look to be going away.
> 
> Things are also changing, and people are getting more interest in 
> different things.  I remember, I actually messed with XMLHttpRequest 
> before it became popular ("Web 2.0", I hate that term)... I thought it 
> wasn't terribly useful.  Haha, seems I wasn't in the majority.
> 
> There are other things on the horizon too.  Big changes in JavaScript, 
> DOM, HTML, that will make things easier and cleaner.  With that comes 
> the backwards compatibility... things will be interesting for a while 
> longer at least ;).

That's encouraging.

> 
> I do a lot of systems type stuff as well.  For example, I help manage 
> our servers from time to time (because I have some experience doing 
> that.)  I've written utilities for this in D.
> 
> Further, sometimes you don't want/need a language like C# or PHP, but 
> one that is fast for processing.  Case in point: I did a little mixer 
> program, where you picked two mp3s and dynamically mixed them (using a 
> slider bar) together.  I wrote a simple D program that mixed the two 
> together and gave the user something to download.
> 
> Had I done this in PHP, C#, or similar, it would not have been fast 
> enough for the impatient users that proliferate the web.
> 
> It's also possible that one might right a FastCGI program in D, which 
> would likely be a good mix.  It might also be possible to write an 
> Apache module, although this seems like it would be more trouble indeed.
> 
> Lastly, as to your comment about "hard core programmer ... challenging 
> problems", that really depends on you, not on what you do.  I work with 
> PHP and MySQL primarily, which really have a bad name in that regard.
> 
> But, if you know what you're doing, you know what you're doing.  It 
> means something if you can write a dynamic website that sends reasonable 
> caching headers and performs well, because when the site gets 
> 1,000/5,000/10,000 (whatever milestone you have for it) users online at 
> once the first time, and the server's load average didn't even notice, 
> you'll be proud.
> 
> People still consider me to be a programmer challenging difficult 
> problems, at least at the office.  Or so I'd like to think.  I've had 
> the project managers joke they were fighting for me, and often have 
> other programmers in the office coming to me for advice on things 
> they're working on.
> 
> This is just how an office is; and the other programmers in my office 
> are taking on challenging things as well.  But if you're worried about 
> losing respect or face, you won't really.  You'll only look like less a 
> programmer to those people who don't know the difference between good 
> PHP and bad... and for those, who cares anyway?
> 
> Or, if you mean, losing the edge within yourself (not respect or face), 
> I doubt that's an issue.  Just keep in mind, if you slog off, you slog 
> off.  It's easy to lose your edge when you switch to something new, 
> especially something that has an easy learning curve.  This is true with 
> anything, I think.

You touched on both of my worries: fear of losing respect and fear of 
losing my edge. It's encouraging to know that you do web application 
development and still find opportunities to do some systems stuff.

You also mentioned you do some of your systems stuff in D. How does you 
employer feel about that? Or are you free to program in what ever 
language you chose?

> 
> My opinion.  Hope it helps, at least somewhat.  I should note, last I 
> was told, systems programming pays more.... but I think web programming 
> is more interesting (and, of course, how much it pays depends on you, 
> again.)

This new opportunity (developing web apps) pays more than my present 
systems programming job.

> -[Unknown]
>