RE: Programming Language Swift Poll
November 3, 2015 at 7:17 pm
(This post was last modified: November 3, 2015 at 7:24 pm by I_am_not_mafia.)
When I have to develop a web application using Java, Spring, Javascript and a database I'm still amazed at just how complicated it is. It just feels like we're rehashing 60's technology but for web apps / portals / whatever you call them instead. Most of the time the only computation it really performs is to present fields to a user to be filled in with constrained values, perform queries and return results. I just can't believe that we haven't abstracted away the whole client / server / browser / database from the programming model in this day and age. I can see that's what technologies are trying to do, like Java and Spring, but what they actually do is just replace one set of boiler plate code with another.
I think the problem is that people create frameworks to make use of existing technologies which are actually too low level for the task at hand. What am I actually doing with Java and Spring to create a web site? I'm basically using a powerful language to stick the programming equivalent of Lego bricks, Meccano and Mega Bloks together using duct tape and string.
Take Java. Starts off a normal programming language, like say C++ but interpreted. Then people for some reason start using it to serve web pages. So along comes Enterprise Java, JSPs and Java Beans etc. People don't like this so Spring is invented. But this just means people create lots of XML files instead of Java code. So they try to do away with this by making everything auto-magical, implicit and impossible to debug. But this is only for the back-end though, browsers need client side scripting so Javascript is used but that's shite so JQuery was invented.
No. Just don't fucking use Java for a stupid website. Surely it's not beyond the wit of geeks to invent a single platform specifically for web browsers and servers that does away with all the patched on crap?
Still, at least it's better than having to deal with Bioinformatics code. Biologists who don't actually know how to program. The code I am refactoring now is no different to what you would get from the 80's. C code wrapped up to look like C++. Obviously loads of googling went on because they clearly did not understand why code fragments were being used. No classes. No encapsulation. No single point of maintenance. No coding standard. No abstraction. Why? Did someone actually teach themselves an obsolete language or was it some lecturer who has been stuck away for 30 years teaching their students this and not realising that the world has moved on?
Bioinformatics is heading towards the same software crisis that software engineers faced and solved 30 years ago because all the scientists just hack shitty little programs without a care in the world about someone wanting to make use of it after them. But that C code made to look like C++ is still preferable to the Fortran code that I very narrowly escaped having to refactor.
I think the problem is that people create frameworks to make use of existing technologies which are actually too low level for the task at hand. What am I actually doing with Java and Spring to create a web site? I'm basically using a powerful language to stick the programming equivalent of Lego bricks, Meccano and Mega Bloks together using duct tape and string.
Take Java. Starts off a normal programming language, like say C++ but interpreted. Then people for some reason start using it to serve web pages. So along comes Enterprise Java, JSPs and Java Beans etc. People don't like this so Spring is invented. But this just means people create lots of XML files instead of Java code. So they try to do away with this by making everything auto-magical, implicit and impossible to debug. But this is only for the back-end though, browsers need client side scripting so Javascript is used but that's shite so JQuery was invented.
No. Just don't fucking use Java for a stupid website. Surely it's not beyond the wit of geeks to invent a single platform specifically for web browsers and servers that does away with all the patched on crap?
Still, at least it's better than having to deal with Bioinformatics code. Biologists who don't actually know how to program. The code I am refactoring now is no different to what you would get from the 80's. C code wrapped up to look like C++. Obviously loads of googling went on because they clearly did not understand why code fragments were being used. No classes. No encapsulation. No single point of maintenance. No coding standard. No abstraction. Why? Did someone actually teach themselves an obsolete language or was it some lecturer who has been stuck away for 30 years teaching their students this and not realising that the world has moved on?
Bioinformatics is heading towards the same software crisis that software engineers faced and solved 30 years ago because all the scientists just hack shitty little programs without a care in the world about someone wanting to make use of it after them. But that C code made to look like C++ is still preferable to the Fortran code that I very narrowly escaped having to refactor.
