Pain and Glory from the Trenches of the IT World

When it comes to judging programming languages, there are three main factors that we need to consider: programmer productivity, the application feature set that can be implemented, and the runtime performance of the developed applications. There are, of course, many others, including memory usage, portability, and implementation cost. However, memory is plentiful these days, most languages have cross-platform implementations, and many of these implementations are free or have a low cost. So the three factors mentioned in the title become the most important ones.

Today I was reading about Buzzword, yet another Web-based word processor. There is some sort of a Buzzword preview page, but it said the browsers I tried were “unsupported.” At the very least, they could have put up some screenshots of their application on that page, so people like me can see what we’re supposedly missing out on.

We’ve all seen cars that have been “riced out“. Typically, a rather lousy car has all sorts of doodads and gizmos stuck on it. Sometimes this is done for the sake of the car’s appearance. Sometimes it’s done in a vain attempt to increase the vehicle’s performance. Regardless, what often happens is that it’s a costly hassle to modify the car, in the end the car looks awful, the performance actually decreases, and there’s been virtually nothing gained.

When it comes to programming languages and programming technologies, I think we’re getting close to a point similar to that of twenty years ago. In 1987, many enterprise software systems were being written in languages like C, COBOL, and even PL/I at some shops. Some places were ahead of the curve, and were using Smalltalk.

Michi Kono recently wrote about how the most talented Web developers are usually also the most talented application developers. I propose that we take it a step further: a great Web developer is usually a superb application developer. Or in a different light, a great Web developer is a waste of a really great application developer.

Those who follow recent trends in Web development have no doubt heard of “scrollovers“. It’s a JavaScript- and CSS-based method for making the text of a typical hyperlink “scroll” upwards, from one color to another. I don’t doubt that others will adapt the technique to other uses.

We often hear about how JavaScript-based Web applications will be the wave of the future. Some people have gone so far as to say that these applications will completely replace the traditional, desktop-based applications we use today. The advocates will list off supposed benefits, but will rarely listen when serious problems are shown with their favourite technology. Take, for instance, the major problems I noticed with a JavaScript-based Breakout clone.

Today I was reading through an article about the many problems associated with Flash. Although it is entitled “Flash Sucks,” the article is well-written, and makes many good points that a lot of Web developers fail to consider. Among the issues covered, the usability and accessibility problems often observed with Flash-based Web sites are mentioned. The proprietary nature of Flash and related technologies is also addressed. So overall, it sensibly addressed some serious issues with a fairly popular technology that is poised for further growth.

When the computing world moved from manually toggling input switches to machine code encoded on paper tape, there was a vast improvement in programmer

Today I shared the experience a friend had with one of the companies he works with. It involved a failed transition from what was mainly a console-based suite of applications powered by Sun systems and Oracle, to an AJAX and Web-based system running on Windows, .NET and SQL Server. It seems that that entry was submitted to Reddit, and so I’ve been reading some of the comments that were left there.