Ask HN: What do you hate about today's dev practices compared to 10 years ago?
7 comments
The churn. Web apps aren't really THAT different from the PHP + AJAX (or Angular v1) days, but every 2 years we reinvent that whole system from scratch. It's tiring.
A part of me still kinda wishes Microsoft (or some other single big vendor) won out and standardized a set of common APIs/UIs/SDKs, like .NET with WPF or something, rather than the hodgepodge that is the modern web. On one hand it's cool that it's a relatively open ecosystem (vs, say, the mobile app stores), but my god, does the dev ex and UX suffer from the fragmentation. And it's not like modern web apps are really any substantially better than 90s desktop app.
A part of me still kinda wishes Microsoft (or some other single big vendor) won out and standardized a set of common APIs/UIs/SDKs, like .NET with WPF or something, rather than the hodgepodge that is the modern web. On one hand it's cool that it's a relatively open ecosystem (vs, say, the mobile app stores), but my god, does the dev ex and UX suffer from the fragmentation. And it's not like modern web apps are really any substantially better than 90s desktop app.
Actual good UX was thrown out the window when it became a focus and profession. It's all wrong now.
Can you elaborate?
Yes. These people spend way too much time trying to get things right that they over complicate it and generally don't do a great job of making things usable.
Sorry, I get what you mean, but I was wondering if you might be willing to share some examples?
I'm a frontend dev who occasionally hears this complaint from certain users. If there were some way to be more accommodating to them, I'd love to learn! For example, some people hate the "modern" use of a lot of whitespace with less text density, or mobile menus on desktop (I hate that too), etc.
I don't think any UX designer sets out to purposely try to overcomplicate things, but there are good designers and bad designers out there, and also, most of them are young and don't have the lived experience of older computer users and don't remember older UIs. I would love to share comments and tips with them if I knew what the specific issues were.
I'm a frontend dev who occasionally hears this complaint from certain users. If there were some way to be more accommodating to them, I'd love to learn! For example, some people hate the "modern" use of a lot of whitespace with less text density, or mobile menus on desktop (I hate that too), etc.
I don't think any UX designer sets out to purposely try to overcomplicate things, but there are good designers and bad designers out there, and also, most of them are young and don't have the lived experience of older computer users and don't remember older UIs. I would love to share comments and tips with them if I knew what the specific issues were.
Overreliance on SPAs.
Software that works fine on the developer’s 6-month-old high end workstation and like molasses anywhere else.
The subscription model for EVERYTHING.