Hi, I am a Javascript apprentice. Can you help me with my project?

- Sure! What do you need?

Oh, it’s very simple, I just want to make a static webpage that shows a clock with the real time.

- Wait, why static? Why not dynamic?

I don’t know, I guess it’ll be easier.

- Well, maybe, but that’s boring, and if that’s boring you are not going to put in time, and if you’re not going to put in time, it’s going to be harder; so it’s better to start with something harder in order to make it easier.

You know that doesn’t make sense right?

- When you learn Javascript you’ll get it.

Okay, so I want to parse this date first to make the clock be universal for all the regions.

- You’re not going to do that by yourself right? You know what they say, don’t repeat yourself!

But it’s just two lines.

- Don’t reinvent the wheel!

Literally, Javascript has a built in library for t...

- One component per file!

I’m lost.

- It happens, and you’ll get lost managing your files as well. You should use Webpack or Browserify for managing your modules.

Doesn’t Javascript include that already?

- Yes, but some people still have previous versions of ECMAScript, so it wouldn’t be compatible.

What’s ECMAScript?

- Javascript

Why is it called ECMAScript then?

- It’s called both ways. Anyways, after you install Webpack to manage your modules, you still need a module and dependency manager, such as bower, or node package manager or yarn.

What does that have to do with my page?

- So you can install AngularJS.

What’s AngularJS?

- A Javascript framework that allows you to do complex stuff easily, such as two way data binding!

Oh, that’s great, so if I modify one sentence on a part of the page, it will automatically refresh the other part of the page which is related to the first one and viceversa?

- Exactly! Except two way data binding is not recommended, since you don’t want child components to edit the parent components of your app.

Then why make two way data binding in the first place?

- It’s backed up by Google. You just don’t get it do you?

I have installed AngularJS now, but it seems I have to redefine something called a... directive?

- AngularJS is old now, you should start using Angular, aka Angular 2.

But it’s the same name... wtf! Only 3 minutes have passed since we started talking, how are they in Angular 2 already?

- You mean 3.

2.

- 3.

4?

- 5.

6?

- Exactly.

Okay, I now know Angular 6.0, and use a component based architecture using only a one way data binding, I have read and started using the Design Patterns already described to solve my problem without reinventing the wheel using libraries such as lodash and D3 for a world map visualization of my clock as well as moment to parse the dates correctly. I also used ECMAScript 6 with Babel to secure backwards compatibility.

- That’s good.

Really?

- Yes, except you didn’t concatenate your html into templates that can be under a super Javascript file which can, then, be concatenated along all your Javascript files and finally be minimized in order to reduce latency. And automate all that process using Gulp while testing every single unit of your code using Jasmine or protractor or just the Angular built in unit tester.

I did.

- But did you use TypeScript?

Boss just said it needs to be IE6 backwards compatible

Making backwards compatible websites for IE8 and back honestly feels like releasing the new blockbuster in VHS..

Hey, we need a service to resize some images. Oh, it’ll also need a globally diverse cache, with cache purging capabilities, only cache certain images in the United States, support auto scaling, handle half a petabyte of data , but we don’t know when it’ll be needed, so just plan on all of it being needed at once. It has to support a robust security profile using only basic HTTP auth, be written in Java, hosted on-prem, and be fully protected from ddos attacks. It must be backwards compatible with the previous API we use, but that’s poorly documented, you’ll figure it out. Also, it must support being rolled out 20% of the way so we can test it, and forget about it, and leave two copies of our app in production.

You can re-use the code we already have for image thumbnails even though it’s written in Python, caches nothing and is hosted in the cloud. It should be easy. This guy can show you how it all works.

"So, coder huh. What languages do you use? HTML, CSS, JavaScript? That type of stuff?"

"No. I use React. You see... with hooks... "

"Well, can you change some of the CSS on my website for me?"

"Is it React?"

These ignorant comments about arch are starting to get on my nerves.

You ranted or asked help about something exclusive to windows and someone pointed out they don't have that problem in arch and now you're annoyed?

Well maybe it's for good.

Next comes a very rough analogy, but imagine if someone posts "hey guys, I did a kg of coke and feeling bad, how do I detox?"

It takes one honest asshole to be like "well what if you didn't do coke?".

Replace the coke with windows.
Windows is a (mostly) closed source operating system owned by a for profit company with a very shady legal and ethical history.

What on earth could possibly go wrong?

Oh you get bsod's?
The system takes hours to update whenever the hell it wants, forces reboot and you can't stop it?
oh you got hacked because it has thousands of vulnerabilities?
wannacry on outdated windows versions paralyzed the uk health system?

oh no one can truly scrutinize it because it's closed source?

yet you wonder why people are assholes when you mention it? This thing is fucking cancer, it's hundreds of steps backwards in terms of human progress.

and one of the causes for its widespread usage are the savage marketing tactics they practiced early on. just google that shit up.

but no, linux users are assholes out to get you.

and how do people react to these honest comments? "let's make a meme out of it. let's deligitimize linux, linux users and devs are a bunch of neckbeards, end of story, watch this video of rms eating skin off his foot on a live conference"

short minded idiots.

I'm not gonna deny the challenges or limitations linux represents for the end user.

It does take time to learn how to use it properly.
Nvidia sometimes works like shit.
Tweaking is almost universally required.
A huge amount of games, or Adobe/Office/X products are not compatible.
The docs can be very obscure sometimes (I for one hate a couple of manpages)

But you get a system that:
* Boots way faster
* Is way more stable
* Is way way way more secure.
* Is accountable, as in, no chance to being forced to get exploited by some evil marketing shit.

In other words, you're fucking free.
You can even create your own version of the system, with total control of it, even profit with it.

I'm not sure the average end user cares about this, but this is a developer forum, so I think in all honesty every developer owes open source OS' (linux, freebsd, etc) major respect for being free and not being corporate horseshit.

Doctors have a hippocratic oath? Well maybe devs should have some form of oath too, some sworn commitment that they will try to improve society.

I do have some sympathy for the people that are forced to use windows, even though they know ideally isn't the ideal moral choice.
As in, their job forces it, or they don't have time or energy to learn an alternative.

At the very least, if you don't know what you're talking about, just stfu and read.

But I don't have one bit of sympathy for the rest.

I didn't even talk about arch itself.
Holy fucking shit, these people that think arch is too complicated.

What in the actual fuck.

I know what the problem is, the arch install instructions aren't copy paste commands.
Or they medium tutorial they found is outdated.

So yeah, the majority of the dev community is either too dumb or has very strong ADD to CAREFULLY and PATIENTLY read through the instructions.

I'll be honest, I wouldn't expect a freshman to follow the arch install guide and not get confused several times.
But this is an intermediate level (not megaexpert like some retards out there imply).

Yet arch is just too much. That's like saying "omg building a small airplane is sooooo complicated". Yeah well it's a fucking aerial vehicle. It's going to be a bit tough. But it's nowhere near as difficult as building a 747.

So because some devs are too dumb and talk shit, they just set the bar too low.

Or "if you try to learn how to build a plane you'll grow an aviator neckbeard". I'll grow a fucking beard if I want too.

I'm so thankful for arch because it has a great compromise between control and ease of install and use.

When I have a fresh install I only get *just* what I fucking need, no extra bullshit, no extra programs I know nothing about or need running on boot time, and that's how I boot way faster that ubuntu (which is way faster than windows already).

Configuring nvidia optimus was a major pain in the ass? Sure was, but I got it work the way I wanted to after some time.

Upgrading is also easy as pie, so really scratching my brain here trying to understand the real difficult of using arch.

I don't want new features or updates anymore. Almost every OS gets bloated with new features I don't want, while also breaking backwards compatibility and a working setup.
Phone? Apps not compatible anymore since update or just disappearing from the phone.
Computer? Often unstable updates, and since this has happened many times before I try to delay updates as long as possible but then caves in from the annoying update notifications.
Would love to get security updates, but come on, stop it with the bloat apps. Let me just uninstall the features I don't want and let me opt in instead. Make it possible to build extensions and plugins to customize behaviour. Why does software have to spoil like this?

To have only one Javascript framework which everyone can use which does not do breaking changes every fuckin 6 months or year. And newer versions are backwards compatible. And will not endorse in any framework wars

(Warning: This rant includes nonsense, nightposting, unstructured thoughts, a dissenting opinion, and a purposeless, stupid joke in the beginning. Reader discretion is advised.)

honestly the whole "ARM solves every x86 problem!" thing doesn't seem to work out in my head:

- Not all ARM chips are the same, nor are they perfectly compatible with each other. This could lead to issues for consumers, for developers or both. There are toolchains that work with almost all of them... though endianness is still an issue, and you KNOW there's not gonna be an enforced standard. (These toolchains also don't do the best job on optimization.)

- ARM has a lot of interesting features. Not a lot of them have been rigorously checked for security, as they aren't as common as x86 CPUs. That's a nightmare on its own.

- ARM or Thumb? I can already see some large company is going to INSIST AND ENFORCE everything used internally to 100% be a specific mode for some bullshit reason. That's already not fun on a higher level, i.e. what software can be used for dev work, etc.

- Backwards compatibility. Most companies either over-embrace change and nothing is guaranteed to work at any given time, or become so set in their ways they're still pulling Amigas and 386 machines out of their teeth to this day. The latter seems to be a larger portion of companies from what I see when people have issues working with said company, so x86 carryover is going to be required that is both relatively flawless AND fairly fast, which isn't really doable.

- The awkward adjustment period. Dear fuck, if you thought early UEFI and GPT implementations were rough, how do you think changing the hardware model will go? We don't even have a standard for the new model yet! What will we keep? What will we replace? What ARM version will we use? All the hardware we use is so dependent on knowing exactly what other hardware will do that changing out the processor has a high likelihood of not being enough.

I'm just waiting for another clusterfuck of multiple non-standard branching sets of PCs to happen over this. I know it has a decent chance of happening, we can't follow standards very well even now, and it's been 30+ years since they were widely accepted.

When starting projects, following semver.org quickly gets out of hand. Nothing is "backwards-compatible"

0.0.0 gitignore
0.1.0 prints arguments
1.0.0 prints text of web requests
2.0.0 prints parsed web requests
3.0.0 prints filtered requests
4.0.0 prints using yaml
5.0.0 logs to file
5.0.1 catch error
5.1.0 interactive

Someone explain this logic?

Contractor makes changes and then I have to fix because he can't as it's no longer backwards compatible.

I make changes and I need to enforce backwards compatibility. Yet these contractors are my seniors

I can work with Angular, even though it's pain in the but.
My current Angular job is actually the job with the first manager that had decent human values and ethics, I like my team, and yeah, what we building is shit. But it's only 30% shit because of Angular, another 30% are due to SAFe, and the rest is the usual stuff.
Still enjoy my job and respect my team.

But please do not expect me to pretend Angular is on a comparable level to React. Angular hasn't brought any actual innovation in most major versions but releases those breaking major updates still at least twice a year.
Ivy might be awesome, but only because Angular told the world 3 years ago also to have Ivy compatible compile targets for their libs/packages doesn't mean everybody cared.
And the ngcc, the awesome compatibility compiler, mutates node modules in place. So ne parallel stuff, no using yarn2 or pnpm.
At the same time, React brought so many innovations into the frontend world but is basically backwards compatible.

Not sure how the Angular partial compilation and whatever needs to go on works, but it seems like there's hardly anyone that really knows, so you can't use Vite or whatever other new tool.
And sure, if you're really good, you can write Angular without producing memory leaks.
But it's really hard. Do you know what's also quite hard: Producing memory leaks with React!

And for sure, Angular Universal, which isn't used by anyone, it feels like, will still be on a comparable level to an open source product that's used all over the world, builds the basis for an open source company, and is improved by thousand of issues day by day.

And sure, two kinds of change detection are a great idea. And yeah, pretending Angular comes with all included makes it worth it that the API is fucking huge and you're better of knowing nothing, because you have to read up things, than knowing quite a lot, since making assumptions and believing apis work in a similar way and follow similar contentions...

Whatever... I work with it. Like the time. Like the company, even my poss. But please don't expect my lying to you this was a good idea, or Angular is even remotely the same level of React.

I have a nightmare project that I will probably be ranting about quite a lot in the coming weeks, but I don't want SEO to pick up the specifics on the off chance my peers Google the issues we're facing and my profile comes up.

Let me set up the scene by describing the predicament, and then I'll get to the most outrageous thing I've heard while working at this job. It gives you a CLEAR idea of why we're in this situation in the first place.

Anyways, the nightmare project only runs in IE with compatibility mode set to version 6. So it only runs in IE 6 at the latest.

And it is massive. I'm talking real, real enormous.

The most recent roadblock I ran into while Chrome-ifying it is the extensive use of a browser API that was removed 8 years ago.

It involves synchronous data input and I know for a relatively certain fact there's no way to fix it without combing through every single reference to this API and converting the ones that need sync data (not all of them do) to callbacks. How big of an issue is that?

Well, just one of that 15-ish modules has over 900 references to it. Even just creating a spreadsheet of "commented out / doesn't need a fix / needs fix" for each reference in 1/15th of this project would take days of manual labor.

Here's the rant.

So after discussing this issue in the meeting (we ended on "they don't believe me that we can't just replace it with jQuery") I brought up the next issue. One of our 3rd party libraries is so old it doesn't work anymore and we can't modify that code (it's compiled).

They said that even if it was backwards compatible (no fucking way. This version is like, at least 10 years old, I guarantee it) they can't simply replace it because we don't have a subscription to this product anymore (suggesting we find an alternative).

And I fucking kid you not, this is what happened next.

They then began discussing how this is why you shouldn't use 3rd party code. Because it becomes obsolete and you can't even fix it yourself because it's not yours to edit.

Yes. They said this DIRECTLY after we discussed our 900+ references to a browser API >>REMOVED<< 8 years ago. Yes, they said this about a 3rd party library that receives regular support but is totally FUCKED because we NEVER updated it after adding it and we never even renewed the LICENSE.

What the FUCK

Welp, learning PHP for work now. Have to use an Open source thing built in Drupal for a Professor's research, but that means I need to learn PHP and how to style the site to match our existing style that we use on our ASP.NET sites. I'd be more excited if I was sure I could use PHP7, but it's at the mercy of how backwards compatible it is with 5.5.
I'm less than thrilled.

Why is customer support sometimes so shitty? A coworker good a Win10 Laptop (Win7 before) and one program wasn;t working there anymore. So we reached out to the support asking to help us fix it. After over a month later and x-amount of E-mails back and forth. The answer was, you have to upgrade everything (Webserver, Database, Client) to use Win10 (no backwards compatibility). Which is fine, I don't mind upgrading and understand that software sometimes is not backwards compatible. BUT THAT IS SOMETHIGN TO STATE IN THE 2nd E-MAIL. Not an infinity later after a tiring back and forth of nonsense.

I started with cakephp 2. I did a TON of projects with it and made my own reusable plugins for future projects and everything was nice and smooth.

then cakephp 3 came out with breaking changes and was not backwards compatible. I learned the new rewritten ORM and tried to do a project with it along with plugins.

then cakephp 4 came out with breaking changes and was not backwards compatible...

ok... look i dont claim to know more than the people writing frameworks but u want people to use ur framework u cant fuck them up in every major release and render their old projects unupgradable... fuck you im switching to laravel this was the last straw

Design Decision:
We have an API and a lot of microservices based on that API. Additionally we have a store of protobuf-templates (files to automate serializing certain events etc).
Currently for each service we have the API with general stuff (connection stuff etc) and then copy the 5 or 6 proto-files we need for that service, they update sometimes, so does the API, for each service, two things that need to stay updated. Which option would seem more logical to you?

a) Integrate all proto files into the API. The services then only need to update the API but they also have access to many proto files they don't need for that service (which are required for other services however)

or

b) Keep them seperated and keep manually updating the proto-files for affected services

Disclaimer: our proto files are always backwards compatible by design, both the API and protofiles change fairly frequently.

Ty