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Comment by miguelrochefort | Hacker News Reader

Modern application development is horrible.

Why on earth do we still design and implement user interfaces by hand? Shouldn't 99% of development be about creating semantic models and let generic clients take care of rendering it properly based on form-factor, context, preferences, etc?

Today, every single app needs to re-implement the user class, authentication system, profile management interface, responsive design, loading indicators, caching and offline support, third-party access, sharing, filtering, theming, localization, accessibility, etc. This is insane.

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Designers and product owners won't allow it. See also: tons of custom styling and behaviors on mobile platforms that break user expectations and double or triple development time, just so the designer has something to do other than arrange in a grid and choose colors for the perfectly-fine built in UI elements which are, most of the time, more pleasant to use than whatever they come up with.

I never asked for branded or fancy UI. I want consistency, and I expect the platform to drive design decisions, not the feature that happens to be packaged as an app. I'm sure most rational people would agree.

Design hubris is one of the world's most important problem.

> Design hubris is one of the world's most important problem.

Probably not, and I disagree entirely besides.

We shouldn't break design paradigms or expected behaviour. But design in UI helps us navigate and create a clear mental model . Have you ever tried orientating yourself in the Barbican?

Design is extremely important, hence why it shouldn't be delegated to third-party service providers.

In theory you could implement HN and Reddit with the exact same design, but to me each of these hold value in different ways thanks to their differences. That's just one of countless examples.

I will build a system that will let you use both Reddit and HN using the same interface.

Will you try it?

I'll be willing to try it sure. Just don't steal my login details please :)

You can find my e-mail address through my website which is linked on my HN profile, or you can PM me on Reddit, same username that I use here.

If your system is public already you can simply link to it in a reply to this comment.

> I never asked for branded or fancy UI. I want consistency, and I expect the platform to drive design decisions, not the feature that happens to be packaged as an app. I'm sure most rational people would agree.

Do you, or other rational people, have the money that guides the software world? Based on what I see around me and what I read on the internet, I don't think you do, sorry.

> Why on earth do we still design and implement user interfaces by hand? Shouldn't 99% of development be about creating semantic models and let generic clients take care of rendering it properly based on form-factor, context, preferences, etc?

Oh look, XHTML2, oh wait, it's dead ...

https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-i18n.html#s_i18nmodule

> Today, every single app needs to re-implement the user class, authentication system, profile management interface, responsive design, loading indicators, caching and offline support, third-party access, sharing, filtering, theming, localization, accessibility, etc. This is insane.

You're mixing up server-side and front-end development. The client shouldn't take care of authentication or profile management.

> Shouldn't 99% of development be about creating semantic models and let generic clients take care of rendering it properly based on form-factor, context, preferences, etc?

If you're not familiar with the Naked Object's pattern, you may find it interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_objects

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