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Comment by LAC-Tech | Hacker News Reader

> You kids have no idea how easy you have it.

Don't worry, the industry finds a way to overcomplicate everything.

If we tried to write anything that original in 2022 we'd be berated for not using a library.

It's funny you say this because just last night I was reading a 1985 copy of UNIX Review [1] and there was an article specifically having a go at C developers who didn't use library functions and rolled their own(!) Not entirely related to the modern practice of using a "library" but close enough to make me chuckle.

[1] https://twitter.com/peterc/status/1478520632765784072

I think there's a difference between ignoring stdlib stuff and not using some 3rd-party library of questionable provenance to parse strings in the format of YYYYMMDD into date objects.

But you still can ignore those idiots. It works very well.

I can't really when the app is pre-existing and over-engineered.

Good point, there helps fingerpointing. Bad programmers are not hearing enough that they are bad. Slow, bloated software is just accepted somehow. Even in the dev community. That needs to stop. Start naming the people behind all those electron crap.

Too bad most desktop GUI framework libraries are trash and absolutely painful to use.

Yeah, we should just give up. I get you.

I mean, try teaching someone the age of the author or most people that played with BASIC at the time what it takes to build a webapp these days.

what breaks my heart is it doesn't have to be that way. less so than in 2022 than any other time.

I look forward to you posting the link to your tutorial on HN. I was fiddling with assembler in 1987, but I am probably fifteen years older than the author. I suspect that I am still teachable; I am confident the author is.

I was playing with BASIC on a Wang PC in 1987 and today I write and maintain webapps using React (among other things).

Perhaps you didn't mean it that way, but I found your comment demeaning.

Hmmm, I started programming in 1982 on a TRS80 Color Computer, and am still at it building web and desktop apps. I agree if you were out of the scene for a while it'd be a hard task to get to grips with things, but otherwise some of us can still understand and maybe even use some of the newfangled stuff.

Huh, I was writing BASIC code (and even some 6502 Assembler) back in 1980. Somehow I manage to get my feeble brain to comprehend the modern web stack. I guess I must be exceptional.

Full stack dev checking in (Django on the backend, Angular on the frontend). Also have no difficulty with modern development (web or otherwise) despite having cut my teeth on 8-bit BASIC. ;)

Is this based on experience teaching such people, or assumptions?

I mean, define web app.

We want to get hyper technical, I'd argue with Flutter web and Firebase I could even teach a non-programmer how to build a basic web app with about 3 months .

A lot of times these more experienced programmers are able to plan things better, versus folks from our generation who just jump in and start writing JavaScript until it works.

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