The Schizophrenic State of Software In 2014 209
jfruh writes: "The current state of the world of software is going in two radically different directions. On the one hand, server-side software is maturing, with wide consensus on tools and techniques that can be used across platforms. On the other hand, client-side programming is an increasingly fragmented mess, with the need to build apps for the Web and for multiple PC and mobile platforms, all natively. But of course, the server and client sides have to work together to deliver what people actually want."
Re:Adobe Air (Score:2, Interesting)
Adobe products are an interesting case of trying to solve systemic problems, and inevitably creating new, worse ones. Except photoshop. Photoshop is software that is just useful and nothing else.
Re:Adobe Air (Score:5, Interesting)
I fail to see how AIR is a problem worse than Phonegap or what Chrome is offering right now as a wrapper over html5.
Making a cross-platform game is world of pain, especially when you're small.
I was able to make my chess game [sparkchess.com] available on web, as a chrome app, as a native app for PC, Mac and Linux and for mobile on iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and phones, even the now-dying Blackberry Playbook. The game is quite complex but 99% of the code is cross-platform, there are very few platform-specific lines.
I've been considering porting it to HTML5 but the amount of work needed is too much for one man. The AI is straighforward (Javascript and AS3 are closely related), but porting the UI, the multiplayer code and then tweaking it to make sure it works with all major browsers is not something I'm looking forward to. With AIR I can keep my sanity and concentrate on features.
Re:Be Thankful (Score:4, Interesting)
But from the business side it sucks. Also as a developer you have to be careful you don't get yourself locked into one technology. To me learning new stuff is part of what makes my job enjoyable but far too many of us get comfortable and find ourselves reaching into our middle years with skills that are no longer in demand.
I don't get it. Why do you think that learning (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't get it. Why do you think that learning five, or a dozen, or fifty ways to do the same damn things is fun?
This is precisely why CS (really IT) is such a horrible field - you have to spin your wheels, faster and faster, just to do the same damn things, over and over.
Boy how I regret wasting time studying this field! Learning new things in science or math areas is fun, even history or psychology, medicine, neuroscience, the world is wide open.
CS/IT has become all about learning yet one more way to glue a database to a user interface. Yawn. Barf.
No wonder fewer people of quality, especially women, eschew CS/IT. it is a horrible, soul-deadening area to work in.