this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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StackOverflow is blogging about Web3. Please put it out of its misery (stackoverflow.blog)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The one catch is that because responses from the blockchain can take variable amounts of time, it’s best to request and receive from blockchains using asynchronous methods.

"You may be used to writing websites that actually load in fractions of a second, and so rely on obsolete web2 technologies like synchronous fetches. But don't worry! With modern techniques like async / await your loading spinner will animate flawlessly while the blockchain spends 20 minutes burning down a forest in the background."

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

By using these newer technologies, you can provide a more bloated and slow user experience, converting your web users into app users so they can avoid this garbage you wrote that requires a 100 MB download every time they visit the page.

But the kicker is we can put the same web site into the app!

UX is more uniformly garbage than ever.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What's going on with the header image? You've got Google Chrome, YouTube and Xitter in one hand, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Brave browser in the other and you're bridging the gap by fusing your index fingers together?

Were it not for the illustrator credit I'd assume it was generated. (No shade intended to Alexandra Francis, I wouldn't want to bring my A-game either if I had to work for this kind of bullshit.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I hope for the most people here the dubious history of the Brave browser is well known right?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

It's on one side with Bitcoin and Ethereum, even if you didn't know about Brave before, seeing it there would immediatelly throw it into the bin compartment of your brain.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Oh absolutely, though among the others listed it doesn't particularly stand out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes, true. You would expect SO to know better, but alas.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Most programmers are programmers and a lot of programmers really do inexplicably find selling points like these compelling:

  • Boo hoo I got canceled for being a homophobic wingnut. Mozilla has gone woke. Install this chromium fork #93726 to own the libs!
  • Tired of ads (which, for all their numerous faults, usually at least fund the websites you use)? Watch our ads instead and waste a shitton of electricity to get paid in our monopoly money scrip for the privilege!
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Most programmers are programmers

Technically correct the best kind of correct.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

You’re familiar with older web and pre-web languages like JavaScript and Java. Did you know that you can use these well-known languages with Web3 technologies?

What the fuck is this? Since when is JavaScript not the main and almost the only programming language of the web, by usage?

And I remember when Java was actually used on the web.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

There was a question on here recently like "Please recommend an e-commerce web application which doesn't use JavaScript" and the top response was "I don't understand what you're asking - how can you have a web application without JavaScript??‽". It was like everyone has forgotten about HTTP POST.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It could be entirely server-side generated with PHP.

I’m not sure why a person would want to do that however. It seems unnecessarily limiting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

And I remember when Java was actually used on the web.

I'd rather forget...

And if you work in a corpo, this memory might sadly be pretty fresh.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I should have forgotten, and the memory would be garbage collected, but it ended up leaking anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

PHP is probably still the main language of the web.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Already deleted my login. Absolute shitshow.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I watched the video of a talk by the author from an xrp conference in June and I don't know why I do that to myself and I also don't understand how these people muster the energy to talk about this stuff which is SO MUCH THE SAME AS IT ALWAYS WAS. It's such a grind.

ICYI in watching paint dry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwqmDTfsspM

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

ah, it's a paid ad for Ripple

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You're right! There's a disclosure on the page but it's fuckin tiny.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I completely missed it! It’s almost like they don’t want you to know the content is sponsored.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

lmao the disclosure is all the way down at the bottom and it's soooo small

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

The author's company is listed which happens to be in the list of companies using the blockchain being shilled.

That's practically above board in the land of blockchain companies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

disclosures for ants

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

"sponsored content, but only very smol bean sponsored content, pls not be mad thx"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The fall from grace of StackOverflow is something both mesmerising and horrifying.

An invaluable repository of programming knowledge ground into dust as the last tokens of good will are cashed in for stinky money. It was a unique place, where self-moderation by the community actually worked to a large extent.

How the fuck did we get here? First the AI debacle, now this. Joel Spolsky always appeared as a reasonable guy, I wonder how much him stepping down is intertwined with SO making some of the worst possible calls in the past few years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

where self-moderation by the community actually worked to a large extent.

This is apparently not totally true, it was apparently (I read people talking about it, I have no source on it) not a great place for non-white people. But it is unclear what was wrong with it to me. (I saw this when there was the backlash against the AI moderation thing). So minor point, but I have no more information.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

An invaluable repository of programming knowledge ground into dust as the last tokens of good will are cashed in for stinky money. It was a unique place, where self-moderation by the community actually worked to a large extent.

That's the worst part about this situation - Joel's burning the coder's Library of Alexandria in pursuit of that cash. Whatever comes to replace StackOverflow is gonna be a pale imitation of what came before, and I suspect the entire field of programming's gonna be feeling the setbacks for a long, long time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Joel's no longer associated with SO, though, right? He's not even a chairman at this point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

According to wikipedia he left, rejoined and left again in 2022.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Kinda checks out? 2022 is around the time it became clear the admin was clueless about what makes SO actually a valuable research, and then genAI was the perfect spark to go full rot.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

every time I started reading this I seriously got the most disorienting feeling that I was in the past, and my brain kept telling me “the time travel worked! you’ve got to warn them!”