If that's the case, how come nobody seems to be writing improved Minecraft clients?
Ever since I started playing it in the beta days I've been frustrated with how poorly Minecraft performs relative to what it's showing on the screen. (Not that that stopped me from pouring hundreds of hours into the damn thing.)
Well, they do? Sodium, for instance. It's a mod, not a full rewrite, rewriting the client from scratch would mean a lot of boring work like speaking with Mojang's server, but I understand Sodium basically rips out and replaces the entire graphics pipeline of the client.
Yeah, it was always weird how 32x32x48 extreme reactors lagged the game whenever you looked at them, but the moment you looked away everything was fine.
> but if you're used to Wordpress plugins or an NPM package being available for whatever you need, Drupal can be frustrating.
On the other hand, Drupal does not have the WordPress ecosystem habits where many modules/plugins have paid upgrades and/or scatter ads all over your site. The WP plugin ecosystem feels so scummy in comparison.
I agree the switch to Drupal 8 really killed its momentum though. (Drupal was reimplemented on top of Symfony and all existing modules/plugins had to be almost entirely rewritten to work with it - which was quite a difficult hurdle for people used to the previous conventions. Also being able to implement a site's configuration entirely in code, a beautiful feature of D7 albeit one that required third-party modules to implement, was still not quite working properly last time I checked.)
Configuration as code is actually one of the best parts of Drupal now. I think it's probably symfony as well under the hood, but you can just import / export your config with a CLI and commit as yml, makes moving configuration to higher / lower environments so pleasant.
But yes, I think with Drupal 7 there were a lot more "site builders" using Drupal, where D8 I imagine it's mostly just developers left standing.
How did the sites auto-update to have this plug-in removed/replaced? Are your sites set up to just automatically take push updates from WordPress central command or something and auto-modify themselves?!
Wordpress has a (highly effective) auto-updates mechanism for security patches.
It was extended a couple of years ago to automatically apply plugin updates for you if you opted in, and I think automatic plugin updates may now be the default.
(This is on balance a good thing; almost all WP vulnerabilities are outdated plugins, and until this mechanism was prevalent, WordPress occasionally had to live-patch existing installations of third party plugins in the case of severe vulnerabilities.)
The reason this nasty little takeover worked is that they (Matt, whoever helped) have stolen ACF's slug (advanced-custom-fields). So as far as the updater is concerned, it's just another plugin update to the same code base.
IDK if WordPress plugins respect SEMVER, but shouldn't this auto-update thingy update only patch versions, or minor versions at most? Idk, breaking changes like these is definitely not something you want your CMS to do overnight when you won't notice until you receive complaints that your site is broken
Right. And actually this small detail is emblematic of the whole problem.
When you roll out an auto-updates mechanism you're saying to the people who enable it "you can trust us to do the right thing with your project while you are elsewhere -- this is a risk but it's one we manage for your benefit".
If you roll out a change for purely political/commercial reasons that are ultimately not your end user's concern -- we're not a party to that lawsuit -- then you're undermining the trust in that mechanism entirely.
It was a stupid, arrogant, underhanded thing to do.
I don't know off-hand what the rule is for plugin updates, actually; I'd have to look it up.
As far as WordPress itself is concerned, the updater definitely does not auto-push updates to major WP versions by default [0], and they continue to patch older versions for a long time.
But at any rate, whether the plugin updates respect SEMVER or not, Matt/WP.org pushed this bullshit out as the most minor of minor version number changes over the previous ACF version: 6.3.6.2.
WP and/or A8C took over the existing plugin, so that sites that have auto-update on were automatically bumped to the SCF version instead of the historical ACF which obviously had a different team of maintainers
I looked at the code to see why it would be doing that. It seems to handle the font customization stuff by basically downloading all of the variants and then combining them into a zip file in client-side code - even when you do no customization at all. Apparently that code which makes the zip (which I'm guessing is an external library) creates a corrupted one when run in Safari according to a comment buried in the JS.
Maybe it really is a bug on Safari's part but creating custom zip archives is something which would be far saner to do on the server side in the first place.
The capacity to keep secrets, even at the state level, takes a level of mental maturity that few are capable of. So many are thrilled by the idea of knowing something few other people know to a degree that they paradoxically want to make it something everybody knows. Journalists take advantage of this and collect and share leaky sources amongst each other. The reason for the leaking is most likely just human nature.
That said, the existence of the state of Israel is such a contentious topic that the leakers may have been motivated by politics as well as the above, sure. But I doubt state-level agencies are condoning the leaking here.
> So many are thrilled by the idea of knowing something few other people know to a degree that they paradoxically want to make it something everybody knows
Some people (often due to trauma) have a very different relationship with secrets than you describe. Some people get immense satisfaction from holding secrets, and have no issue keeping it that way. Sometimes those people have other flaws or vices, as often plays out. In my understanding, managing such people is its own meta-game within these professions
I won't disagree with you about some people liking to keep secrets just as much as others like to spill them, but could you give an example of how trauma would cause someone to want to do the former?
That you think full-stack developers such as myself are routinely earning "just under $200k" (but please feel free to reach out to me if you need an experienced dev and think that's a fair price to pay) yet "cost money and do not generate profit" seems to speak of a skewed perspective and/or experience, I think. I mean, if that were true, then what would be the point in hiring a web developer in the first place? Some sort of weird nepotistic makework scheme? Again, if that's your perspective…
In my world, clients come to me with a web site and a problem (or no web site and the problem of "I don't have a web site"), we agree on contract terms, and I solve their problem. If I do a good job at it (and I want to do a good job at it, because solving problems and making clients happy feels good while failing at that feels really bad), the client finds value in my work and they will come back to me the next time they have another problem that needs solving. It's that simple. Nobody's hiring me because of "candidate compatibility" and then throwing a bunch of money at me to do nothing.
At least in the short term, I'm not too worried about AI taking my job, because, as stated elsewhere, it's not yet good enough to do more than the least complex of tasks, and as one tries to get it to do more complex things, the odds that it will hit a brick wall due to a bug it can't code its way around or a creative understanding it can't unravel increase - so these sorts of tools might actually end up creating more work for more experienced professionals like myself (although I don't necessarily look forward to the days where I'm regularly being hired to unravel a plate of ChatGPT spaghetti). But even more than that, I feel like a good deal of the value I provide is in being able to talk to a client about what they want the site to do, how it will earn them money, and foresee potential problems or offer better solutions based on my experience - to answer questions that they didn't think to ask, and ask questions of my own to make sure we're on the same page on things. A client just giving me a description of what they want built followed by me just building it? That never happens. There's always discussion and back-and-forth to nail down details and make sure the site is as good as it possibly can be. So long as clients see the value in that, and until AI can do that sort of thing, I'm not sweating it.
The only purpose of software is automation, which is elimination of labor. Eliminating labor reduces expenses. While that is certainly valuable as it contributes toward profit it is not sales. Sales make money.
As a general rule profit is 10% of revenue and revenue is 10% of sales. Sales are the money paid by outside parties. Revenue is money left over after spending associated with sale acquisitions, for example after: marketing, merchandising, and advertising. Profit is money left over after accounting for internal expenses.
As such software never directly contributes toward sales unless software is a product directly sold to an outside party. The developers responsible for that software are virtually never responsible for sales generation even when that software product is directly sold to outside parties. The exception occurs when developers introduce a solution to a business problem into that software product and that solution becomes a direct point of merchandising.
As for the current capabilities of AI the LLM approach does not seem capable of writing original software. Most full stack developers are not writing original software though. The LLMs are already writing superior output with use of large frameworks to the extent that they can generate more efficient products and write the documentation sufficient to teach humans the approach to these large frameworks. Whether you should be worried then becomes a consideration of your employer’s perception of software authorship.
I take incredible exception to what you are saying. What you are saying might be broadly correct for software as a whole, but not at all for web sites; most commercial web sites exist to drive sales, through advertising and promotion of products for sale if not actually selling the products. The largest client I've had for the past six years or so is a web site that makes revenue through advertising and subscription/premium account sales, so improving the site such that it draws in visitors, entices them to stick around and view ads, and encourages them towards ponying up for a premium account for access to more features is the motivation behind everything I do on it. Everything I do on that site is for the purpose of generating revenue. Another site I'm currently building is just a straight-up e-commerce site for specialized products. One I worked on in the past was a credit provider that specialized in loans for medical professionals and encouraged them to take on loans which in turn made the company profit in the form of interest. One major project I worked on early in my career was for a local newspaper that sold advertising and newspaper subscriptions. I could go on.
As for "original software," how are you defining that? Is software only original if it doesn't use any pre-existing frameworks? Okay, is it all right if I use a pre-existing programming language with a pre-existing standard library, or do I need to build my own? Is it all right if I host on a pre-existing VPS provider, or do I need to start my own hosting company? Can I host in pre-existing datacenters or do I need to build my own? Can I use pre-existing server hardware, or… At the end of the day all programmers who are getting anything practical done are using pre-existing tools at some level to solve their problems, often building new tools along the way. If I use the right tools for the job, build what my client wants, and keep end user experience in mind as much as possible (and I always do), then what's the problem?
Are you actually a web developer? Are you not passionate about it?
I was a full time JavaScript developer for 15 years. I still write personal software, but the corporate world killed my spirit for doing this for employment. I blame the exceptionally high insecurity of my prior developer peers, the extraordinary lengths businesses will go to in order to avoid correcting for that, and the diminishing expectations that follow. I will not go back to that. My own bias though is irrelevant to my comments here though as the identified trends and business terms apply the same irrespective of any such bias. Its all about the numbers.
As for advertising that is what's considered transactional revenue, or revenue generated upon the traffic from some other unrelated engagement. Nobody goes looking for advertisements intentionally. They just happen to appear on a site a user visits and eyeballs on that site thus generate revenue in consideration of some contracted term.
Transactional revenue is interesting because it generally has very low associated expenses which all associated revenue is far more closer aligned to profit. It is also insidious in that it tends to get in the way of what users actually want and will over time tank an associated product/brand unless the product/brand is so compelling that it drives substantial repeat traffic. That is the fundamental distinction between media and e-commerce. In media they can throw as many advertisements at you as they want because repeat traffic is deterministic and you are the product. With e-commerce, on the other hand, there exists actual products users must purchase. That purchase process is called conversion and over time advertisements erode the frequency of conversion. As conversion tanks over time users have less reason to access the associated website and so then advertising revenue also tanks.
With regards to sales and revenue developers still have no role in that relationship even in respective to advertisements and transactional revenue. Sales are literally money paid by an outside party directly to your business. Transactional revenue is indirect so it does not qualify as a sale. Even if it did quality the sales people are the ones negotiating the corresponding contracts and revenue terms, which is still not the developer.
I once wrote an advertising pop under for Travelocity from the homepage. The change in presence increased ad click-through impressions upon that placement from 0.3% to approx 14% at approximately 1.1 million page impressions per day. That is a massive revenue boost, but the customers hated it. Part of the massive traffic increase was change of visibility and part of it was content intentionally shifting low quality traffic off site. Stuff like that really killed the business.
It is all about the numbers you like, it seems. Developers sell too, a good % of successful software is created and marketed by a single person. It seems like you can't or couldn't sell while developing. Your achievement was to be a cost center for 15 years and it shaped your vision of the whole profession.
As a web developer, specifically one who started my professional career when Internet Explorer 6 had something like 85% marketshare, I'm horrified at the idea of a single browser engine dominating the space again. It will lead to stagnation just as it did back then.
Keep WebKit alive. Open source Presto. Support Ladybird. Hell, I believe that Microsoft should never have abandoned Trident…
Does it count all of the chromium based apps that query some webpage behind the scenes? Because other than a few brave exceptions, my impression is that most apps are nowadays glorified (and bloated) websites.
I looked up an article to elaborate on the "threw a fit" part. It appears that Apple believes it would have to compromise security aspects of iPhone Mirroring in order to do it in a way that complies with EU law, so it's choosing to just not offer it at all.
The problem I have with this explanation is that it’s 90% available sans the magic update.
It’s possible to Airplay iPhone to window and see what’s on the screen. Continuity with iPad work just well so it’s also possible to control iPad using MacOS.
But combine both and we get into no-no land.
It’s not a secret that Apple brings much more revenue from US than from EU. I named it a fit, but I’m perfectly aware it’s a power struggle between EU and Apple and I think it’s an end of the era.
How can WordPress be so prominent and have so much money behind it and still have such garbage code? Are there giant companies still running PHP 4 server farms that need it to continue to be coded to 2003 standards? Is it some government op to ensure a good deal of the sites on the web are easily-hackable? Someone explain this to me.
This should be a lesson for everyone. Code quality doesn't matter, language doesn't matter, it only matters if people want your product. If you would look at the code quality of the most successful WordPress plugins you would be... uh, amazed? Compared to them WordPress' code quality is top notch. Yet, they probably bring in million/month from subscriptions. If you're curious see WpAllImport
Thankfully it's been a couple years since I had to touch a WordPress code base, but I remember being confused because I needed to define a route and couldn't figure out how to do so either in the code base or in documentation scattered about online. Eventually I realized that this was because WORDPRESS DOESN'T HAVE A ROUTER and you're supposed to just create .php files which are called and executed directly from the web server. True caveman smash-together-rocks shit.
This is not true. WordPress routes request in its own, admittedly shitty way, but it has a router. I don't remember where it is, but it exists. It parses rewrite rules and matches them against the request URI.
