It was very strange to me how StackOverflow consistently, every time it was mentioned everyone had exactly the same complaints and nothing changed. They can't have been unaware of the reputation or the sinking activity rates.
There are multiple groups on Stack Overflow with different (and sometimes conflicting) goals and desires.
Corporate measured "engagement" and has been trying things to make that number go up.
The curators of the site... if they could have tools to measure would be measuring the median quality of the questions being asked and the answers being given.
People asking questions on the site have changed from the "building a library goal" with the question as a prompt to "help me with this problem" - but rarely not sticking around.
---
The sinking activity rates have had alarms going for many years... but remember that engagement was being measured and while that's sinking, comments were engagement so the numbers (ad impressions) at corporate level were getting measured differently.
The reputation has been something, but there's a disconnect between what "hostile" means and what "toxic" means between the people making the claims and how it's being interpreted.
That reputation was interpreted (by corporate and to an extent, diamond moderators) as "people are mean in comments" - and that isn't the case. People are not mean in comments. However, the structure of the site being focused on Q&A rather than discussion for someone who wants discussion with the people who are there to provide answers to questions will find the environment innately hostile.
Without changing the site from a Q&A (and basically starting over - which corporate has tried, but the people who are providing quality answers aren't going there because they don't want discussions - if they wanted discussions they would be commenting on HN or Reddit), that change can't really be done. The attempts to try to change how people are approaching the site run into a "this would reduce 'engagement'" and people asking questions to get help for their problem not accepting the original premise of building a library. ... And that's resulted in conflict and decreasing curation (which are often the people who were the ones providing the expert answers).
----
So while they have been aware, (I believe) corporate has been trying to solve the wrong problems at odds with both the people asking questions ("help me now") and the remaining curators.
>So while they have been aware, (I believe) corporate has been trying to solve the wrong problems at odds with both the people asking questions ("help me now") and the remaining curators.
For years every single company announcement has been downvoted to -500 and flooded with comments and answers saying it's terrible and what the real problems are. They don't care. Now they are finding out.
Plus housing insulation. So many British houses are still almost entirely uninsulated. That's not an exaggeration, the roof of my house had zero insulation, solid brick walls, no under floor insulation and single glazing. The only gesture to efficiency was some secondary glazing over the windows.
It absolutely ripped though gas just to keep a couple of rooms warm enough to live in, and it was still two jumpers and thermal trousers indoors. God only knows how the pensioner who lived there before managed.
Press Roku remote button: 3 seconds until it wakes up and repairs (remote still eats batteries)
Open streaming app: 5-10 seconds
Select profile: 3 seconds
Scroll about looking for show: 5-20 seconds, or a minute to type it in
Select the right episode: 3-10 seconds depending on if it's currently on the right season (somehow not always)
Start and buffering: 5-10 seconds
Ad: 20-40 seconds (depending on platform)
And that's all if you're concentrating on getting through it and the device isn't a laggy UI toxic waste dump. Some TVs you have to press each button and wait for each one to register.
At least there isn't an FBI copyright warning at the start I suppose (when you don't live in the US).
Everybody complains about performance. Slow software feels like poison.
Except, anything written with a large JavaScript framework is allowed to be slow. In fact slow as syrup is strongly encouraged. To prove it just ask the developers. Mention it could be 8-50x faster just by not using their favorite framework and note the response. Even better, show them a proof of concept and take note of their unemotional objectivity.
This has nothing to do with the frameworks though. Almost every listed step of delay there is due to specific software design choices, not JS level stuff. For example search - why isn't every possible next letter prefetched before you even select it? It's trivially cacheable at local nodes anyway. Why isn't the first few seconds buffered by the time you open movie description? How is the UI even possible to be laggy - there are way larger services using react without issues.
Non-constructive reply: Developers have been burned too many times by snake oil vendors and "solutions" that only work for toy examples. Also, I've never seen being slow to be encouraged anywhere. Most consider it an acceptable tradeoff though.
Constructive reply: What would be an approach to writing a large web frontend (large as in, many pages and controls) without using a large framework?
I'm asking this because I know how to do it in React but also how to do it "the old jQuery way" (or equivalently, using today's standardized builtins). Productivity is easily 100x larger with React.
edit: Ideally, together with a link to an example open-source application that does it that way, to understand how it works and feels at (code) scale.
I have explained this countless times. It rarely sinks in and quite often is met with hostility, so I don't bother any more. The problem is simple: its where people stake their career. Do they build their career upon writing original applications or upon using a tool? This difference is rather extreme.
By the way, without React shouldn't default to jQuery. If that is your perspective of reality you are already at the maxim of your potential.
> By the way, without React shouldn't default to jQuery
I never claimed it does. I stated my experience to give context for my question for other solutions than React.
> The problem is simple: its where people stake their career
I meant my question to be about building a large frontend without a large framework, purely in technical terms. This has nothing to do with career choices.
It works fine. Clients don't complain about the interface. The project has been going on for 20 years or so now, and doesn't need big refactors every time a dependency gets updated because it avoids dependencies.
Thanks for your reply. This seems like it builds the UI almost completely in server code, which I usually avoid these days because in my experience, it causes other problems. I should have mentioned that in my question.
That is a rather generous comment. As a former JavaScript developer I can tell you the qualities of concern are not the business concerns of delivery. Delivery will increase just as dramatically by reducing the tech debt imposed from unnecessary code. All that really matters is solving for developer anxiety.
Imagine if you were an Uber driver and that is your full time job. Imagine it pays more than double the national average income. Also imagine you cannot navigate without a digital map and cannot work the car without AI assistance. If someone suggests taking the AI and the digital map away to increase road safety and driver performance you would likely lose your job for failure to perform. The very first thing you would do, as that driver, would make excuses and attack everything that threatens your career identity.
Your Roku had to "boot" for 10s - why? Would resume from standby in a couple of seconds, so you've chosen to slow yourself down.
My TCL TV runs Android/Google TV, wakes from standby in 2s while also waking the surround in ~3s via HDMI CEC (and I don't need to hear anything until I've chosen something to play) so really it only take me 2s before I can start to open a streaming app (via a button on my remote) vs your 16s to get to the same point.
It's the choosing what to play that's the slow bit for me - every app puts what you were last watching in a different place, and not all apps notify Google TV so its own attempt at letting you resume is incomplete...
It also frustrates me that profiles streaming apps don't link to profiles for the OS (e.g. Google TV) - seems obvious to me that by now they should all be seamlessly linked together in a way that delivers the most personalised experience, instead of muddling up everyone's profiles and watch history!
I don't think I'm especially stupid and I try very hard not to interact with ads more then I have to, but I have often found it impossible to escape those ads without ending up being delivered to the app store page.
Maybe I didn't notice the X in some part of the display or whatever, but even if by making a concerted effort to not do it, you still "convert", their click though stats must be crazy.
What actual training data does contain threats of punishment like this? It's not like most of the web has explicit threats of punishment followed immediately by compliance.
And only the shlockiest fan fiction would have "Do what I want or you'll be punished!" "Yes master, I obey without question".
Labelling laws are Unamerican and that's why inhibiting other countries from requiring clear food labelling is a clear part of the American trade negotiation platform.
The best part is if you consider it a vulnerability, it is one you can't fix.
It reminds me of SQL injection techniques where you have to exfiltrate the data using weird data types. Like encoding all emails as dates or numbers using (semi) complex queries.
If the L(L)M has the data, it can provide it back to you, maybe not verbatim, but certainly can in some format.
Why not make it a condition of the vote in the first place? Don't understand it? No vote for you. If your constituency wanted a say, they can let you know what they think about that.
reply