> There is a opinion I hit on every now and then—of programming, especially web development, getting ridiculously easier compared to the past.
Programming change. As an old timer I of course think it has been for the worst but I would not call it easier today. Consider that in most programming language, two decades ago, getting a context to render pixels directly was pretty straightforward.
I was taught programming on BASIC. To draw a line in BASIC you just need a two lines program:
SCREEN 9 (initialise a graphic screen)
LINE (10,10)-(100,200)
Even Processing isn't that straightforward nowadays.
Of course, web programming will be cross-platform. Of course if done properly your per-pixel rendering will be displayed on a GPU-accelerated surface. Of course, you can share it easily on a web page.
Things were different. Not easier, not harder.
When I first learned assembly, I was surprised at how simple it is. It is probably the easiest language out there. It is very simple, but very tedious to use. The only thing is, to use it you can't avoid knowing a bit more about the hardware it runs on.
Nowadays, especially in web programming, a lot of the lower layers are abstracted. It brings a whole can of new problems while removing others. You won't have to worry (much) about memory management and socket pools but then you have interactions between your React update and your version of whatever is used for matrix computation in JS nowadays.
Programming change. As an old timer I of course think it has been for the worst but I would not call it easier today. Consider that in most programming language, two decades ago, getting a context to render pixels directly was pretty straightforward.
I was taught programming on BASIC. To draw a line in BASIC you just need a two lines program:
SCREEN 9 (initialise a graphic screen)
LINE (10,10)-(100,200)
Even Processing isn't that straightforward nowadays.
Of course, web programming will be cross-platform. Of course if done properly your per-pixel rendering will be displayed on a GPU-accelerated surface. Of course, you can share it easily on a web page.
Things were different. Not easier, not harder.
When I first learned assembly, I was surprised at how simple it is. It is probably the easiest language out there. It is very simple, but very tedious to use. The only thing is, to use it you can't avoid knowing a bit more about the hardware it runs on.
Nowadays, especially in web programming, a lot of the lower layers are abstracted. It brings a whole can of new problems while removing others. You won't have to worry (much) about memory management and socket pools but then you have interactions between your React update and your version of whatever is used for matrix computation in JS nowadays.