Software goes through a lot of hype cycles: New frameworks, NoSQL, Blockchain, etc.
But it seems to me like we’re in a period without so much hype...
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I agree, I still see the "JS ecosystem everywhere" as a bit of a trend but less than a year ago.
WebAssembly is in the upward trajectory of the hype, it hasn't reached peak hype though (probably because it's not ready for the mainstream)
I wonder what we'll all be psyched about next
I'm a little nervous about the WASM hype. There's a sub-trend in there that showed up when WASM was first being discussed and has reemerged a few times since then that goes: "WASM means we don't need JS anymore! WASM means we can write the web in C# or Go!" And while the current counter argument is that that's just factually false, since WASM functions need to be imported into JS and run from there, that needn't always be true; if enough of the community clamors for end-to-end WASM apps, it'll probably happen eventually.
And I see a lot of potential danger in that idea: web app code becomes a lot less transparent, the attack surface of web apps dramatically increases, the potential for various walled gardens increases, the push to constantly improve JavaScript decreases, the complexity of web apps could blow way up...
But maybe I'm wrong; maybe those concerns are already present with WASM as it currently is, once it gets more mainstream use. And I do absolutely see its value. But still, I'm nervous. Not necessarily pessimistic, just... nervous.
This is right, WASM is far, far from being production ready, as it's a really unsafe option that will be a step back from the current web. Wasm is just a compiled bytecode that executes in the browser, it's usually C, C++ or Rust code in the background but once compiled to wasm it looks like this:
Good luck debugging this, and more importantly, good luck trying to figure what is this code meant to do on the client side. This code is much much harder to analyze than JavaScript because Wasm is a binary format whereas JavaScript is clear text. While malicious actors often heavily obfuscate JavaScript, deobfuscation is still relatively easy. By bringing Wasm into the game, bad guys get new ways to hide and obfuscate the intentions of their code.
And as there is still no viable WASM analyzers, an WASM app is just a blackbox to the user. The only thing that you can do is to analyze network requests and see if there is something suspicious there. In other words, say hi to the coin miners on every site, as with Wasm based approach, the return of investment will be higher for the malicious actors, since heavy math calculations can be done faster with Wasm than with JavaScript. To date, the majority of Wasm samples analyzed have been associated with cryptocurrency miners. Another opportunity for an attacker may be exploitation of hardware bugs.
On the side note it should be pointed out that Wasm is not intended to be seen as a replacement for JavaScript, but rather as a complement. For example, Wasm modules may be used for performing computation intensive tasks and JavaScript (and HTML) for providing the UI and gluing things together.
I guess that whole situation will improve with time, but, sadly, we're not there yet. Until then you can take a look here to learn how to disable WASM in the browsers.
Yeah, this is what I meant when I said the following:
My concern is that while it's currently the case that WASM is no JS replacement, I don't necessarily trust that it will remain true, especially given how loud the cry was from the "JS sucks" community that WASM will finally let us write for the web in "real languages" etc etc. I'm not catastrophically worried or anything, I think the developers of WASM have a stake in keeping it scoped pretty narrowly for the time being at least, but I don't think we can predict what the web will look like in 5-10yrs; I could see WASM turning into a core part of the web platform that can be used independently of JS, and I agree with your concerns if that does happen. Not ready to disable WASM just yet, though; squoosh.app is just too good 😁
That's right, once again 😄Web is evolving rapidly, and while my comment might seem grim and in disfavor of WASM, I really hope that it can evolve into something like Js today but without its bad parts. Sharing, collaboration, and open source are the keys for the better future, and I wouldn't want to see web locked down and obfuscated.
Also, that's really cool app :D Tnx for share!
@puritanic
I agree is far from being ready. I don't think it's inherently unsafe, it's boxed in the same box JS is. Regarding the step back or forward it really, really depends on what developers do and what becomes popular in the next few years. If all devs do with WebAssembly is "I can't wait to recompile my desktop app, ship it in the browser, call it quits and who cares about the web" yeah, we'll have a problem. But if it's used as a performance enhancer and used in conjunction with JS, why not?
WebAssembly has a text format though, not as readable as a normal programming language but I'm quite sure "view source" tools that make our lives easier will appear. I think it's too early to decide if WebAssembly will doom us all or not.
That's why we're saying it will take some time to become mainstream :)
@kenbellows
This is a real thing, but I also don't think that developers will start throwing all the web principles out of the windows just because they can finally code a textarea using Go. That's bonkers in my opinion. Also: WebAssembly still needs to talk to JS and has only a few types, I reckon that writing an entire app might even be counter productive :D
Squoosh is a perfect example of why one would use WebAssembly for the transformation functions to alter images and JS for the rest of the app
We'll see! :)
I definitely agree in terms of backend technologies and databases, the waters are relatively calm. For a while everyone thought Go would solve all the problems but that has died down. Containerization has matured quite a bit as well and is not as new and shiny as it once was.
I'm kinda digging the calm, makes me not feel so left behind 😊
Yeah, calm is nice.
All of the Bitcoiners lost their money and now everyone hates tech.
😂 But really - It does seem like not much is going on lately. WWDC and Google I/O aren't far away - maybe that will spark some excitement :D
I think we're in a time, not of low-hype, but of maturation. SPAs and rich, interactive web experiences were brand new just a few years ago, which is when we saw the explosion of JS frameworks and static site generators. Now, us developers are starting to figure out how we should be using the web, not necessarily how we could, and that is lending itself more toward rallying around the existing tools and making them better, rather than making new stuff.
Ben, I can't believe you forgot about all the awesome tech I'm planning to use in my new project to be the Uber for Star Trek action figure interactions.
We have so much amazing tech going into this project I'm sure I'll miss something but here are the highlights:
It's going to be glorious!
Functions in a container is soooo last year. Everybody knows that you should actually put containers in functions instead. Serverless docker images running stateless is the way forward.
(I’m actually creating a service that will auto generate 16 page rebuttals of any given technology choice, with full details of why it can’t possibly work and why you should do it my way - it’s going to be such a hit!)
Totally agree. We're going to throw everything out and start over with serverless docker images running stateless--I can't believe I didn't see that myself.
Your project sounds cool. If you could work in an IOT angle, you could probably cash in for 7 figures in a couple of years.
I’m going for the exitless exit. I don’t actually sell anything and a million bucks appears in my bank account. It’s going to be the next big thing!
Best dev.to comment so far.
Hmm...
So, I don't think this hype has really started yet, but I could imagine hype around things like Google Stadia and similar streamed video games services. If that type of delivery becomes the norm, it would be a huge shift for the gaming industry. It's weird to me to think of a future where I don't own my games, but just pay for access on any device. And what would that business model look like? I'll confess that I've put well over 600 hours into Skyrim in the past, but would I still be willing to do that at $1/hour? Amd how much more will this merge gaming experiences with social media experiences? (Can't say I'm looking forward to more social experiences in the things I use to get away from social experiences!) The gaming landscape could be fundamentally altered. We'll see how much hype builds around it, though.
Otherwise, as I live and work in DC, I see the 2020 election hype train building up steam. So Americans, brace yourselves for two years of vitriol.
I think if they can get some of the major technical issues taken care of, there is a lot of opportunities outside of the gaming space.
Being able to subscribe to a service where I can pay a monthly rate and use a cheap laptop to remote into Windows/Mac/Linux boxes that already have the Adobe Suite, Office Suite, and any other service I might want at speeds far better than what I could reasonably afford.
If they can make that feel native, support multiple monitors, and not have terrible response times, I'd gladly switch from owning my own expensive box in exchange for that.
Could see similar repercussions for DAWs for music production
I think that the hype is always there (graphQL, react, react native, vue...) but we just got adjusted to it.
That's our secret captain, we are always hyped.
I kinda get the sense that many people are getting really fed-up with solutions to problems that most of us don't even have (Microservices, SPAs, AI, ML, most front-end craziness ala node_modules madness).
A well-structured monolith with extra front-end magic included where needed is seeming like the new "hype" to me (I've been seeing lots of articles about this lately)
That being said, I think solid skills in software organization, architecture and design are what most devs needs - not more knowledge about specific technologies.
It wasn't that long ago when you would scroll through a site like this and every other article would be how blockchain/ml/graphql/cloud/serverless was going to eat the world. Those are all good things, but it's nice to see that some balance has returned.
Maybe it's just me and the circles I run in, but GraphQL keeps getting more and more attention. Granted it's now been around for a little bit, but the tooling keeps getting better and better.
Yeah. To me there's a different flavor between hype and maturation/adoption. I think GraphQL has matured and is ripe for broader adoption. There were some accompanying technologies related to GraphQL that FB and others released at the time and GraphQL sort of won out in a sea of hype.
Maybe Hasura will hype next 😉
I am actually super hyped about Hasura! Tanmai Gopal (one of the co-founders) actually gave a talk at my local meetup, and it was only me an another person present, so we basically got a one hour personal lecture on how GraphQL works, including demos. It was cool because he never really even tried to sell the idea of Hasura, but I was familiar with the product at the time.
I love the idea of not having to build the integration between graphql and my database, nor having to maintain a database myself, so yes to Hasura!!!
I happen to know that the Hasura folks have plans to put out a lot more DEV content. Maybe @praveenweb can elaborate 😊
Yes!
I haven't been hyped for something in the last 24 hours...
So yes
OCaml! Rust! Serverless!
😬 Did you feel the hype? 😬
maybe google stadia can Hype ...
It's because you are entirely focused on your product right now, dev.to. You've subconsciously put on blinders to whatever is brewing and are focusing on getting things done.
You've likely also become hardened to hype, not letting it phase you as much.
I assure you, if you look around you'll find all sorts of excitement over shiny things. :)
I noticed the same, we are in a period of stability at least in the Frontend ecosystem, current leading frameworks have been there for years now and are quite stable, even if they are adding new features continuously.
New framework doesn’t get enough traction and remain in niches, with little communities.
Yes, things are calm. I think we are kind of using in production the "hyped" technologies, dealing with their challenges (or drawbacks) and in a "should we really use this??" phase.
Ps. IMHO "serverless" is maybe hyped now...?
With JS, i can do more with less. JS doesn't control me, and it's the best language to get shit done to me.
Hype comes and go, but i believe JS stay there. The reason is that, the best programming language is not nessessary the most perfect one.
I feel like the web is taking a breather in terms of evolution. We've found our new mediums, the new languages, and the new efficiency-boosting frameworks. Now it's just implementation. It's a good time to refine our skill sets while waiting for the next crazy thing to pop into the scene.
I completely agree! I've felt this a lot recently too. I don't think it's a bad thing though. Existing tools are maturing quite a bit, and we're just now starting to understand how many of these existing tools can be used in interesting ways, that truly maximize their potential.
That being said, a part of me also thinks people (including me) aren't dedicating enough time to rethinking existing tools & patterns- afraid to go back to the drawing board on some tech? Unsure. For example, email behind the scenes is still as archaic as ever isn't it?
Nooo.... dun jinx it!
Im really loving that we are in a low-hype phase.
In all seriousness, its probably a cyclical thing, so lets hope this last as long as possible. And personally i prefer it to be less hyped, as it allows us to discuss technology trade offs more objectively. 🙂
Oh, it was simply a panic, as a result of the end of the exponential phase of computers development.
Now more or less the people are starting to realize that the new technologies will not help and the big era of optimizations is coming.
And more you need to optimize, the lower level technologies you should use. Down back to assembly language.
C++ and C will be much more popular soon. And assembly language a bit later.
I think people are starting to catch on to all the reinvented wheels. Ever since Dominos Pizza came out with that app that let you order pizza by voice, I saw this coming.
I believe that super new high tech app was once called a phone call back in the days of the land line. Time to break out the JBox and hook up the 4 pair...
It's probably cyclical. We'll see one in the coming months.
GraphQL HYYYYYPE!
Is there no hype, or have we all become desensitized?
Hoping the next trend will be ActivityPub!
Now that you say it... yeah I haven't heard about anything like when TypeScript or GraphQL went out. Let's hope it lasts a while.
Rust, WASM, Flutter
What about Web assembly? is nobody hyped about that?
It's all about Python / ML / AI right now. That's where all the hype is.
It definitely was hyped a while ago, but all I am seeing now is a load of presentations from 'AI/ML' startups that tried it but only seem to be able to linear regressions (which I wouldn't class as AI/ML at all, just basic stats)
No new tech hype is always better, devs can focus on shipping code. But if there's anything that needs more hype right now, I think it's PWA. It's quite underrated, PWA needs to be mainstream.
What do you think about hype for GraphQL? According to the state of js it's most wanted technology to learn.
Gatsby?
Maybe everyone is happy with the tools they're using? 🤷♂️