Enticing but Bad Solutions

2022/02/02

... written very quickly. Don't expect much.

This is post no. 75 for Kev Quirk's #100DaysToOffload challenge. The point is to write many things, not to write good ones. Please adjust quality expectations accordingly :)

There is an apenwarr article on C++. My takeaway was that... although, technically, C++ is strictly better than plain C, you can just not resist using all the solutions it provides, even if you're worse off using them.

But even if you try avoiding them... you are not working in isolation; other people who claim they're also using C++ will want to use those features / solutions that you decided against; you have no other choice but to interface with them.

Meanwhile... the Web seems to be a similar scenario. Technically, you could stick with it being a fancy way of downloading documents to people's computers. However, once you're there... you add just a tiny little bit of Javascript, to make things nicer. And then you start learning about it. About all the possibilities. Slowly, you pick up all the complexity that you previously thought was pointless... and by the time you realize, your webpage is 10 megabytes, uses 8 frameworks, and consumes gigabytes of RAM.

... maybe that's why it's nice to, sometimes, start over?

... comments welcome, either in email or on the (eventual) Mastodon post on Fosstodon.