Sometimes I also think that it is not terrible and is probably the usual practice to just flextape until it works, then try to improve upon it... but then there are just too many cases of me facing the decision of either that I just leave it there or I rewrite the whole thing from scratch. Perhaps I took that to the extreme...
I just tried to look for info on XMLHttpRequest getting deprecated, but apparently it's only the synchronous version of it getting dumped. The asynchronous version is still well supported it seems. I don't know if it will ever disappear, probably yes but after a very long time... when people finally invented something better than it. Like how IE finally (almost completely) disappeared after the years. But, I also don't know how to improve XMLHttpRequest, so... no clue. Lol.
Totally agree on how Java is a pain to setup. Luckily, we have IntelliJ IDEA, so it's no longer such a terrible nightmare. Jetbrains really knows how to make their stuff. I'm more of a C# person myself (with a special love towards TypeScript), but I still have to agree that Java is amazing. It's pretty intuitive, runs on a lot of places, and surprisingly runs really fast. Originally, we were also looking at Tomcat, but after 30 seconds of looking at it we were like "yeah not sure what's that, can we use Python?" :P so you know how this story actually started.
Thanks for dropping by!
IntelliJ IDEA - completely agree, Jetbrains makes amazing tools. I'm using Eclipse only because I started using it so long ago, but I wouldn't recommend Eclipse lol.
Patch it vs rewrite from scratch.. Do both! lol There are some routines here I've rewritten dozens of times to make it faster.. faster.. faster or more flexible. Even a complete re-architecture can open up possibilities, well, if time allows.
With your skills in C# and TypeScript you can pretty much do anything. Good tech to have!
It's funny how I begged customers to adopt IE over Netscape back in 90's. Then, it wasn't long before IE just meant I had to write a TON of extra css and javascript workarounds to support it. And IE became ridiculously slow compared to Firefox and Chrome's rendering engines, so ditching IE was easy.
I really enjoy reading about your programming tools and experience. Very nice of you to share.
Yes, if we have the time! Which I think is difficulty for large commercial codebases that happen to power multi-million businesses. It's a weird feeling knowing that the products that run the world are sometimes (or often... I don't know) questionable code. Well, at least for our small personal stuff it's always okay to chop off and remake a better one when we feel like to. If we aren't lazy. Lol.
I also think that with these two things I can do almost everything! Except that I'm still trying very hard to figure out the C# things beyond the basic things. The deeper I go the weirder the language looks with many other features popping out from nowhere. It'll take a long time before I get comfortable making big things with it :)
We should pray that Chrome will never accidentally wander into IE's path, it'll be the apocalypse. Or maybe we're already on the way to it (I think some people did say so). Hopefully not...
When I happen to get motivated enough to actually make stuff I'll try to write more about them! It feels pretty good to write about it and have people who understand it reading it.