Nilesh Trivedi 2025-07-17 06:13:11 [July 7th, 2025 11:00 PM] nilesh.tr: Folks, can you please point me to recent efforts in Distributed Reactive Programming? How can we build whole systems (spanning multiple simultaneous users as well as the database) in React/Vue/Svelte- like way, instead of just UI components? What are the typical challenges and the unsolved problems?
Konrad Hinsen 2025-07-19 19:36:11 Very mixed feelings about XMLUI . I like the motivation and the overall approach to an accessible glue language, but just about everything about the implementation feels wrong. XML syntax is perhaps the worst - does anyone really want to stare at that kind of code?
📝 Introducing XMLUI
In the mid-1990s you could create useful software without being an ace coder. You had Visual Basic, you had a rich ecosystem of components, you could wire them together to create apps, standing on …
misha 2025-07-20 08:14:27 recently I'd say "no", because xml sucks due to at least verbosity and lack of syntactic difference between lists and single-things (just like http GET parameters).
but now I think syntax is only as bad as your IDE is, so I'd say "meh, whatever".
Konrad Hinsen 2025-07-20 16:23:15 Good point, but the blog post does not suggest the use (or even existence) of an IDE that hides XML syntax.
misha 2025-07-20 19:22:17 I'd call "hiding" – DSL.
"IDEing" – helping you to type as little as possible (autosuggest/complete) based on context you are (or cursor is) in, including but not limited to tag auto closing, tag and attribute names completion, valid attr values completion, cursor teleportation to next meaningful actionable place, moving blocks in and out of other tags, etc.
With all these, having a little redundancy in tag names (open/close) is... meh, bearable.
Also, this seems to be targeted at react+web, and keeping it similar looking makes some sense.
meh, whatever
Natalie Freed 2025-07-19 23:52:19 Does anyone know where this quote comes from? "How is the abstraction, for understanding? Is it well designed to help you see what is happening underneath?" I was so certain it was from Learnable Programming or another Victor piece but I cannot for the life of me track it down. Maybe it's my paraphrase or misquote of someone and that's why I can't seem to Google it? Let me know if this rings a bell for anyone!
Natalie Freed 2025-07-20 00:38:14 Your comment now has me extra puzzled about this quote because now that you point it out, that is pretty close to the opposite of how abstractions are usually discussed (even without the extra nuance of the paper you linked, which I am looking forward to reading). I was thinking about the kind of abstraction where the interface hides something important and makes its behavior confusing until you can see what's inside.
misha 2025-07-20 08:23:36 abstraction is a "reduction", tool.
"reduce to highlight the essence", or "reduce impl details away" – are the intentions of tool application.
"I can't figure out what this is all about until I read an impl" – is just an example of poor tool choice/application (or maybe just poor perception/pov).
