chenglou

Basically, performance doesn't compose well under current paradigms, and you can see Casey's methods as starting from the assumption of wanting to preserve performance (the cycles count is just an example, although it might not appeal to some crowds), and working backward toward a paradigm.

There was a good quote that programming should be more like physics than math.

Generally, Casey seems to preach holistic thinking, finding the right mental model and just write the most straightforward code (which is harder than it looks; people get distracted in the gigantic state space of solutions all the time). However this requires 1. a small team of 2. good engineers. Folks argue that this isn't always feasible, which is true, but the point of these presentations is to spread the coding patterns & knowledge to train the next gen of engineers to be more aware of these issues and work toward said smaller team & better engineers direction, knowing that we might never reach it. Most modern patterns (and org structures) don't incentivize these 2 qualities.

I manage a web UI programming language in my free time, and the juxtaposition of folks claiming FP ergonomics benefits, then upon my request, showing a static, interaction-less end result whose improved version would obviate their pristine architecture, is pretty staggering. The typical defense is "hey we're not designers" but if you zoom out a bit you realize the whole environment doesn't foster engineers to care about design concerns anymore (barring a niche but valuable vertical of optimizing for payload size). This in turn puts pressure back onto designers who come to expect less and less of what they care about on the web.

Just the other day a newcomer shipped an animated row transition after fighting her framework for 3 weeks. The designer was delighted, but the manager didn't even get the point because he matured in whichever era of JS framework that de-emphasized acquiring taste in interactions.

I myself come from a Flash background, so rather than seeing an upward trend, I see a decline in UX concerns, followed by an incline of devops-related concerns in UI frameworks (accompanied by HN comments saying that in both cases the web should have stayed as a document format, only to end up with an awkward mix of document + app architecture their desktop apps through Electron anyway).

If I were to categorize these "eras", I'd rather take the perspective of wondering at which point, and why, framework process ended up more important than the product. Heck, a similar thing is happening on native too, unfortunately. Where did all the interaction designers go?

Maybe AR would nudge more folks to learn and focus on rendering, gestures, transitions, framerate, intent and the rest.