How will your portfolio benefit from React? Portfolios are usually just static content. By all means use interesting technology like React and Sass to develop it, but compile it all to static HTML/CSS, unless you really need dynamic functionality.
Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
31–40 of 52 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
#32[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
#33I wouldn't spend any time on a portfolio. No manager spends their time looking at that. You are not a UX designer and portfolio means nothing. Your best bet would be polishing your resume and LinkedIn profile -- that's where recruiters and hiring managers look for highlights. If you want to do a portfolio regardless, especially for non job hunting purposes, do it however you'd like and spend however much time you wan…
As a manager who has hired hundreds of developers I always ask for a portfolio, with links to live sites. Right-click, view source! Can reveal a lot about a developers habits and practices. I also expect a GitHub repo. Fyi, personal sites and projects are just as important as the ones you get paid to build. IMHO LinkedIn is a waste of time. People struggle to keep it up to date and most don't have the time to put eno…
You have to ask them to richly narrate their portfolio or you won't know if it's fake. You could be judging someone else's code quality. It's not wrong to do so but it's a different kind of interview.
Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
#34I wouldn't spend any time on a portfolio. No manager spends their time looking at that. You are not a UX designer and portfolio means nothing. Your best bet would be polishing your resume and LinkedIn profile -- that's where recruiters and hiring managers look for highlights. If you want to do a portfolio regardless, especially for non job hunting purposes, do it however you'd like and spend however much time you wan…
Agree, if your personal site is basic looking but links to a cool react library you made that would be more impressive to me than a fancy portfolio.
If you want to learn React then nothing you do is a bad idea because it is all going to teach you something. If you want to look impressive spend your time building something impressive that you think is cool. Even something overdone like a Select component or a Table component if it works well will demonstrate way more competence.
Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
#35If you’re trying to get a react job then probably a good idea to use react. If it’s to get clients for indie work they won’t care.
Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a manager who has hired hundreds of developers I always ask for a portfolio, with links to live sites. Right-click, view source! Can reveal a lot about a developers habits and practices. I also expect a GitHub repo. Fyi, personal sites and projects are just as important as the ones you get paid to build. IMHO LinkedIn is a waste of time. People struggle to keep it up to date and most don't have the time to put eno…
You have to ask them to richly narrate their portfolio or you won't know if it's fake. You could be judging someone else's code quality. It's not wrong to do so but it's a different kind of interview.
In my experience you can quickly tell if the quality of somebody’s resume material lines up with the person across the table. I suppose at more attractive workplaces there are folks spending serious effort to game the system, but I haven’t seen it.
If anything I am most accustomed to seeing a light GitHub profile and an out-of-date personal site, and the candidate clearly has the skills to do way better today, they’re just not touching open source or spending time on their site.
Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
#37What do you think of my personal portfolio?
100% React.js <3
Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
#38Anyone who over-obsesses or nitpicks framework choice for some personal project isn’t someone I’d want to work for/with.
Use whatever you like. The most important part is to make something you enjoy keeping up to date that doesn’t become a big chore. I use NextJS for my personal site, but before that I used a Python static site generator, and before that a collection of FreeBSD POSIX make files and shell scripts. All the same design. Whenever I changed technology it was because it would make it easier for me to update or deploy the site
Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
#39I wouldn't spend any time on a portfolio. No manager spends their time looking at that. You are not a UX designer and portfolio means nothing. Your best bet would be polishing your resume and LinkedIn profile -- that's where recruiters and hiring managers look for highlights. If you want to do a portfolio regardless, especially for non job hunting purposes, do it however you'd like and spend however much time you wan…
As a manager who has hired hundreds of developers I always ask for a portfolio, with links to live sites. Right-click, view source! Can reveal a lot about a developers habits and practices. I also expect a GitHub repo. Fyi, personal sites and projects are just as important as the ones you get paid to build. IMHO LinkedIn is a waste of time. People struggle to keep it up to date and most don't have the time to put eno…
> Fyi, personal sites and projects are just as important as the ones you get paid to build.
You're missing out on great developers who have children and family lives that don't lend themselves to having the time for building a portfolio that nobody is going to look at except once every few years.
Not to mention that if a portfolio is going to be a selling point to a hiring manager, you need to rewrite it every time you change jobs to stay up to date with the latest trends lest you be pegged as someone who is out of touch.
Vanity projects are fine as vanity projects, but a hiring decision based on one is a red flag about the person doing the hiring and I'm happy to be passed over for it.
Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nextjs is the way.
Or Vite. It is a close call. Vite seems to more configurable but the trade-off is you spend more time figuring out how to set stuff up like SSR and routing. NextJS had it all set up but Vercel make some weird choices like rolling out the app router and saying it is recommended when it felt very beta still. My preferred thing is NextJS or Vite but constrain it to front end only. Use a better back end stack than Node.…
Isn’t vite a build tool? Next js is a framework for building apps or sites.