Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#41

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 11:32 PM UTC

troyforster wrote: post #30

rty32 wrote: post #17

I 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…

What do you expect to see in the source? You're either going to see minfied code, or like 5 lines of HTML and then a js import.

GitHub repo and personal portfolio are unreasonable expectations. I have both but keep neither up to date because 99% of my work is commercial/private.

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#42

Post by nikkwong » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 11:38 PM UTC

hoofhearted wrote: post #37

What do you think of my personal portfolio? https://brandonowens.me/ 100% React.js <3

This is a great example of a site that is built with React where HTML/CSS would be a more appropriate choice

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#43

Post by rfrey » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 11:40 PM UTC

troyforster wrote: post #30

rty32 wrote: post #17

I 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…

I trust that when you were hired as a manager you were required to provide a sample of the recreational gantt charts you have done for historical engineering projects.

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#44

Post by wruza » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 11:41 PM UTC

hoofhearted wrote: post #37

What do you think of my personal portfolio? https://brandonowens.me/ 100% React.js <3

What makes this page a "portfolio", may I ask?

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#45

Post by fernandomtza » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 11:44 PM UTC

I'm a manager and certainly take a look at any platform provided by the candidates before an interview. You should create a portafolio that not only showcases your work but that it also follows web standards, SEO rules and great performance, this is what I would likely focus on.

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#46

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 12:11 AM UTC

JasonSage wrote: post #36

threatofrain wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’r…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#47

Post by jchook » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 2:15 AM UTC

If you want to use React, consider Astro.

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#48

Post by tamimio » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 2:40 PM UTC

troyforster wrote: post #30

rty32 wrote: post #17

I 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…

> IMHO LinkedIn is a waste of time.

I couldn't agree more! I don't know why this site is still relevant these days. It should be a sign of an entry-level or mediocre employee/job by now. I haven't updated mine in about four years or so.

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#49

Post by tamimio » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

My suggestion is to use something that's simple to maintain because you might have plenty of time now, which may not be the case in the future. Your content should be platform-agnostic; for example, as markdown files, so if you migrate to something else, it will be quick and easy. My last suggestion is to use a Static Site Generator (SSG), minimize or eliminate JavaScript, as it makes things faster to load, and your content mostly doesn't require it. I personally use Zola, but there are plenty of other good options. Hugo can be a bit complicated at the beginning, though.

Re: Ask HN: Should I use React for a personal portfolio?

#50

Post by langcss » Thu, Jul 04, 2024, 12:49 AM UTC

moomoo11 wrote: post #40

langcss wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes. It comes with a lot of features overlapp with NextJS and there are plugins for the rest.