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Show HN: Revived my personal website to join the nostalgia

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Re: Show HN: Revived my personal website to join the nostalgia

#12

Post by egeozcan »

WWLink wrote: post #9
slimsag wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also become much less accessible to your average every-day person. I remember in 2001 my brother's community college in rural America taught HTML and Flash development. Not only could you learn to make websites quickly, but you were learning technology that was exactly what you would be using when working at a company. You could argue the technology is better these days, but it's certainly not more clear to newc…

There isn't really anything stopping people from making simple HTML/CSS/JS code, and I think it'd be nice if more people did that. Instead of thinking about how one could grow something, it'd be nice to think about how simple and efficient one can make something.

Totally agree. People jump into extreme abstractions (React, Vue, Angular, when even jQuery is too much at the beginning) when they never experiment with the fundamentals. Using just HTML/CSS is so much fun, even better with the latest advancements, why not enjoy them while learning, instead of getting depressed in totally abstracted frameworks?

Re: Show HN: Revived my personal website to join the nostalgia

#14

Post by mvonballmo »

egeozcan wrote: post #12
WWLink wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't really anything stopping people from making simple HTML/CSS/JS code, and I think it'd be nice if more people did that. Instead of thinking about how one could grow something, it'd be nice to think about how simple and efficient one can make something.

Totally agree. People jump into extreme abstractions (React, Vue, Angular, when even jQuery is too much at the beginning) when they never experiment with the fundamentals. Using just HTML/CSS is so much fun, even better with the latest advancements, why not enjoy them while learning, instead of getting depressed in totally abstracted frameworks?

People want to be able to create stuff that looks just as good and is as smooth as what professionals are making without learning anything that they basically don't already know. That has definitely changed.

In the old days, it didn't matter how _good_ you were; basically, your site was going to look more or less like the site created by someone who just started and tried really hard for a few days. You could copy/paste HTML from other people's sites _and just have it_. Now, nothing works because there are tokens and authorization and APIs everywhere.

I don't see anyone complaining that you can't just build a car from scratch in your garage. That would be crazy, right? Yet, somehow, anyone should be able to learn how to code professional internet software with little effort and understanding.

If you want to use React, I don't understand what's so hard about the [introductory documentation](https://reactjs.org/docs/add-react-to-a-website.html)? It's almost pure HTML and has [a lot of help](https://reactjs.org/docs/getting-started.html#try-react) for extending it from there.

This is honestly a lot easier than what we had at the beginning, where even documentation for HTML tags wasn't so easy to find.

Maybe this is still too complicated, but the lower bar is there, whether you like it or not. If I don't know how to use scissors, I'm going to be a shitty barber.

Re: Show HN: Revived my personal website to join the nostalgia

#15

Post by onion2k »

slimsag wrote: post #3
jvalencia wrote: post #2

This takes me back to the days when so much of web apps was tied to non-web things. Skeupomorphisms were pretty good UX, but also the fact that layouts looks like ads or newspapers, trying to conserve room and increase information density. The websites themselves weren't much in the way of a destination, rather they tied you into other real world things: family, computers systems, hobbies. They were relevant only as…

It's also become much less accessible to your average every-day person. I remember in 2001 my brother's community college in rural America taught HTML and Flash development. Not only could you learn to make websites quickly, but you were learning technology that was exactly what you would be using when working at a company. You could argue the technology is better these days, but it's certainly not more clear to newc…

I would've chalked it up to "there are layers upon layers of magical things I don't understand, I guess I only need to interact with them and slap them together."

That's fine though.

If someone learns C++ today without knowing any ASM very few people would tell them they're "doing it wrong". If someone learns Unreal Blueprints without learning C++ senior game developers still see them as productive game developers. If someone writes a great GLSL shader on shadertoy without knowing how to use WebGL that's OK too. You don't have to understand all the layers in order to use them and make good stuff.

The web is no different. I see no reason why people can't just concentrate on learning the top level abstraction to make things until they encounter a problem that they need to know more about the lower levels to solve. They might never have that problem.

All of this "You have to learn the underlying tech in order to use the framework on top of it" just sounds like gatekeeping to me.

Re: Show HN: Revived my personal website to join the nostalgia

#17

Post by Moru »

DarthGhandi wrote: post #5
dwohnitmok wrote: post #4

The "No Javascript? :( Click here" link directs to a 404.

Same issue, though at least the author cares more to at least think of those who whitelist scripts enough to mention it. Half the large companies today will present you with a blank screen instead of writing one line of a tag.

It's a lot about not even knowing the tag exists. I mean, who would block javascript, the whole web depends on it. (I block javascript since it came around the first time...)

Re: Show HN: Revived my personal website to join the nostalgia

#20

Post by searchableguy »

mvonballmo wrote: post #14
egeozcan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. People jump into extreme abstractions (React, Vue, Angular, when even jQuery is too much at the beginning) when they never experiment with the fundamentals. Using just HTML/CSS is so much fun, even better with the latest advancements, why not enjoy them while learning, instead of getting depressed in totally abstracted frameworks?

People want to be able to create stuff that looks just as good and is as smooth as what professionals are making without learning anything that they basically don't already know. That has definitely changed. In the old days, it didn't matter how _good_ you were; basically, your site was going to look more or less like the site created by someone who just started and tried really hard for a few days. You could copy/pa…

This is certainly biased. I have had far better programmers than me express their distaste about jsx and how it feels confusing for them to use. For starters, you can't use any statements inside JSX so you would need to learn expression replacements for statements. To understand this limitation, you need to understand jsx factory and what jsx is translated to.

Check this issue: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/11609

Many functional aspects of react can be hard to grok. HOC and currying isn't obvious to everyone.

The surrounding tooling sure is complex af and the little inconsistencies in how everyone does things in the community doesn't help. If the person wants to keep themselves to using a blackbox, they will face problems with react at some point which will force them to learn about how all of this works. React will introduce performance issues that normal js/html/css can easily forget about if you are not careful. Then you will need to learn about lifecycles, debugging tools, and lot of other things simply to make your app not suck.

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