Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#41

Post by spiderfarmer » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

anton_gogolev wrote: post #39

mason55 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of being "hipstery", the drawback is that each time you refresh the view you have to resend all the markup. You're increasing the total amount of data that's going back and forth between the browser and the server. By sending the markup once and then dynamically populating it you can have much faster transitions between objects that use the same view. What you really want to do is provide progressiv…

Oh give me a break. > ...the drawback is that each time you refresh the view you have to resend all the markup. You're increasing the total amount of data that's going back and forth between the browser and the server. For like 99.9% of applications this is a non-issue. For crying out loud, StackOverflow itself has been doing server-side rendering since day one and is still heaps and bounds more usable than WhateverT…

I completely agree. I settled on using sockets.io for the small pieces of my website that can benefit from the realtime aspect of Angular and friends. It's shocking how little code you need to make an awesome 'modern' website. All pages load in under 200ms on first load and I can mostly stick to what I know.

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#42

Post by spiderfarmer » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 9:44 PM UTC

mipmap04 wrote: post #24

anton_gogolev wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, I assume, is all done because 99% of web sites are trivially done with server-side HTML generation and that is not hipstery enough.

There's not a lot of love for server-side generated content in the start up community right now, but it makes things a lot easier most of the time.

And better.

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#43

Post by blackoil » Fri, Mar 11, 2016, 3:35 AM UTC

rallende wrote: post #30

Askbot ( https://askbot.com ) is also open source and you can create you QA forum "in a minute" (sic). No seriously, the askbot guys have been for a long time on the field, great app.

they have there source code pretty well hidden, can't find any link to source on Home / Developers / Contact page. So they may no longer want it to be open source.

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#44

Post by rallende » Fri, Mar 11, 2016, 3:55 AM UTC

blackoil wrote: post #43

rallende wrote: post #30

Askbot ( https://askbot.com ) is also open source and you can create you QA forum "in a minute" (sic). No seriously, the askbot guys have been for a long time on the field, great app.

they have there source code pretty well hidden, can't find any link to source on Home / Developers / Contact page. So they may no longer want it to be open source.

https://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-devel askbot creators believe that if someone does not know to google askbot source code he shouldnt get the code :)

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#45

Post by plugnburn » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 7:46 PM UTC

anton_gogolev wrote: post #8

Kudos for effort, but for the life of me I cannot understand why the hell is "load empty shell of a page and then asynchronously fetch bits and pieces of content, ruining the UI along the way" is so prevalent these days.

Are you on GPRS? Cause the page loads fine even on 7Mbit 3G (HSPA).

The problem is it's still quite raw and full of demo-stuff. Not in the way it loads.

Although... yes, isn't Angular a bit overkill here?

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#46

Post by plugnburn » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 7:48 PM UTC

nyan4 wrote: post #16

anton_gogolev wrote: post #8

Kudos for effort, but for the life of me I cannot understand why the hell is "load empty shell of a page and then asynchronously fetch bits and pieces of content, ruining the UI along the way" is so prevalent these days.

It's terrible indeed, and it works only if javascript is enabled.

Why would anyone disable it these days?

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#47

Post by plugnburn » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 8:21 PM UTC

anton_gogolev wrote: post #18

dkopi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how a basic angular.js app with client side templating works if it has to fetch the the data from the server using AJAX calls. A common optimization would be to preload the served javascript with the initial AJAX results. This still means rendering the content on the client side, but the content isn't fetched asynchronously. Another optimization is to actually render all the DOM elements in advance on the serv…

This, I assume, is all done because 99% of web sites are trivially done with server-side HTML generation and that is not hipstery enough.

"Server-side HTML generation"... literally each word in this phrase shows how bad things are now in 99% of websites and - what's even worse - we still have to somehow follow these things for some sucky search engine bots that still don't run JS (yandex and other crap).

Let's begin from the end: generation. With a proper presentation layer, we wouldn't have to generate anything. We have data (from the server and/or local in-browser storage) and presentation modules, and we just feed data right into these modules on demand.

Next: HTML. In an ideal situation, we wouldn't touch any raw HTML string at all. Presentation modules, in effect, are responsible for DOM rendering of the page parts they are in charge of. And proper partial rendering usually doesn't involve innerHTML and other raw hacks (well, maybe for quickly clearing element contents, it will do). No escaping hell and other "fun" things.

Next: server-side. Screw all the dogmatic rules that the presentation layer must run on a server. The server should be responsible for handling all non-view logic providing the API for the client to communicate with (from simple AJAX/REST to something more complex like WebSockets) and serving our scripts and assets as fast as possible with proper caching headers, that's all.

This model, if applied wisely, will just make everything easier. I'm in the process of writing an article on it. But as I see Angular in this stack, this particular implementation doesn't show any sign of wisdom. :) Kill the overkill and keep it simple, stupid.

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#48

Post by plugnburn » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 8:31 PM UTC

Mahn wrote: post #28

dkopi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how a basic angular.js app with client side templating works if it has to fetch the the data from the server using AJAX calls. A common optimization would be to preload the served javascript with the initial AJAX results. This still means rendering the content on the client side, but the content isn't fetched asynchronously. Another optimization is to actually render all the DOM elements in advance on the serv…

> Another optimization is to actually render all the DOM elements in advance on the server, and only use client side rendering for updates. Which is, you know, how the web is supposed to work.

Was. 15 years ago.

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#49

Post by plugnburn » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 8:39 PM UTC

What's the real issue is:

Do you even know that this is invalid and the proper tag is called just ? Do you know that must not be empty in the initial page? Do you know that custom attributes must start with data- (not ng- or ui-)?

Did you even check your page with http://validator.w3.org?

Re: Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service

#50

Post by plugnburn » Sat, Mar 12, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

yoshiokatsuneo wrote: post #26

omegote wrote: post #17

The article is missing what I think is one of the most important parts, and that's the reasoning behind using a MEAN stack instead of a more classic approach using a standard back-end language like Ruby, Perl or Python, because I honestly fail to see how this is easier than using a framework like Django or RoR.

Thank you for your feedback! For me, the most important part is the language. I can use JavaScript for client side, server side, and database. There is no context switching related to language like Ruby, JavaScript, SQL. (And, the way of thinking related to that like asynchronous and synchronous.) It is especially helpful for startup or prototyping where small team build everything.

Then you should definitely give a try to Meteor framework (https://www.meteor.com/). Using it, we have built and run a production-ready service + Android app for a local flower shop delivery-messengers in about 5 days.