I wouldn't call it "novel", but I've lately turned to designing APIs first using OpenAPI [0], and then using that specification to drive routing and validation using (shameless plug, but that's what I use) pyotr [1].
Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
141–150 of 333 posts
Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
#142[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
#143I'm currently using Obsidian Publish to build and publish the knowledge base website underlying the information I send people in my newsletter, which is something I've always wanted to do and never had the time to build. I like that it's similar to GitHub pages in that it's just a bunch of markdown files, but it comes with a really amazing editor and it's pretty much 0 effort to host and update.
Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
#144Some recent projects:
- Frontend only, plain javascript, but a lot of it uses a project-specific custom scripting language. This is a game that consists almost entirely of procedurally generated written content, so I write a language that makes it easy to categorize procedural content bits and make sub-calls to new ones. I have a long way to go on language design still, but it's already better than a json blob.
- HTML frontend with some small plain javascript. Backend is node/express, but most of the heavy lifting is done by a shell call to Coil Snake[1], and which inserts a ton of code in ccscript and 65816 assembly. This is a randomizer for Earthbound (http://pkscramble.com/), so those are super specialized tools for that purpose. But I really like the Coil Snake ecosystem, and it's definitely going to influence my projects going forward (the decision to use a custom scripting language above was influenced by ccscript).
- Plain javascript frontend, vertx backend, postgres database. This is my goto for serious projects. It's fairly boring.
Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
#145I'm currently working on a PaaS product called fold.sh (very early days). One thing I'm using that I've seen crop up on this thread is tailwindcss... I've not used it before but I'm really enjoying it so far. It's not a panacea by any means - it makes no attempt to help you organise your CSS or make it modular so you need to 'bring your own discipline'. For example, it's fairly easy to end up with inconsistent design…
> That probably says more about me than CSS but I'm having a blast.
No, that probably is just how CSS is - a pile of decisions based on obsolete or incorrect assumptions that cannot be allowed to change due to backward compatibility.
To me Tailwind is just a wrapper that's more reasonable for modern webdesign. Just like TypeScript doesn't change how you're still running JS but it's more pleasant to work with.
Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
#146I am working on two alternative tools for building web apps: https://htmx.org - uses HTML attributes and HTML-over-the-wire for AJAX/Web Socket/SSE interactions https://hyperscript.org - an experimental front end programming language derived from HyperTalk that is event-oriented and that removes the distinction between synchronous and asynchronous code. Both tools are HTML-oriented and are designed to be embedded dir…
htmx looks super intriguing.
Anyone have recommendations for server-side languages that make HTML templating fun? I’m leaning towards Elixir+Phoenix using sigils[1]
[1] https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix_html/Phoenix.HTML.html#sigil_E/2
Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
#147Django, Hotwire/Turbo+Stimulus, Tailwind, Postgres. The codebase is small, easy to reason about, and maintainable, it's easy to build an accessible site on top of semantic HTML, and it's fast and responsive enough for my needs. It's nice to use JS for things it's best suited for rather than being responsible for running the whole application. Tailwind has its detractors but honestly I've found (as a decidedly non-frontend person) that it's very productive for building out a responsive design with good support for dark theming.
Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
#148This partially might be more of a what's old is new again, but here's what I use: - 100% server side rendered - Progressively enhanced (fully works without JS, but having JS enabled makes it nicer) - In select places where I need SPA-like snappiness I use a ~100 line long DOM diffing algorithm (I request full HTML through AJAX and diff it into the current page; if the user has no JS enabled then the page just refresh…
How do you deploy changes? git hooks or something like ftp?
Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
This speaks to my soul! How cheap of a VPS?
Currently 4.29 EUR/month VPS on Hetzner. (Although I have some fun features planned and might need some more processing power so I might upgrade in the future.) They have great AMD-based VMs, 2x perf/$ over Intel. (I've benchmarked.)
what benchmarks do you use? I'm curious how my VPSes compare.
Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I use a ~100 line long DOM diffing algorithm Since this is not vDOM diffing (which most JS frameworks nowadays provide) can you help share the algorithm if its already out in the open / non-proprietary?
It's really nothing special. I wrote the whole thing in, like, a single afternoon. If you're interested, here it is: https://pastebin.com/V7UiWj1e It's not really a general purpose diffing algorithm. It probably doesn't handle every corner case as it only does what I need it to do in the few places I actually need it.
Would you even need diffing if, for example, the relevant nodes had an ID functionally derived from their contents?