Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#251

Post by kouteiheika » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #236

jasfi wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No SQL database is the one thing I disagree with. What if you want to write a SQL query/report? Do you have transactions? As the app gets bigger you might want that.

Yeah, this seems problematic. What if you hard power off your server, how do you know your data didn't get corrupted? As someone who has written databases, and knows how difficult this is to get right, it makes my skin crawl. Backups and restore will also have to be DIY. Point in time restore probably won't be possible - and that's a life saver when you need it.

> What if you hard power off your server, how do you know your data didn't get corrupted?

Atomically replacing the whole file instead of updating the data in-place, and using a checksumming filesystem like ZFS should give you such guarantee, no?

> Backups and restore will also have to be DIY.

Well, yeah. A daily cron job that `scp`s the data to an offsite location. Personally I don't really see much problem with that? It's easy to backup, and easy to restore.

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#252

Post by cusx » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

splatcollision wrote: post #241

Chiming in here with my latest "weird but cheap" stack: * Use a Trello board as a free CMS. * Write cloudflare worker code to read cards from the board via Trello APIs and render card content as plain old HTML. I use labels as tags for the categories, and have specific formatting in the card descriptions. If an attachment is a YouTube URL, it renders the video as an embed, otherwise it uses image attachments as post…

haha brilliant!

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#253

Post by richardanaya » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

I'm experimenting with creating web pages in Rust WebAssembly using lit-html. https://github.com/richardanaya/lit-html-rs

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#254

Post by ChrisRus » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

Working on a new spin on domain models and software product line engineering, in JavaScript, for data scientists that need to build sophisticated process pipelines, and complex interactive visualization UX --- from data and reusable stuff. The dream is an open and extensible cloud that functions like the software service analogue of the system-on-chip ecosystem that's eating the devices/IoT world.

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#255

Post by greggturkington » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #154

I worked as a full-stack developer up until 7 years ago. Evaluating different options for my new website, I ended up just using what I'm familiar with: raw, vanilla PHP, HTML, CSS, and JS. Eliminates the need for any faff like server management on my part; PHP-enabled hosting is cheap and easy. No frameworks, just PHP. Not that novel, I know. There's a stark difference in research and production in terms of output, f…

Then why post about it in a thread about novel tools? Great, your small blog doesn't need frameworks.

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#256

Post by yboris » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 3:09 PM UTC

My commercial app: Video Hub App - https://videohubapp.com/en/

App written with Electron & Angular. Includes a "web app" inside that gets served so you can browse videos on your phone - built in Angular.

The public-facing website is built in Gatsby, and served from the cheapest hosting I could find: $3/month - also connected to CloudFlare for free-tier CDN.

Made a small webpage for users to download their purchased app too - just 3 pages built with PHP (so fast and easy!)

All code is MIT open source: https://github.com/whyboris

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#257

Post by janjones » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

kouteiheika wrote: post #25

This 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…

> 100% server side rendered

> Progressively enhanced

> request full HTML through AJAX and diff it into the current page

These first three points are actually starting to be "in" again. They're called HTML-over-the-wire[1, 2]. And I am currently looking into implementing them for my site (which uses ASP.NET Core Blazor), because I think this approach is awesome.

[1] https://hotwire.dev/

[2] https://alistapart.com/article/the-future-of-web-software-is...

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#258

Post by bccdee » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

skrtskrt wrote: post #247

kouteiheika wrote: post #25

This 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…

Which Rust templating tools are you using for server side HTML rendering?

I've had a good time with Tera, but I haven't used it extensively.

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#259

Post by janjones » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

paul_f wrote: post #174

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #154

I worked as a full-stack developer up until 7 years ago. Evaluating different options for my new website, I ended up just using what I'm familiar with: raw, vanilla PHP, HTML, CSS, and JS. Eliminates the need for any faff like server management on my part; PHP-enabled hosting is cheap and easy. No frameworks, just PHP. Not that novel, I know. There's a stark difference in research and production in terms of output, f…

I'm not trying to impress anyone, I just want to solve business problems quickly, get paid, and go golf. I firmly believe that high productivity can be achieved by using boring technology. https://expatsoftware.com/articles/happiness-is-a-boring-sta...

Here is transcript of a talk about that same idea: http://boringtechnology.club/

Re: Ask HN: What novel tools are you using to write web sites/apps?

#260

Post by shubik22 » Mon, Apr 05, 2021, 3:18 PM UTC

I use a pretty standard Rails stack, but just wanted to give a quick shoutout to Stimulus Reflex[1].

For the web app I'm working on, I wanted to add some real-time functionality (e.g. being able to broadcast updates to all the users on a given page in my application, and have them interact with each other) without having to write a full SPA. I ended up implementing that functionality using Stimulus Reflex and it's been great.

Stimulus Reflex uses: 1) Stimulus JS for frontend functionality 2) CableReady, a websocket library built on top of ActionCable 3) morphdom, a clientside DOM diffing library to update your UI

I'd recommend anyone who wants to incorporate some more advanced functionality into their Rails app to take a look. (I can't speak to how it stacks up against the new Hotwire/Turbo stack, as I haven't built anything with that.)

[1] https://docs.stimulusreflex.com/