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How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

#21

Post by bubblyworld »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #12
bubblyworld wrote: post #10

I don't see the value in posts like this. It's just a random list of things that can go wrong in software projects, with no discussion of trade-offs at all. Where's the engineering?

Basically they’re saying implicitly to be principled about adopting frameworks and other dependencies, evaluating whether they’re needed for one’s project before adopting them. It’s a pretty thought provoking post, even if it may be too subtle for some folks.

No need for the random snark? I mean, again, we're in extremely obvious territory here. Just doesn't seem appropriate for hacker news front-page (to me).

Re: How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

#22

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

crinkly wrote: post #8

We are good at not even getting that far. Have a platform team and spent a month setting up CI, github repo, onboarding, writing terraform and stuff and not even get around to doing a web site in the first place!

But only after marketing, management, and other stakeholders have spent six months defining what the site should do and what it should look like, based on vibes and personal preferences. ("I like this one. Make it look like this.")

Re: How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

#24

Post by bubblyworld »

kunley wrote: post #18
bubblyworld wrote: post #10

I don't see the value in posts like this. It's just a random list of things that can go wrong in software projects, with no discussion of trade-offs at all. Where's the engineering?

It is not random. All the mentioned problems come from a single source.

They don't really, as far as I can tell. There are lots of independent good and bad reasons to go down each of the roads in the article. Dependencies make a lot of sense in a lot of cases (e.g. the recent article on date parsing). So do build steps (static API doc generators anyone?). I think chalking it up to one thing is a bit too reductionist.

Re: How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

#26

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

bubblyworld wrote: post #10

I don't see the value in posts like this. It's just a random list of things that can go wrong in software projects, with no discussion of trade-offs at all. Where's the engineering?

> Where's the engineering?

not every problem has a technical solution.

Re: How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

#27

Post by Phemist »

DocTomoe wrote: post #4
epolanski wrote: post #2

On one hand I agree, one should approach issues as they come, but there's solutions that are hard to ignore such as the need for reusable fragments/components on different pages which already make a cry for dependencies. Even admitting one wants to go with bare bone web components authoring and maintaining them is expensive, requires lit or something. Thus, what's the solution? Some sort of templating? Again, you're…

I think the emphasis is in 'indiscriminatly'. The goal is not to have absolutely zero dependencies, just don't depend on dependencies that you could reasonably implement yourself. A classical example might be https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-odd

JavaScript's weak typing and implicit type conversions get in the way of reasonability though:

  >>> '13' % 2
  0
  >>> 'nan' % 2
  NaN
  >>> NaN % 2
  NaN
  >>> null % 2
  0
this package ensures that you have a sane complement to is-odd, e.g. `!isOdd(someVar)` is always even (in the domain of natural numbers). A naive implementation of is-odd: `(some_var % 2 === 1)`, does not have a sane complement.

Anyway, to include this package as a dependency is indeed overkill. I would most likely opt for vendoring this package into the project (including licenses and acknowledgement), as the code is unlikely to change and is MIT licensed.

Re: How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

#28

Post by mettamage »

judge123 wrote: post #5

The problem isn't the tool or the dependency—it's the developer's temptation to over-engineer. We grab a framework because we lack the discipline to keep something simple. Is self-control in coding just a lost art now?

> We grab a framework because we lack the discipline to keep something simple.

I grab a framework to also keep my skills relevant, especially if I'm not practicing them in my day job. If I didn't have that impulse, I'd keep it simple all the time. I'm really good at it, because I really dislike complexity as it requires me to remember more things and I don't really like that feeling.

I'll optimize if I absolutely have to.

Not that businesses ever cared about this attitude. I mean, I've seen it work. The work that I do with LLMs is quick and pragmatic. No need to put stuff into production when it's just a prototype. No need to use a framework if gluing an LLM with some Python code and a well crafted prompt produces the result we need. It allows me to ship in days, not weeks. Obviously, if one then wants it productionized, additional work needs to be put into it and possibly the code needs to be refactored. But, in my opinion, that's the time and place where that type of stuff should happen.

Re: How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

#29

Post by zwnow »

pfoof wrote: post #20

I host my blog using plain HTML and I have a compile step - a Python script that converts markdown to HTML, which minimizes the energy I spend on... wrapping everything in HTML tags?

If you have a business website, customers expect a clean site with good visuals and a great user experience. Unless you are as big as Amazon. Sadly overengineering things is a necessary evil nowadays. If I had the choice I wouldn't even build websites mobile friendly but well... got no choice.

Re: How to make websites that will require lots of your time and energy

#30

Post by blueflow »

zwnow wrote: post #29
pfoof wrote: post #20

I host my blog using plain HTML and I have a compile step - a Python script that converts markdown to HTML, which minimizes the energy I spend on... wrapping everything in HTML tags?

If you have a business website, customers expect a clean site with good visuals and a great user experience. Unless you are as big as Amazon. Sadly overengineering things is a necessary evil nowadays. If I had the choice I wouldn't even build websites mobile friendly but well... got no choice.

Hey, customers are people too, and they can and will say "no", too. "good looking" doesn't do it when it cannot do basic things.
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