Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

mohkohn.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 605 posts

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#201

Post by dotBen »

motoboi wrote: post #132

Old people. They exist. Not even that old. 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. You know that when pressing a button a hidden engine runs in the backend (or something runs in the backend). You expect an answer and if the expectation do not match the result, the model in your mind creates an hypothesis about what maybe happened and iterate from th…

"Old people don't have that because they didn't grow up with computers."

You know, it's time to stop this trope.

People who are 60 today were born in 1966, they probably entered the workforce in the mid 80's. They probably are not even retired yet. They know how to use computers, they own a smartphone (or if they don't, it's probably for economic reasons unrelated to their age).

As a founder and product manager, this kind of thinking is unhelpful as we design the future. In many ways it's actually ageist to imply that old people are unable to utilize everyday technology.

I was building public service websites (BBC News website) back in the early 2000's where accessibility was a real and important consideration. Technology progresses, and the bar for accessibility has moved up.

My father is about to turn 80 - he checks his heart with his Apple watch, video calls his grandson from his iPad, and asks ChatGPT questions from his iPhone and MacBook Pro. Maybe he's more unusual for 80yo's but it's time to stop this lazy trope that old people are technically illiterate.

(also, shit, I'm only 15 years away from being 60 myself :/ )

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#202

Post by [deleted] »

OskarS wrote: post #165

As a non-web dev, I have a question about this part: > There was a sad coda; as is the way of contract work, I moved on. I explained what I had built to my replacement, that it always worked even without javascript. He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.” Why is it more work? The approach described in the article seems honestly reasonably simple: just write the standard components for the form,…

[deleted]

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#203

Post by EGreg »

LNSY wrote: post #177
OskarS wrote: post #165

As a non-web dev, I have a question about this part: > There was a sad coda; as is the way of contract work, I moved on. I explained what I had built to my replacement, that it always worked even without javascript. He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.” Why is it more work? The approach described in the article seems honestly reasonably simple: just write the standard components for the form,…

Because before there was AI Slop, there was React.

I think Facebook with their money and Vercel with their VC funding tried hard to push the React and then the Next.js everywhere. So it arrived in time for AIs to all train on it. And now it’s the one true way :)

But do we really need all that stuff? Build steps, bundling, tree shaking, all for what? And is it really simpler… hmm

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#204

Post by lucumo »

onion2k wrote: post #138

This isn't "We replaced a React app with an HTML form and performance improved." It's "We replaced a bad web page with a good web page and performance improved." Attributing this to the technology driving the browser experience is silly. You can make a brilliant user experience with React. You can make a terrible website with plain HTML. The improvement comes from the change design, not tech.

The standard answer to that is that some technologies make one harder than the other. That's kind of true from first principles, but it requires making the case that e.g. React is actually harder to make good than a plain HTML page.

Fun thing, TFA describes a kind of multi-page wizard style form that I haven't seen a lot anymore in the last decade or so. But when I did see it, it's always some dogshit enterprise system. Some Oracle product for expensing expenses last time.

The problem with those things always seems to be that they are slow in the middle of doing your task. Every button is seconds of waiting. Doubly annoying if you have to go back a step or two. The badly coded SPAs seem to be slow at the start. It takes a while to load, but once it's loaded its performance is usually okay.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#205

Post by [deleted] »

OskarS wrote: post #165

As a non-web dev, I have a question about this part: > There was a sad coda; as is the way of contract work, I moved on. I explained what I had built to my replacement, that it always worked even without javascript. He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.” Why is it more work? The approach described in the article seems honestly reasonably simple: just write the standard components for the form,…

[deleted]

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#206

Post by natbobc »

aidanbeck wrote: post #94

I was going to comment on the Terence Eden excerpt quoted by the author about the woman researching housing benefits on an old PSP browser, when I noticed that you (the OP) are Terence himself. It's strikingly powerful, and a reminder of the duty we have in building our infrastructure. > Of course, your javascript-based analytics package doesn’t see the users you are bouncing because of javascript failures. It is fri…

And that is what pixel tracking is for. :)

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#207

Post by isityettime »

breakwaterlabs wrote: post #160
motoboi wrote: post #132

Old people. They exist. Not even that old. 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. You know that when pressing a button a hidden engine runs in the backend (or something runs in the backend). You expect an answer and if the expectation do not match the result, the model in your mind creates an hypothesis about what maybe happened and iterate from th…

> Old people don't have that because they Aren't insane . When did the industry put the onus on the user to understand how the computer works? What happened to the old days of Xerox PARC's HCI studies putting the user first? The computer is in service of the user, not the other way around! If I need to build a mental turing machine to understand your application, it is a bad application . It is rather the engineer's…

Automation generally goes along with a transition to more "self-service" approaches that require the user to model internal states and workflows of whatever they're dealing with.

This is even true for things as seemingly non-technological as getting to your flight once you arrive at the airport. People who are used to dealing with a service desk might just show up with their printed ticket without even having looked at it, take it to the counter, and expect instructions on what to do next without having read or considered all the fields present on the ticket.

It's not just about understanding the technology, but sometimes about understanding the business, policies, whatever. When a human agent or customer service worker is handling that stuff for you (typical in the pre-computer age), you barely have to think about that stuff and even if you're told, it can be "in one ear, out the other". Automation very often means pushing a requirement of more understanding onto customers/users.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#208

Post by jimbokun »

rewgs wrote: post #168
Hard_Space wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 60 year people can't user your fancy site because then don't have an internal model of how a computer works. I think this is a bit outdated. I'll be 60 in a month, and have been practicing and writing about machine learning, for money, for a straight 10 years now; and I was a young man (and a full stack developer) during the digital revolution. If anything, GenX had to work harder to get into these brittle emerging…

GP clearly isn’t talking about 60 year olds who were full stack devs and get on Hacker News.

Most people under 60 aren’t full stack devs either.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#209

Post by simpaticoder »

LNSY wrote: post #189
simpaticoder wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simpler doesn't mean easier. Consider a chef who at their previous job started using a wood-burning stove. This is an objectively simpler tool than a gas or electric stove, yet it would be very difficult (even impossible, depending on local architecture and regulations) for a new kitchen to add one.

I don't understand how having to pay 20 different vendors so hackers can run commands on your server barely impeded is somehow simpler.

The message you just wrote involved how many complex systems, from your keyboard switches and firmware to your BIOS and OS interrupts, to your browser, the internet and middle boxes, just to say one sentence to someone. It would be much simpler (and more secure!) if you just told me with your mouth, but you didn't do that.

Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

#210

Post by lproven »

tomgp wrote: post #182
rewgs wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP clearly isn’t talking about 60 year olds who were full stack devs and get on Hacker News.

60 year olds have been using computers most of their working life. Word processors and spreadsheets having been ubiquitous for office workers from at least the early 90s.

> 60 year olds have been using computers most of their working life.

Absolutely. I am in full-time work, and expect to be for another decade. I have worked my entire career in IT, doing tech support, training, systems design and implementation, tech journalism, and tech writing (i.e. documentation).

I will be 60 in less than 18 months.

> Word processors and spreadsheets having been ubiquitous for office workers from at least the early 90s.

You did say "at least", but still... longer than that.

I started work in 1988 and they were already ubiquitous in my world. Richer companies had the fairly newfangled IBM compatibles, which were still big and expensive. The cheap Amstrad PCs were just starting to appear.

Older hands had multiuser boxes with SCO Xenix or DR Concurrent CP/M or Concurrent DOS and a bunch of dumb terminals. My company had switched to these from Alpha Micro systems running AMOS -- and again, dumb terminals. One of my clients had a DEC PDP-11.

The real old hands had 8-bit kit: some CP/M, and a few BBC Micros.

The first big migrations I saw were from standalone (or multiuser) PCs to LANs, and from pre-PC systems to PCs and Macs.

Post reply on HN