They replaced an ASP form on the website with something better.
To apply for their services, customers could either use an old ASP form on the website, or follow a manual process
Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
431–440 of 605 posts
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
Junior and midlevel devs aren't decision makers for government benefit websites. The culture of not giving a shit is real, but the responsibility goes far beyond these roles.
If we're talking a government site, chances are you don't have the budget to be able to hire much above junior or midlevel devs. And the project manager probably has a small budget [^1] and little experience with what the web design choices really mean (and what the trade off are). I think you'd be surprised who ends up making those decisions. Which goes back to the original point (that's valid for any project) - kee…
Even if this were the case, and I wouldn't be surprised, it's still misplaced blame.
> Knowing your user is important, no matter what level you're at.
I agree, but it's absolutely ridiculous to expect a junior dev to make excellent decisions on this. Software development is a massive industry with no prescribed methods. It's not like these folks are going through a residency before getting the job. Even if they went to uni for CS those programs don't teach these skills.
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
May i ask why, specifically, Rick Rubin? I don't know who that is, but whenever we finished mastering a new song, we had a series of "systems" we listened to it on. We went out to my dad's work van and listened there. We called up our friend with a street-comp sound system in his car, and listened in there (neighbors must have loved us!), and then a "cheap" boombox with large-ish speakers but cheap. if it sounded "cl…
Working in the music industry and not being aware who Rick Rubin is… is a bit weird.
i don't work in the industry, sorry. We just made music and released mp3s, 1997-2008. Co-creator of Def Jam, alright.
I wonder if David Lynch watches his stuff on a tiny screen just to make sure everyone has a good experience.
hint: no, he thinks small screens are stupid.
ETA: after like 3 years of mastering and reviewing this way i trusted my ears and my studio monitors enough to know what it would sound like. I also wrote in headphones and mastered on speakers, then remastered in monitor headphones. Anyhow, i think the whole point i was making is "yes, this is a good thing to do, for music, for websites, for software, etc"
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are far too empathetic to them. They should not hold the jobs they have. These are the people writing React monstrosities for government benefit websites, and testing them on fast iPhones and fast 4G, without realizing that every page load for actual users will take 30 seconds on their old $200 Android on 3G, and users won’t complete the form. It’s a culture of not giving a shit, that’s the deeper issue.
I just had one of these people, a contractor working for a state government, argue vocally with me in a meeting stating that "500 JavaScript requests is not a problem" for a single page. Un-cached, of course, despite there being a CDN in front of the site. You can't win against cargo-cult coders because they just assume you're from a different, competing cult. They have no concept of engineering or science, they have…
Heh this is one nice thing about doing engineering work in Australia. Our round-trip time to US data centers is often about 200ms. There’s no hiding from sloppy choices in the performance panel.
I had an argument a few weeks ago because our page took 4 serial requests before content appeared. I argued - with solid data - that it should be 1. If we could manage that, cold load time would ~ halve.
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#435This takes me back close to 15 years ago: using backend session management in Grails and the html forms that were enhanced with “some” JS, using responsive CSS. The difference at that time was browser tech not being as advanced as now, we had to care for different browsers and deal with IE7 and even IE6, it was difficult and we needed extensive QA (Browserstack would appear later). There is a reason why we had JS library evolution. Dude there was no npm, not even bower. Then we had Backbone.js - loved it, then AngularJS - amazing, then Angular version which had huge breaking changes then React, Polymer etc. Native browsers can do a lot these days, it is easy to enhance the functionality as well. But it was not always the same, the decisions to use React made sense for a variety of reasons at the time, maybe it was the case here as well.
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
Starting a few years ago, I realized some junior and medior engineers never once considered the possibility of building a website (app, experience, etc.) in anything other than a heavy SPA framework. But they're not stupid people! If you directly asked "Can you build a website without React?" they know the answer is obviously "Yes." However, if you asked them to build a new website, they would unthinkingly start a ne…
Yup. It’s exactly like the dismal state of CSS frameworks we're mired in. All these new kids walk in and learn the CSS framework du jour first, then find themselves stranded when things move on. If they had just learned CSS the first time, they'd be set for life. Nobody should learn React before learning HTML and vanilla javascript. HN last week: Learn SQL Once, Use It for 30 Years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?i…
The practical question most face is which is more likely to land them a good role. Does standards level CSS knowledge meet that bar?
(I’m team CSS standards although my knowledge is a bit tilted towards late 2010s, currently revisiting)
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a contract once to save a government website that had serious performance issues, it was so unusable that people preferred to go in-person and wait 4h in a queue rather than try to fill the forms online. The frontend was in React because the company that got the contract initially used React for everything. The frontend was a 5MB SPA, but it could've been (mostly static) HTML files with some interactivity for f…
I’m curious if - and when - LLMs change this. They’re very good at web apps. And they’re great at rewriting existing stuff. Just give them a well scoped /goal and go get coffee. Theres lots of open questions about the future of our profession in the age of AI. But, playing with opus and fable, I think the future will be bright for our users. There is no reason any more for teams to put out junk that’s worse than what…
Unfortunately the LLMs are trained on what we've made, and there's going to be a ton more React garbage[1] in the training set than there are carefully-crafted websites like the article describes, so I don't expect a decrease in overengineered, bloated junk. If anything, I predict that the fact that you can shit one out in less time than before will have a different effect: A modest increase in bloat since an LLM won't mind adding a half dozen redundant and competing ways to do the same things in a large codebase, combined with a shorter mean-time-between-full-rewrites.
I think most of us have seen incredibly creaky codebases that are too buggy to be maintained any longer, where we make the hard choice to wipe the slate clean and build a new one.
We might find those rewrites happening every 12-24 months instead of after a decade.
[1] Frontend people, I mean no disrespect -- just that React & friends are (ab)used for nearly every website now, even those which map perfectly onto the "Simple document viewing with occasional submission of incredibly simple form data" model that plain HTML has always been perfect for.
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#438This 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.
Plain old HTML with vanilla JS is not exactly a pit of success but React is much closer to a pit of despair. The former tends to be clunky but effective, while the latter requires a PhD in complexity avoidance to stand a chance.
JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford is a comically short book. React: The Good Parts would be shorter still.
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sympathetic to a doctor who specialized in surgery and now always recommends surgery, even for a common cold? Or would you say they are in the wrong job, if they are anywhere but surgery?
Well that's horribly reductive. I certainly do not expect everyone in a given field to know absolutely everything there is to know in that field. Crazy enough, I also hold doctors and surgeons to higher standards than web developers.
If those web developers fail a critical government service, or online pharmacy or financial service, it can mess up peoples life pretty badly as well.
Re: Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
Starting a few years ago, I realized some junior and medior engineers never once considered the possibility of building a website (app, experience, etc.) in anything other than a heavy SPA framework. But they're not stupid people! If you directly asked "Can you build a website without React?" they know the answer is obviously "Yes." However, if you asked them to build a new website, they would unthinkingly start a ne…
A few of them would outright not know how to do anything else. It's like how a lot of people these days reach for an electric drill/driver for even the most simple projects like tightening a screw. It never occurs to them to use a screwdriver, or even a butter knife.
Yeah, my dad is like this. But even just for one screw I am at least 10x faster with the electric option.
But I also achieve faster HTMl with vanilla and never touched react, so .. I will continue to stick with using the right tool for the job.