Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight

Post by lotsoweiners » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 12:49 AM UTC

josephg wrote: post #430

igsomething wrote: post #356

Earlier 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…

Post by sonixaep » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 1:11 AM UTC

Post by Henchman21 » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 1:24 AM UTC

ThomW wrote: post #474

I teared up at the PSP talk. I feel terrible that life requires a level of technology that not everyone is capable of affording and it doesn’t seem right.

Post by inigyou » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 1:27 AM UTC

simpaticoder wrote: post #174

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,…

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.

Post by grebc » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 1:36 AM UTC

shit_game wrote: post #82

faangguyindia wrote: post #50

Most of my apps are now simply HTMX + Go + SQLite. I've found it's enough for most projects. One of my sites is image heavy and serves 10 TB of traffic per month. For this, I use the following setup: 1. S3 (I wanted reliable data storage) 2. In front of it, I have Cloudflare (with Tiered Cache enabled, which makes POPs prefer pulling from Cloudflare rather than the origin). I've set rules to cache everything on both…

>One of my sites is image heavy and serves 10 TB of traffic per month I can't imagine this kind of traffic without acting as a CDN, advertising broker, pornographer, or part of a massive ecommerce site. I have to wonder, what are you doing that generates 10TB of traffic per month?