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The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

nolanlawson.com

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Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#151

Post by jjpones »

CqtGLRGcukpy wrote: post #108

There is going to come one day that companies (and any website owner) will wish they didn't use AI and instead used a simple (maybe even plain-text) website. That will come when people really need information from that website but can't get to it. https://sparkbox.com/foundry/helene_and_mobile_web_performan... Discussion regarding that post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46494734

Heck, you can have your information as clear and concise as possible, but the moment I sense that "AI-generated" texture, I am immediately closing the tab. This is just extrapolating from how I feel about the bevy of obviously AI-Generated flyers and banners that have been gaining a lot of traction in real life.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#152

Post by sznio »

bhawker wrote: post #140
bluefirebrand wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's called alignment Alignment is such a polite term for "a giant boot that is crushing all of the uniqueness out" Once it is done crushing, congrats! Everything is aligned.. by being flattened

Does the world need the "uniqueness" of 40 similar web frameworks?

the world certainly needs novel ideas. maybe eventually we'll come up with a web framework that doesn't suck - or rather we'll realise that Django had it right all along for all these years.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#153

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #49
bayindirh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know an accountant, who has a respectable amount of customers and enough income to live comfortably. Their company has a website which only provides a logo, address and contact information, in a 23 line HTML file, complete with all the white space. If their company can do well with this website, her psychology practice can do as well. Some of the best services I got was from professionals with no or mundane online…

Yes, presumably that's why she did not update the website for 20 years! If once she's decided to update the website—surely it's worth more then $20 at that point? Otherwise, she probably shouldn't be spending any time on it herself either, given the opportunity cost. Obviously she decided otherwise, I just find it kind of surprising. Like, in general, I'm always kind of surprised at what people are and aren't willing…

>If once she's decided to update the website—surely it's worth more then $20 at that point?

the problem here really, from both sides of the argument, is the assumption that humans are rational economic actors.

One side assumes that it is not worth 20 dollars to update the site quickly thus she does not do it, but really for that to be true (given costs of psychologists sessions etc.) then it would not even be worth updating the site, or paying for the site hosting or the domain at all.

The other side assumes that given that she is updating the site it must be worth paying 20 dollars to do so quickly and asks why she does not, given that it is worth updating the site.

If humans are rational economic actors she should be updating her professional site because it has some professional benefit to her that she is aware of, but this creates the two problems stated above.

This problem, and the examples you give, are resolved by understanding that humans are not really rational economic actors and the reason that she is updating the site and not paying the extra 20 dollars at the same time cannot be resolved to a non-contradictory answer.

We are at best, partially rational economic actors. Rational-like.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#154

Post by zmmmmm »

crabmusket wrote: post #150
chanux wrote: post #116

> For better or worse, React is heavily overrepresented in the training weights, and “agent experience” is starting to matter more than developer experience. Another winner takes all situation. This and the other post on agent tool use[1] makes me think we are in a period of great homogenization. I'm sure there's a group that's delighted about this but for me, it just makes me feel a little uneasy. [1] https://armatu…

I wonder if this is overstated. Anecdotally, we use Vue at work and Claude and Codex handle it just fine. I'd expect Vue to be the third best-represented after React and Angular, but even then, we feel absolutely no need to change things up to get better results. Vue's reactivity is quite similar to Solid's, AFAIK, so I wonder why there would be so many issues with Solid. We have also started to have success getting…

Vue had a good tenure as a solid #2 to React, so I think it probably has got a lot of representation in training data. Things really splitered after that but it got a good foothold.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#155

Post by gmac »

bhawker wrote: post #140
bluefirebrand wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's called alignment Alignment is such a polite term for "a giant boot that is crushing all of the uniqueness out" Once it is done crushing, congrats! Everything is aligned.. by being flattened

Does the world need the "uniqueness" of 40 similar web frameworks?

Perhaps not if the one framework we ended up with was a good one …

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#156

Post by the_other »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #139
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably a nicer website could lead to more customers. Otherwise why update the website at all?

She had no shortage of patients from word of mouth, but old website was minor liability in its datedness potentially putting off prospective patients. People already knew about her and website is essentially just “this is what I do, where I am and how you can contact me”.

> but old website was minor liability in its datedness potentially putting off prospective patients.

Anecdata: I’d be more likely to use the services of a company with a good, old-style site than a bad, new style site. Things like pop-overs, text that animates in as you scroll, banner images that take up most of the “abive the fold” are all red flags for me.

Oh, and the most common one: “Read more”.

A modern site that avoids all those can be great. But those are rare, IMO.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#157

Post by gunalx »

zmmmmm wrote: post #154
crabmusket wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is overstated. Anecdotally, we use Vue at work and Claude and Codex handle it just fine. I'd expect Vue to be the third best-represented after React and Angular, but even then, we feel absolutely no need to change things up to get better results. Vue's reactivity is quite similar to Solid's, AFAIK, so I wonder why there would be so many issues with Solid. We have also started to have success getting…

Vue had a good tenure as a solid #2 to React, so I think it probably has got a lot of representation in training data. Things really splitered after that but it got a good foothold.

The problem I see with vue is what vue patterns are you using. And the llms may be trained on more outdated ones more than current practices.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#158

Post by wiseowise »

josephg wrote: post #45
Supermancho wrote: post #31

> The frontend is less risky to just hand to an agent. The smaller the problem, the less risky it is to do this, regardless of the nature of the problem. This is not a frontend-specific issue today.

Frontend development - perhaps more than any other kind of software development - is “what you see is what you get”. There aren’t a lot of ways a website can be invisibly broken. Systems engineering isn’t like that. Vibe coders beware: A database could silently corrupt data, or have latent security vulnerabilities. It might have a badly designed query language that will be difficult to change later. But frontend code…

> Systems engineering isn’t like that.

Whatever lets you sleep at night man. If you really think you’re better than the machine at spotting arcane Unix incompatibilities, or that you’re somehow more “safe” than frontend jockeys, I’ve got really bad news for you.

Re: The asteroid currently hitting front end web development

#160

Post by flyingshelf »

CqtGLRGcukpy wrote: post #108

There is going to come one day that companies (and any website owner) will wish they didn't use AI and instead used a simple (maybe even plain-text) website. That will come when people really need information from that website but can't get to it. https://sparkbox.com/foundry/helene_and_mobile_web_performan... Discussion regarding that post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46494734

Doubtful. This is just the cost of doing business. 99.9999% uptime for a fraction of the cost is totally fine for all businesses. Government should be the exception though.
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