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There's never been a better time to build websites

simeongriggs.dev

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Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#101

Post by freeflight »

As somebody who's only dabbled in creating a personal website in the late 90s, using FrontPage and hosting on a free hoster, the current web seems like a completely, and way more complex beast to build websites for.

Back then all I needed was get a bit familiar with FrontPage and html scripting, some Photoshop to create/edit image elements, and I already had a functional website.

I knew if I wanted to "really" do it, I should probably learn proper html, but 15 years old me was already plenty proud of having a pretty good looking, and well working, website at all. It even had a visitor counter, and a guest book, all the Jazz that defined 90s websites, and that was enough for me.

Now, over 2 decades later, just the prospect of getting back into it seems so extremely more daunting and complex. We are now at Html5? At "Web 3.0"? I don't really know anymore, it's all just become so "vast" with so many options and so much complexity that I wouldn't even know where or how to start anymore.

Is it still viable to just learn plain html and do something with that? Have WYSIWYG editors matured so much that they can be used at least semi-professionally, or is that still "looked down upon"?

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#102

Post by dwkns »

nbzso wrote: post #80

I have a question. Would someone please give me some form of enlightenment about the practice of product placement in blog posts? Is this the new normal? >I'm Simeon, a in and Solution Engineer @ Sanity.io > Some major bias at play here but when I came across Sanity I finally found "the CMS I'd always hoped existed". It is cool, that he acknowledges the "bias", but this is more in "conflict of interest" category in m…

The OP used to work for me. He was a massive fan of Sanity before he went to work for them. I think that in part that is why he went to work for them. Knowing him, I am sure that he was was not consciously doing any product placement, rather showing what he genuinely feels about the product and heading off any conflict of interest concerns others might have.

As to the practice of product placement in blog posts. This is HUGE and the way that many bloggers make their living (although less so in dev). Affiliate marketing (getting paid for links to products & services) makes up around 10% of e-commerce transactions. It's been around for a long time and is likely to continue to grow as it's one of the few directly attributable sales channels (not without its issues however).

I'm fine with people monetizing their content, especially if it's useful and ad free. What is less comfortable is where people don't make it clear that they get paid for it.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#103

Post by rambambram »

pxtail wrote: post #97
rambambram wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment, but RSS and the likes are not 'the same old weapon but better'. It was never 'weaponized' in the first place. It never really came to fruition for the masses. To me, RSS is like two sticks and a string, and it needs some people who can see that they can make a bow and arrow out of it (to stay in the realm of 'weapons'). I don't like talking about tech and business in a sense of 'weapons',…

> I don't like talking about tech and business in a sense of 'weapons', 'winning', 'smashing the competition', etc. Talking about it in this sense makes it a struggle, because one will look at tech from the pov of a stockholder, capitalist, or just a narcissist. The wording is very important, and the moment you make that wording your own, you can't see it in a different light anymore. I like this paragraph a lot, in…

Thanks! Getting rid of notions like 'winning' and 'competition' in areas where it's not necessary was a mind changer for me. Even personal stuff like friendship becomes a competition this way (and I see it everywhere around me). Nowadays, I prefer to think about it as 'challenges' instead of competitions.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#104

Post by nbzso »

dwkns wrote: post #102
nbzso wrote: post #80

I have a question. Would someone please give me some form of enlightenment about the practice of product placement in blog posts? Is this the new normal? >I'm Simeon, a in and Solution Engineer @ Sanity.io > Some major bias at play here but when I came across Sanity I finally found "the CMS I'd always hoped existed". It is cool, that he acknowledges the "bias", but this is more in "conflict of interest" category in m…

The OP used to work for me. He was a massive fan of Sanity before he went to work for them. I think that in part that is why he went to work for them. Knowing him, I am sure that he was was not consciously doing any product placement, rather showing what he genuinely feels about the product and heading off any conflict of interest concerns others might have. As to the practice of product placement in blog posts. This…

Thanks for the answer.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#106

Post by rambambram »

zerop wrote: post #64
rambambram wrote: post #15

I'm also developing for 25 years, I also really really like websites and coding, but not for the reasons the OP sums up. For me, it's not about all kinds of solved or unsolved technical questions. Today is a very good time to build websites, because a good website is the only way to push back to Big Tech and it's practices. Your website can be build on techniques invented in a time where the dream of the internet was…

I find lots of love for RSS by "innovators" and "experts" of HN community. Despite of it, the thing (RSS) is only going low and I don’t see anything other than RSS readers/mergers invented?

Stay tuned. ;)

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#107

Post by BlueTemplar »

andybak wrote: post #83
coldtea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying it in jest, but also as an observation. The TFA writer takes it for granted, but then again, so do many (most?) today.

Maybe that makes it even more important to repeatedly raise the possibility that this assumption is wrong.

Yeah, some JavaScrit can be nice, but if your website stops working with all javascript being blocked, you should probably make a native program instead.

This is particularly important so that web scrapers and other automated tools that the Web relies on can work. Also accessibility tools.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#108

Post by iandanforth »

This article strikes me as hopelessly naive. Filled with the same kind of 'new is better and solves everything' mentality I've seen in the JS community for years. There's no desire for maturity because nothing has ever matured. Even frameworks from huge companies go through radical internal paradigm shifts every 18 months. JS runs natively in the browser. The author implies compilation is required to deploy client-side rendered websites. Sass, Less, css grid, all claimed to 'solve' CSS for whatever the problem in the mind of the author happened to be. ... more of the same.

This article brings no hope that somethings has fundamentally changed in the community.

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#109

Post by ape4 »

ajlburke wrote: post #93
hooby wrote: post #92

It's definitely a great time to build websites, but saying they _NEVER_ have been easier to make... I'm not 100% sure about that. Yes, tailwind might make css a lot easier, and github copilot might make coding a lot faster... but is this really easier than in the early 90ies, when you could just type into notepad and make a website that didn't require any CSS or images or JS or even more than just the most basic html…

Hacker News still uses tables - for layout ! But it always loads super fast, and it just works. We figured out how to display text on a web page decades ago. It's a shame more people aren't just doing it the direct way anymore. (Applications are a different matter obviously)

Because of your comment I just looked at the source - yup tables. And a spacer gif too https://news.ycombinator.com/s.gif

Re: There's never been a better time to build websites

#110

Post by 0x0nyandesu »

auggierose wrote: post #56
proxyon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that not something you can learn by picking up any number of good books in the area in much less time? I'm shocked that you believe this. Work at a moderate or higher sized tech company. The juniors, mid levels and seniors all make the same mistakes and slowly grow out of making them. If it were the case that everyone could stop making the same mistakes and choosing the wrong abstractions simply by reading a boo…

Of course you need experience as an engineer. But knowing which Javascript libraries to pick is the easy part. I was not saying that you don't need experience, but you don't need much Javascript / Typescript experience. This can be done in a few months.

It will take a few months just to bring yourself up to speed on mouse/keyboard event bindings and how they interact in one specific browser and one operating system let alone all browsers and operating systems and mobile and that's without even thinking about rendering, templating, network operation wrappers, local storage, camera and sound APIs. The list goes on.

I've been doing this since literally IE 5.5 and I'm still learning new stuff all the time. The fact that you think you can learn all this in a few months is hilarious.

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