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Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

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Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#111
post #26
post #4

I almost always fight the SV meme that largely founders focus on throwaway trivial ideas. I just think this is so stupid. Craigslist is one of the few companies that isnt greedy, is community driven, and if there are examples using there outsize market to kill competitirs or act nefarious-- I havent heard them. I did 3 craigslist deals in the past 2 days. Got coffee with a stranger at 2am who let me flash an os to a…

I've used Craigslist in several different locations in the US over the last 10-15 years, with I don't know how many transactions. I've never had a problem, except for the occasional buyer who tries to offer a lower price after showing up in person when the ad says "firm".

I've experienced that a lot. Beyond that, Craigslist's anonymity makes it an easy vector for fraud, fencing stolen property, and other crime.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#112
post #10
post #4

I almost always fight the SV meme that largely founders focus on throwaway trivial ideas. I just think this is so stupid. Craigslist is one of the few companies that isnt greedy, is community driven, and if there are examples using there outsize market to kill competitirs or act nefarious-- I havent heard them. I did 3 craigslist deals in the past 2 days. Got coffee with a stranger at 2am who let me flash an os to a…

Are you saying Craigslist is a tiny server in an apartment?

Nowadays, it runs on a Raspberry Pi that sits on his car's dashboard. [/s]

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#113
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to know how to deal with users input, forms and other stuff without JS. Every tutorial we see today is like "throw tons of JS to this problem and it shall work".

Vanilla forms just GET or POST to some server endpoint with all of the s passed in as query parameters. Frameworks (e.g., Rails) put some syntactic sugar on it, but that's really all that's happening. If the form submission contains invalid input, it's customary to return to the form page (with all the values already filled out) and show a server-generated message about what went wrong. JS is absolutely not required…

Thank you! it is actually enlightening :)

I think it's a little bit awkward to not use put, patch, delete... I wonder however if my server must follow the same technique, if not how to wire a delete endpoint to handle a form post and so on. I'll try to handle a form using only get and post sometime just to see how it works. Thank you!

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to know how to deal with users input, forms and other stuff without JS. Every tutorial we see today is like "throw tons of JS to this problem and it shall work".

Is this what you mean: https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp ?

thanks mate!

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#115
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if they just wrote an SPA and overrode the back button behavior and displayed a little spinner icon while html was loaded via json, your experience would be so much better.

Founder: The paradigm has shifted. 5kb HTML pages are no longer disruptive enough, we need more javascript for a- VC: Shut up and light this bag of cash on fire. Focus on number of non-paying users and make sure it's big enough so I can introduce you to more people with bigger pile of cash to light on fire. Craigslist Post: We are hiring front-end React.js developers with 10+ year experience.

Haha! Sadly, I have seen CL posts like that. 5+ years experience for frameworks that have only been around for 1 to 2 years.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#116

It isn't universal, though. One of the things you find if you move to Utah is, "Don't bother with Craigslist." I mean, it exists here. It gets some use. But most people use the online classifieds from ksl.com, the local TV station. At least, I think it is a TV station. I've never watched it, but everyone uses their online classifieds instead of craigslist. Their site also is ugly, and full of difficult buyers and poo…

I have found many of these, usually in suburban or rural areas underserved by services that seem to work only by city or state. CL is guilty of this. Living between two largely served areas, but bad s/n for nearby stuff. A local website, originally just featuring a single persons webcam and static greeting page, is now the regions most active online marketplace. People sell cars, livestock, propery, and various more CL like stuff. They often have strict moderation in stark contrast to CL.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#117
post #63

Am I the only one who doesn't think Craigslist is "Ugly or Janky"? It's one of the only places left on the web where I can go and not be bombarded by ads, pop ups, crazy amount of JavaScript and slow loading. It just works and is intuitive to use. The only major thing I feel is missing is the ability to search through multiple locations at the same time.

you can search multiple locations on craigslist right now. in the left hand bar click "include nearby areas". there is also a miles from zip search option.

I believe you are limited to 200 miles with this option.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#118
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this what you mean: https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp ?

Please don’t ever link to w3schools. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/HTML/Forms https://www.w3.org/TR/html51/sec-forms.html#sec-forms http://caniuse.com/#feat=forms

Sorry, but why not?

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#119
post #29

I find it interesting that there's a general undertone that CL is being "honorable" by choosing to not make more profit. I have no doubt Craig's intentions were honorable, but in reality, his refusal to make money to fund the site's innovation is hurting society. His users are screaming "TAKE MY MONEY AND MAKE THE SITE (MY LIFE) BETTER", but he refuses to do so and everyone is worse off because of it! In a way, it's…

Now it's lazy and selfish to not take every ounce of surplus you can out of a market? Some folks just want to lay back and enjoy life. If I were Craig I'd sit on that goldmine for the rest of my life - most likely it will finance a very decent lifestyle until the day he dies. Why bother with the stress of expanding and doing what everyone else is doing? I'm completely convinced that strategy makes for miserable peopl…

>Isn't Craig living the hacker's dream? A reasonably useful service that provides value to customer, that once built you don't have to put much effort into maintaining or improving - because it works. Then you spend the rest of your free time on the beach.

I don't know about you, but real hackers get personal enjoyment from creating software, products, and innovating. They don't do it so they can "spend the rest of their free time on the beach."

In fact, if you are trying to just make enough money to spend the rest of your free time on the beach etc, you're probably not a real hacker.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#120
post #63

Am I the only one who doesn't think Craigslist is "Ugly or Janky"? It's one of the only places left on the web where I can go and not be bombarded by ads, pop ups, crazy amount of JavaScript and slow loading. It just works and is intuitive to use. The only major thing I feel is missing is the ability to search through multiple locations at the same time.

You can search multiple craigslist locations by doing a google search with "server:craigslist.org" to limit the search to craigslist's server. Not the most refined approach but good in a jiffy.
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