There's never been a better time to build websites • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by AJ007 » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

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)

I would have been horrified if I saw what websites would look like in 2010+ when I first started using the web. The amount of unnecessary garbage and JS added to sites goes well beyond the adtech part. Half or more of sites using frameworks probably should never have used them.

A good contrast is Reddit vs hn. Reddit’s current site is basically unusable and sluggish on modern hardware that can you could train ML models with.

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

#122

Post by Mezzie » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

ape4 wrote: post #109

ajlburke wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think it's old enough to be a retro design choice now.

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

#123

Post by Scarbutt » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

Winsaucerer wrote: post #51

stopcraeting wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if reply is shorter than I would like due to hand, but the dynamic aspects I have encountered have been solved by case when as mentioned, boolean expressions on parameters (where $1 is true or id = $2), or in the worst cast just not caring about DRY in this scenario. Also I use json_agg etc for ORM-like mapping to arrays and objects. I do some other tricks too like bypassing a bunch of redundant and slow parsin…

Thanks for writing what you have. These all sound like reasonable approaches. Just to add some extra options/thoughts because I’ve been thinking about this lately, for cases where CASE doesn’t work well on order by, you can use dynamic queries to construct the final query in SQL. Another option might be to include a splash of templating to your .sql files, and parse them at run time, or use them to generate the final…

Check out https://www.hugsql.org/. Is a Clojure library but I'm sure I have seen Python and JS versions around.

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

#124

Post by mitchdoogle » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #16

0x0nyandesu wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way as the author but I work with php. Recently it's all been TDD, statically typed, and JavaScript gets web packed into one or two files so instead of juggling 15 script tags I only have one or two and a style tag for css. With CI this all happens in the background on every commit. What you pay for when you hire a dev like me with 17 years of experience in the field is the ability to know which libra…

Is that not something you can learn by picking up any number of good books in the area in much less time? I am just getting into TypeScript programming, and I am really having fun. I learnt about the details of how Javascript works, and it is quite cool to have a static layer over a dynamic one. For learning JavaScript, I like "The Good Parts" and the "You don't know JS" series. It took me a while to learn how to cre…

Some things just have to be experienced 50 times before you learn them

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

#125

Post by dna_polymerase » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

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…

But all the things you mentioned are optional. The web is amazingly backwards compatible. Best example: one of Germany's most read blogs: https://blog.fefe.de

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

#126

Post by seumars » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

Is the "exciting" part that these new meta-frameworks save you from actually having to learn and implement proper front-end development concepts? Remix is an "inflection point" because now you don't have to learn how a server-side rendered website works. Tailwind is an "inflection point" because now you don't have to learn how a design system works, let alone how to implement one. Copilot is an "inflection point" because you no longer have to alt-tab between your code and google, or remember how regex works. It goes on and on.

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

#127

Post by Mezzie » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

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…

> 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 tags?

I mean you still can, it's just that nobody's going to hire you to do that and nobody is going to be impressed by it. Even back in the 90s when it was that easy, it was all hobbyists. By the time the dot-com boom started taking off, it was complicated. CSS + JS, no responsive design (remember designing 3 different sites to deal with the 460x640, 600x800, and 1280x1024 resolutions? Frames and no frames? Different sites for each browser [or ones that only worked in one bc things were even less standard than now - 'this site only works in IE'?] etc.)

Now it's the tools adding the complexity, but back then it was hardware, browsers, etc.

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

#128

Post by Mezzie » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #3

I have a feeling that this is the next religious war in dev. I read this article and shudder in horror at, well, all of it. I like static sites (that wouldn't take minutes to build if they were written in a decent language). Adding lots and lots of JS dependencies and frameworks gives me the screaming ab-dabs - it's just adding complexity and dependency. I like writing code, not plumbing together bits of other people…

Same.

I started making websites in 93, and to me, websites are about communication and sharing. They exist to facilitate communication. The current system of crazy dependencies and frameworks just doesn't do this; it values speed and ease over every other aspect of communicating. Imagine if TV developed in a way where they sat and tested how much they could speed up the show and be understood and made that the standard so shows could be 'watched' more quickly: That experience would SUCK.

Or cars that can go from 0 to 100 in .5 seconds but have no seat belts, no horns, no airbags, no turn signals...

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

#129

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

I remember when I was 17 (in 1999) and printing off an HTML tutorial website as a giant stack of A4, so I could read it offline. Anyone remember hasLayout?

Now it all seems relatively simple to learn things, although picking what to learn is probably harder.

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

#130

Post by the_only_law » Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #3

I have a feeling that this is the next religious war in dev. I read this article and shudder in horror at, well, all of it. I like static sites (that wouldn't take minutes to build if they were written in a decent language). Adding lots and lots of JS dependencies and frameworks gives me the screaming ab-dabs - it's just adding complexity and dependency. I like writing code, not plumbing together bits of other people…

> Imagine if TV developed in a way where they sat and tested how much they could speed up the show and be understood and made that the standard so shows could be 'watched' more quickly: That experience would SUCK.

Honestly, a lot of times, I’m left wondering if this isn’t the case.