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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

#161

Post by dmux »

stopcraeting wrote: post #18

I hate every new technology listed in this article. I recently removed all of my SQL-in-programming-language code (orm, strings of SQL) etc, and just wrote actual SQL in files with .sql at the end and load them at run-time. I am now, when my finger heels, going to do the same for the React. I hate React. I have been using it for years and I have never enjoyed it. I feel like everything made after the boomer technolog…

As I've gotten older (about a decade's worth of professional experience at this point), I've started feeling the same way. It's so tempting to build up these abstractions and pipelines and introduce new tools but at the end of the day, what is it we're trying to achieve? It's often the case that the abstractions chosen were the wrong ones for the job and staying at a lower "layer" of abstraction results in more benefits in the longer term (i.e. lower layers are move at a slower pace). If a project's lifetime is longer than 2 hype cycles, it may be worth considering digging down a layer and doing things there.

Whenever a subject like this comes up, I'm always reminded of Stewart Brand's "pace layering" [0].

[0] https://imgur.com/V5oL5WZ

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

#163

Post by moritz »

AJ007 wrote: post #121
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)

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 mode…

Just look at all the overhead of the article‘s website… When I first clicked the link the "website" crashed, so instead of the hot take, all I could read is that "addEventListener is not a function". That tells you all about the current state of affairs

(Yes I get that webdevs' personal sites are their playground)

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

#164

Post by marcus_holmes »

0x0nyandesu wrote: post #5
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…

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…

> a dev like me with 17 years of experience in the field

That's not the flex I think you think it is ;) I've been coding for over 40 years now, professionally for over 25. The attitude you have is one I very much associate with younger devs with limited experience.

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

#165

Post by logicalmonster »

The technology is far more advanced and bordering on magical in some cases, but most front-end web-development is far more painful and less fun to me than it once was.

Say about 15 years ago or so, if you had a creative inspiration for a personal site, you could whip out a text editor and start building top-notch stuff very easily. About the most complicated thing you had to do to start building something was adding jQuery to a project.

Today you have to research a pile of unnecessarily complicated (for most personal projects) frontend frameworks, libraries, and build systems, figure out the compiling and development environments, figure out a complex mess of containers and virtualization, etc, etc, etc. This stuff sucks the joy out of building anything, even if the actual coding itself is far more structured and convenient.

By the way as genuinely nice as Tailwind can be, calling anything a solved problem is kind of arrogant. There will probably be other design approaches and ideas invented over time that are even better.

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

#167

Post by seer »

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…

The reader view (from any of the browsers really) has become my base performance review tool.

If a webpage is meant for presenting textual content and is actually _improved_ by a reader view, that means the design has failed.

There actually are websites out there that don’t benefit much from that view HN being a prime example.

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

#168

Post by wombat-man »

freeflight wrote: post #101

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,…

You can still do html people will just notice that. Personally I don't care. I'm not a webdev and I don't pretend to be. I have setup a pretty basic sorta retro personal website where people can find my resume.

There's a lot more you can do with static sites, it just depends on how much time you want to sink into it. I just made something basic. Maybe when I'm bored I'll try to build on it.

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

#169

Post by marcus_holmes »

zeepzeep wrote: post #33
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…

> I like writing code, not plumbing together bits of other people's code with bizarre config files I don't like reinventing the wheel every time I build something

> I don't like reinventing the wheel every time I build something

This is the crux of the difference, I think. I see open-source libraries as (mostly) mediocre code, usually massively bloated with features I don't need. Using them is like using an 18-wheeler to nip to the shops. I have found in my experience that it saves time in the long run to just write the minimal amount of code I need for the job, rather than dealing with the added complexity and dependency of adding a 3rd-party library.

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

#170

Post by NikhilVerma »

logicalmonster wrote: post #165

The technology is far more advanced and bordering on magical in some cases, but most front-end web-development is far more painful and less fun to me than it once was. Say about 15 years ago or so, if you had a creative inspiration for a personal site, you could whip out a text editor and start building top-notch stuff very easily. About the most complicated thing you had to do to start building something was adding…

I am not sure why you say that, nothing stops a developer from opening notepad and building a website. One of the wonderful things about the web is it's backwards compatibility.

It's just that there's better tooling available for you to build it faster/featureful now.

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