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Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

paramaggarwal.substack.com

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Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#241

Post by userbinator »

mycall wrote: post #145
userbinator wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with the Outlook web app (not the "basic HTML" mode, which is perfectly usable in contrast) is the exact opposite --- it's extremely slow and consumes a ridiculous amount of memory for what it does (I've seen it take over 2GB of RAM, and this is with an account where all the emails with their attachments total less than 100MB.) When composing a message it lags so much that it will delay each keystroke b…

> I've seen it take over 2GB Probably because that RAM wasn't doing anything else. Why not use it as cache to speed things up. I'm sure it can work fine in much smaller RAM sizes.

The fact that my machine was swapping heavily whenever I tried to switch to the Outlook tab or do anything with it says otherwise.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#243

Post by diegoperini »

jusssi wrote: post #215
volument wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a response from a seasoned backend engineer. Seasoned frontend developers value user experience and design — thus the tendency to go "back to static" and rarely back to WordPress.

To me Wordpress sounds exactly a suggestion you'd get from someone who doesn't have to maintain it. I.e. frontend dev.

I believe the grand-grand-parent used Wordpress as an example to his/her argument. You can use any other battle tested CMS solution if Wordpress is too heavy for your needs.

For example, I like Ghost (https://ghost.org/) for my personal needs.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#244

Post by zuzun »

benbristow wrote: post #222
zuzun wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I open a Tweet I look at spinner animations for 10 seconds. Scrolling is also the opposite of smooth.

Scrolling is silky smooth for me and spinners go away quickly. What hardware are you running?

For their infinite scrolling, they clean the DOM above and below the viewport and only keep a certain amount of tweets rendered. So once you start scrolling a little faster, the JavaScript can't keep pace and starts sputtering.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#245

Post by x3haloed »

krapp wrote: post #231
x3haloed wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better than everything else because people have never heard of it. When did software engineers become hipsters?

>When did software engineers become hipsters? Hacker News is the epicenter of software engineer hipsterdom, come on.

That's true. I guess I'm just frustrated by that. I suppose I should just accept it and let it go haha.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#246

Post by x3haloed »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #42
x3haloed wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the reasonable answer gets downvoted. Stay strong! And remember that you're not a good developer unless you write everything in vim compiled for an OS that you wrote for yourself in C, backed up on a trusty old 2MB platter drive via a series of rsync scripts. I heard the concept of version control was originally conceived and canned by IBM in 1967, because it was found that version control would eventually…

Thanks for the kind words and the mention. I'm used to the downvotes on here unfortunately, it's easy to tell which topics will do it, the group think here can be thick...

You're welcome.

My struggle on HN is to try to ignore the groupthink and keep the sarcasm out of my tone, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#247

Post by x3haloed »

nefitty wrote: post #44
x3haloed wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better than everything else because people have never heard of it. When did software engineers become hipsters?

It seems like a lot of web devs are either stuck chasing novelty or constantly trying to bet on the next big thing. For example, what happened to CoffeeScript? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0hjc5m0&ge... What happened to Ember? https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F0s8...

I think you're right. But I think that's because it's still early days, nobody has really nailed it yet. We're all trying to make sure that when something sticks, we'll be ready for it. It seems like TypeScript and React are sticking around pretty good. I'm sure they'll be replaced at some point. My personal hope is that they'll be replaced by better standards within the browser.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#248

Post by x3haloed »

WDCDev wrote: post #87
x3haloed wrote: post #23

> The Dark Age - Somewhere on this path to render pages on the fly (SSR) and render pages on the client (SPA) we forgot about the performance of our webpages. We were trying to build apps. But the web is about presenting content first and foremost! Pfff - That's completely wrong. SPAs are all about performance. If you want to built a highly-interactive site, it makes sense to do the computing where it's consumed -- i…

> Use the right technology for what you're trying to build. Yep .. so if you want a rich responsive user experience, DON'T use any web technologies. GMail (AND Gsuite) is a perfect example of how a relatively simple concept like email can be turned into a slow, unresponsive piece of garbage.

I want to emphasize that I was talking about the first beta releases of Gmail, which is where XHR was born. Or so I read.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#249

Post by x3haloed »

amluto wrote: post #30
x3haloed wrote: post #23

> The Dark Age - Somewhere on this path to render pages on the fly (SSR) and render pages on the client (SPA) we forgot about the performance of our webpages. We were trying to build apps. But the web is about presenting content first and foremost! Pfff - That's completely wrong. SPAs are all about performance. If you want to built a highly-interactive site, it makes sense to do the computing where it's consumed -- i…

> But Gmail showed us that web 'apps' are useful. And we really have come full circle. Gmail performance, at least on Firefox, is awful.

I was talking about the early Beta releases that caught on like fire. Specifically with their use of XHR. That doesn't mean that web apps are always slow and bloated.

Re: Websites have evolved back to static HTML/CSS/JS files

#250

Post by x3haloed »

int_19h wrote: post #96
alharith wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same reason your desktop based email client probably depends on it. It’s 2020 and developers are starting to make use of all the modern browser features. It’s time to stop thinking like the browser is some fickle thing that needs to be caressed and treat it like a sandboxed OS environment for delivering apps and content.

We had rich desktop email clients - with more features than GMail - running on sub-GHz CPUs with integrated graphics. They also had better UI.

Obviously native code is faster than a generalized scripting language for the web. Again, it's all about what you're trying to achieve. You can still use those fast native clients, but you can also access your Gmail from any device that has a web browser, which is basically everything. If Gmail is slow today, then obviously Google has lost sight of that point.
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