Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Advice to Young Web Developers

tumblr.beesbuzz.biz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 328 posts

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#271

Post by ptx »

osrec wrote: post #240
ptx wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offline use already works great, unlike in any SPA I've ever used. 1) Load the page. 2) The page is now fully loaded and ready for reading without any need for further network requests. For even more offline use, try printing it! HN threads work superbly when printed, again unlike most modern sites.

I don't think printing is a viable solution for most users. I'm guessing most would want to download the comment threads to their phone so they could read them later in situations where connectivity is patchy (eg train/plane etc).

Right. You can do this now by loading the page in a background tab, leaving the tab open and then going offline. Works great.

Or you could reimplement newsgroups (but with less interoperability) as an SPA, which in theory would work great (once you work out the kinks) but in practice would suffer from all kinds of little issues in the from-scratch reimplementation of everything. For example, printing would probably forever be a wishlist item in the backlog.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#272

Post by samoa42 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #171
abjKT26nO8 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At work we're forced to use a service for exchanging files where uploading a file is only possible in Chrome, but downloading a file is sometimes only possible in Firefox. Pinnacle of UX.

We need an app that abstracts away the browser / browser engine, and just presents a working website to the user, probably without ads.

go ahead, make my day!

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#273

Post by xrendan »

dustingetz wrote: post #118

1) Nobody has any idea what they're doing 2) If you think you know more than your manager – you are absolutely right 3) HN is 3 years ahead of mainstream, but 10 years behind the edge 4) React was made by an OCaml programmer 5) if you want to be that good, learn emerging languages (all of them) 5) don't optimize for money too soon, if you follow these instructions you will quadruple soon enough 6) Whatever your probl…

Can you expand on 5? Why shouldn't you optimize for money as soon as possible?

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#274

Post by XCSme »

xrendan wrote: post #273
dustingetz wrote: post #118

1) Nobody has any idea what they're doing 2) If you think you know more than your manager – you are absolutely right 3) HN is 3 years ahead of mainstream, but 10 years behind the edge 4) React was made by an OCaml programmer 5) if you want to be that good, learn emerging languages (all of them) 5) don't optimize for money too soon, if you follow these instructions you will quadruple soon enough 6) Whatever your probl…

Can you expand on 5? Why shouldn't you optimize for money as soon as possible?

Probably because it's easier to quickly grow a free product/platform and then add monetization on top, than have users pay for access or endure a worse ad-cramped experience.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#275

Post by XCSme »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #233

> Infinite scrolls are inhumane. People need to be able to reach “the end.” There are forms of eternal torment described in religious texts that are less mean. If I had to pick just one, it would be this.

I really hate the trend with having infite scroll on blogs/news sites. I just scroll to the bottom looking for the comment section and suddenly I'm on a completely new, unrelated article? It's like forcing information into my brain, or someone suddenly placing a newspapper in your face.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#276

Post by cglace »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #111
cglace wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that drives me crazy are websites that say they only support safari on iOS... It’s all safari under the hood.

Yes but a number of features are disabled or buggy on third party browsers that use WKWebView or UIWebView (i.e. basically all of them). A particularly nasty one I ran into once was navigator.sendBeacon being completely broken with HTTPS urls: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51844586/navigator-sendb...

I can assure you that these websites are not using any fancy features.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#277

Post by cpburns2009 »

kall wrote: post #256
SPBS wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want site longevity, HTML is the way to go. It's fine if you clients aren't expecting to maintain their website for the next 10 years, go ahead and use the JavaScript framework. Tell me that React websites today will still be around in 10 years time. With constant upkeep and maintenance, maybe. If a website is just a static website, not making it plain HTML is a disservice. The layers of abstraction will take…

(API-less) react websites today will still be around in 10 years time. The browser has never and likely will never break JS backwards compatibility.

Chrome is slowly removing support for synchronous XMLHttpRequests [1] [2]. It's eventual removal could very well break legacy web applications.

[1]: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2019/12/chrome-80-...

[2]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30876093/will-chrome-and...

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#278

Post by collyw »

siquick wrote: post #164
heavyset_go wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They learn React/Vue/Angular/whatever, then seemingly decide everything they will ever build will use that framework, regardless of whether it's the right tool for the job. At least where I live, small businesses contract with agencies that develop React sites for them, and suddenly these non-IT companies are owners of expensive and hard to maintain websites that they don't, and shouldn't need to, know the first th…

> Meanwhile, WordPress on a managed host or a static site would suit those businesses just fine. Then, they wouldn't have trouble hiring to maintain it, or could even maintain it themselves. > If you work for an agency or you're freelancing, please stop burdening small businesses like this. There aren't many more soul-destroying experiences as a freelance developer than maintaining a neglected WordPress installation…

Honestly, 90% of the work out there seems to be maintaining some heap of shit, whether it is built in Python or Wordpress or whatever. All the better paid work at least. I have a theory that if a company has been around long enough top make money the software will be a mess.

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#279

Post by collyw »

paxys wrote: post #67
ogre_codes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't need a SPA for that. Local HTML based documentation was a thing long before SPA was even a term.

How does that work exactly?

It amazes me that anyone asks this question. I have trouble seeing why you would want put documentaion in a SPA. Search result perhaps, but the rest of it?

Re: Advice to Young Web Developers

#280

Post by collyw »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #122
dustingetz wrote: post #118

1) Nobody has any idea what they're doing 2) If you think you know more than your manager – you are absolutely right 3) HN is 3 years ahead of mainstream, but 10 years behind the edge 4) React was made by an OCaml programmer 5) if you want to be that good, learn emerging languages (all of them) 5) don't optimize for money too soon, if you follow these instructions you will quadruple soon enough 6) Whatever your probl…

I like your list, but I’d suggest: 8) learn a statically typed language with a good type system Even if you end up preferring mainstream language X, learning a language that makes you think in expressions rather than operations, and a language that makes you think in contracts rather than knowing the runtime state in your head, is invaluable for learning how to design, structure and maintain a codebase

What you say sounds interesting but could you give an example of "think in contracts" compared to and example of "knowing the runtime state in your head".

Personally I have never really seen the advantage of staticaly typed languages over say Python, but I do rely on the strict typing supplied by a database instead.

Post reply on HN