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

There's never been a better time to build websites

simeongriggs.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 337 posts

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

#271

Post by rchaud »

I found this article to be mostly about the tooling for web apps, not "websites". The "website problem" was solved a long time ago with semantic HTML, maturation of CMSes and responsive CSS frameworks. This isn't something that's greatly improved by writing primarily Javascript, as is the author's preference.

This bit made me chuckle:

> Not so long ago, I talked myself out of using JavaScript, mostly because I didn't know where to start learning it.Now you're a google or YouTube search away from learning just about anything – often for free.

If I were a beginner today, Youtube would be last place I would go to learn JS, because the top page of results for generic terms that a beginner would use, like "javascript tutorial" will all be from mega-channels providing thin content and an upsell to paid courses. They have the SEO on lock, because this is how they acquire leads.

Maybe it's because the HN audience skews to technical people, but I seem to rarely see discussion of websites in terms of design patterns, information architecture and usability considerations. That's what makes websites worth working on. The tooling is the most boring part.

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

#272

Post by rchaud »

lemonberry wrote: post #91
rambambram wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So true! I hear small businesses and freelancers complain about being kicked of Twitter, OnlyFans, Youtube, Facebook, etc. One might not immediately make money with a website (although you sure can!), but the moment you are kicked of some platform, you have a safe haven to fall back on. A place where you can share the same textual or visual media with your visitors(/followers/friends/fans/connections). But instead of…

My biggest concern is for the people relying on the big platforms you mentioned but not using them to build their own lists and lines of communication with their clients.

I recently heard a podcast by the comedian Kevin Hart. In the early 2000s, when he was an unknown and social media didn't exist, he would have a sign-up sheet at his shows, where people could enter their names and email addresses. This way, he'd maintain an email list for each city.

Each time he scheduled a return appearance in that city, he'd send out an email letting people know the date and time of the show and a link to buy tickets.

Today, people build their followings on social networks that barely let you even post links to your own site (Instagram). Had Twitter/IG/FB existed back then, people would have no way to maintain independent contact lists.

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

#273

Post by raytube »

dmitriid wrote: post #175
moritz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

That website also loads 184 KB of Javascript to display a 13 KB static document

It could sit on a shit ton of interpreter too.

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

#274

Post by samhw »

rambambram wrote: post #261
moritz wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://micro.blog for example does exactly this, sort of RSS based Twitter (i.e the idea is that your feed contains mostly shorter posts, but that’s not a hard restriction) . Give it the RSS of your website (they can also host one for you), "follow" other people (=subscribe to their rss feed) and boom there is your "social media"

Nice! I really like their idea, and very friendly UI. I get a social vibe from it. Your explanation is exactly what I was thinking of as the ideal social media, but I don't see that explained on their website. No mention of RSS. As long as the feeds from my software can work with their feeds (and the other way around) I'm good.

Have you heard of Scuttlebutt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt)? The entire protocol revolves around 'pulling' other people's feeds - unlike most all modern social media, it's a pull-based rather than push-based model. It sounds quite similar to what you're looking for, at least based on the way you describe it in this particular comment.

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

#275

Post by deergomoo »

runarberg wrote: post #193
_fat_santa wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? The thing is you can still do all of this. But we have since built tools and frameworks to let you still do this, while g…

Question: Are people using tailwind for layout? Even when CSS grid is available? If so what is the benefit of tailwind layouts over modern CSS, beyond what tailwinds usually brings?

This question doesn’t really make sense. Tailwind is just modern CSS, it’s just a composable shorthand for applying styles. There’s plenty of CSS grid utilities in Tailwind: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/grid-template-columns

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

#276

Post by rchaud »

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…

The way you described building a simple website (text editor only) works just as well today.

You need the frontend frameworks, build processes and million NPM dependencies only when working inside of a developer team for an enterprise software of some sort.

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

#278

Post by atoav »

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…

I am positively confident that I could teach a bunch of art students (so definitively non tech people) how to create their basic website only using html and css (without any framework/library etc) in 2 to 3 days including the domain and hosting part.

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

#279

Post by rambambram »

rambambram wrote: post #261
moritz wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://micro.blog for example does exactly this, sort of RSS based Twitter (i.e the idea is that your feed contains mostly shorter posts, but that’s not a hard restriction) . Give it the RSS of your website (they can also host one for you), "follow" other people (=subscribe to their rss feed) and boom there is your "social media"

Nice! I really like their idea, and very friendly UI. I get a social vibe from it. Your explanation is exactly what I was thinking of as the ideal social media, but I don't see that explained on their website. No mention of RSS. As long as the feeds from my software can work with their feeds (and the other way around) I'm good.

Yeah, I've seen it come across here on HN. For my intended web application I already chose RSS as the way to go, especially because there exist so many feeds and because I'm familiar with XML.

If you have a blog and/or RSS feed somewhere online, let me know. I'll add it to my 'to follow' list.

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

#280

Post by jakelazaroff »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #194
_fat_santa wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? The thing is you can still do all of this. But we have since built tools and frameworks to let you still do this, while g…

The problem is that expectations changed, so now you're "required" to do more in certain contexts. I absolutely loath frontend developments in companies with more than 5 engineers. In the past you may have found some spaghetti code and various abuses of jQuery but you could probably grasp the codebase in an afternoon. Nowadays every mid company codebase is a spaceship. For sure, you'll find a pseudo technical VP of e…

> In the past you may have found some spaghetti code and various abuses of jQuery but you could probably grasp the codebase in an afternoon.

My first job out of college involved a Rails codebase littered with conditionally rendered jQuery snippets. It was a nightmare to figure out what code was even loaded on any given page. Give me a modern JS codebase over that any day.

Post reply on HN