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TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

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Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#31

Post by CaptSpify »

allover wrote: post #11
noway421 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure HTML y'all. No megabytes of css, no bootstrap, no webpack with plethora of dependencies to load, parse and execute. We went the other route.

Why the drive-by attacks on good tools? This kind of stuff is tiring and just adds to the noise. > No megabytes of css Why would there ever be megabytes of CSS for such a site, apart from for ads, which is the main problem with modern 'content sites'. > no bootstrap Bootstrap can be tiny, and a big win in productivity/quality, so 'no Bootstrap' likely cost the devs in its lack of availabilty at the time. It looks far…

It's not that the tools are bad, it's that they are the goto for building sites. Sites that typically end up worse for having used them.

It's an industry wide issue that we keep trying to solve using shitty duct-tape and hacks, while not addressing the underlying problem.

This is just a reaction to that (and one that I agree with)

Edit:

> Why would there ever be megabytes of CSS for such a site, apart from for ads, which is the main problem with modern 'content sites'.

Dunno, but people keep doing it for some reason

> Bootstrap can be tiny, and a big win in productivity/quality, so 'no Bootstrap' likely cost the devs in its lack of availability at the time. It looks far worse and is less usable on mobile particularly (but on desktop too) than it would be if built with Bootstrap.

Bootstrap can be, but IME it typically isn't. Additionally, I constantly hear webdevs say it "makes mobile better", but I tend to disagree. I admit that this is purely opinion.

> Who exactly is advocating for 'webpack with plethora of dependencies' for that kind of website?

Pretty much every webdev I talk to. Admittedly not necessarily webpack but usually something similar.

I do understand that good tools being misused aren't bad tools, but, as a user, you can't expect me to be happy when I see those or similar tools when most of your industry is abusing them.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#32

Post by CoryG89 »

teddyh wrote: post #28

> Many people have told me that they are surprised that a computer science major from Harvard designed this people-meeting service. Can Facebook still be considered a “people-meeting service”?

I don't know that Zuckerberg ever considered it a "people-meeting" service.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#33

Post by elastic_church »

GCA10 wrote: post #17
dannylandau wrote: post #13

So what ever came of Chris Holt?

He's a senior editor at Super Evil Megacorp, the mobile-games site, according to his LinkedIn profile. To my astonishment, http://womenwhowanttosleepwithchrisholt.com/ is an unclaimed domain name. At least that's true as of 4:14 p.m. Pacific time.

astonishing. monopoly on SEO right there folks

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#34

Post by Swizec »

65827 wrote: post #27
terminado wrote: post #7

Jesus christ. It's so hard to believe that's only from 2004. I feel like that era transpired 40 years ago. The period of time before smartphones feels like it happened in the 1970's to me. The difference between 2000 and 2015 is so absurdly radical it begs disbelief.

It's like things are accelerating isn't it? I remember trying to convince people they should sign up for email accounts in like 1992, I remember them looking at me like I was trying to sell them on a cult. Those people staring at me were such fucking dinosaurs they lost siblings to polio. Imagine that craziness. Now I feel like if I don't have a cyberbrain by 2022 it will be a huge letdown.

Crazier still. The young generation once more has siblings who die from polio and measles and such. For reasons.

Maybe we're the dinosaurs.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#35

Post by andrewstuart2 »

CoryG89 wrote: post #32
teddyh wrote: post #28

> Many people have told me that they are surprised that a computer science major from Harvard designed this people-meeting service. Can Facebook still be considered a “people-meeting service”?

I don't know that Zuckerberg ever considered it a "people-meeting" service.

That's exactly the purpose a literal face book served before Facebook implemented a digital equivalent. Granted, it's not been the sole purpose of the site for quite a while, but originally that was the value proposition for users.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#36

Post by ChrisClark »

samplatt wrote: post #29
terminado wrote: post #7

Jesus christ. It's so hard to believe that's only from 2004. I feel like that era transpired 40 years ago. The period of time before smartphones feels like it happened in the 1970's to me. The difference between 2000 and 2015 is so absurdly radical it begs disbelief.

>The difference between 2000 and 2015 is so absurdly radical it begs disbelief. The first movie I watched on my GearVR headset was called Strange Days, a 1995 film rather aptly about the introduction of Virtual Reality and how the government is involved in all sorts of dirty cover-ups. The movie was terribawesome, but it was amusing to see what 90's ideas of the future were getting right and wrong. Though, the time b…

As a side note, I don't remember much of that movie beside the 'mental feedback loop' of experiencing live what you're recording. Terrifying.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#37

Post by notahacker »

terminado wrote: post #7

Jesus christ. It's so hard to believe that's only from 2004. I feel like that era transpired 40 years ago. The period of time before smartphones feels like it happened in the 1970's to me. The difference between 2000 and 2015 is so absurdly radical it begs disbelief.

I dunno, I thought part of Facebook's instant success was because, with the exception of wilfully-obtuse student columnists, most students instantly "got" it because they'd had some sort of internet profile and compulsively-updated statuses since their parents had finally succumbed to the avalanche of AOL CDs in 1997. Even the university, moving at such glacial pace it still ran a nineties Windows NT, was trying to get us to blog on their platform and chat with other students in the fresher's forum in 2004.

And for all the joys of smartphone browsing on the go and novelty of proximity based search which doesn't involve typing postcodes, I just logged into a popular uh... people-meeting service that fundamentally hasn't changed design since earlier than 2004, and it was dated-looking then.

Re: TheFacebook.com’s darker side (2004)

#38

Post by at-fates-hands »

noway421 wrote: post #6
tdkl wrote: post #5

I'll just comment on the stanforddaily website how clean it looked and loaded fast even without any crap like AMP. Just compare it to the current site.

Pure HTML y'all. No megabytes of css, no bootstrap, no webpack with plethora of dependencies to load, parse and execute. We went the other route.

which is odd since a lot of css "frameworks" are now back to promoting inline css.

https://acss.io/

I like this idea, but I wonder how long it would take my brain to think like this.

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