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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

#321

Post by polyterative »

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…

> but fundamentally because I enjoy writing good code.

Using Copilot speeds you up, so why not take advantage of it?

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

#322

Post by almaember »

polyterative wrote: post #321
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…

> but fundamentally because I enjoy writing good code. Using Copilot speeds you up, so why not take advantage of it?

Because it's a massive footgun, no, footcannon. It also most likely violates the GPL.

It's copy-pasting from stackoverflow except a little faster.

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

#323

Post by geokon »

alin23 wrote: post #19
geokon wrote: post #8

From reading this I get the sense the problems are lower level and there is no impetus to fix them. I'm embarrassed to say, having programmed for over a decade, and running Linux for half of that, I still have no idea how to setup my computer to serve a webpage (or even a file) I probably need to `apt-get install apache` and then deal with some magic config files and incantations and hope I don't mess something up an…

If opening the 80/443 port is such a nuissance in your setup, I would not bother with hosting from home and I'd just drop the website folder in Netlify Drop ( https://app.netlify.com/drop ) That's what I did for the first few iterations of https://lunar.fyi and it really helped with giving people the right information fast while I could keep spending time on the real work (developing the Lunar app) But if hosting fro…

Thanks you for all that! It does look like it simplifies stuff in that there are no more config files! So that's really cool.

I will need to read the docs a bit later b/c from the landing page it's all still confusing. This is probably a function of the tech "debt". It has example commands like

   caddy file-server --domain example.com
- If it's a file server.. shouldn't it be something like FTP/FTPS? Everything on the webpage keeps saying HTTPS .. which is Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.. ie HTML webpages. So is it serving files or webpages? (I guess webpages are a type of file.. but in practice the two aren't the same)

- Do I need to stick this into my .profile? Or I need to configure a systemd service?

- What is it even serving out..? Is it just serving out everything in the immediate directory I'm in where I run the command?

- How is it "hooking into" example.com? How does the registrar know to point at my IP after I run this command? (or if that's done separately - say on the registrar website, why do you need to specify the URL locally at all?)

In any case, these are just immediate questions that come up. It's all stuff that probably makes sense if you know it already :)

And again.. i need to rtfm - so I'm not complaining or shooting the messenger here haha. Thanks for the info

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

#324

Post by alin23 »

geokon wrote: post #323
alin23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If opening the 80/443 port is such a nuissance in your setup, I would not bother with hosting from home and I'd just drop the website folder in Netlify Drop ( https://app.netlify.com/drop ) That's what I did for the first few iterations of https://lunar.fyi and it really helped with giving people the right information fast while I could keep spending time on the real work (developing the Lunar app) But if hosting fro…

Thanks you for all that! It does look like it simplifies stuff in that there are no more config files! So that's really cool. I will need to read the docs a bit later b/c from the landing page it's all still confusing. This is probably a function of the tech "debt". It has example commands like caddy file-server --domain example.com - If it's a file server.. shouldn't it be something like FTP/FTPS? Everything on the…

File server in this context only means a HTTP(S) server that serves static files (which can be webpages like index.html, but not limited to that).

When you run `caddy file-server` in a folder it just starts serving all the files in that folder. You can serve MP3 files if you want, or .txt files, it doesn’t have to be webpages. It just happens to serve them over the HTTP protocol because that’s what the browser speaks.

Keep in mind that caddy doesn’t allow a user to get out of the folder you ran the command in, and it also doesn’t allow the user to list the files in your folder if you don’t explicitly allow that using:

    caddy file-server -browse
For example, I use the `-browse` option to allow users to download any previous release of my Lunar app here: https://releases.lunar.fyi

The domain option is not for pointing that domain to your IP address. That can only be done from your DNS provider (e.g. Cloudflare, or even Freenom which I pointed in the last comment)

What the domain option does is allow you to serve multiple websites on different domains from the same computer, and it also automatically generates SSL certificates for them so that you have encrypted `https://` support by default.

A few years ago, you would have had to buy SSL certificates from someone like Verisign, download those certificates, figure out where to put them securely and configure Apache or Nginx to use them for each domain. Caddy does all that automatically now.

Also keep in mind that if you run a file server like that: `caddy file-server -domain example.com`

… then caddy will only serve those files if you access them using that domain. If you try using your IP address directly, or any other domain instead of example.com, it won’t respond with your files.

In this way you could have multiple domains serving different files from the same computer.

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

#325

Post by oblio »

bullen wrote: post #205

The problem with web is that you have 3 levels of dependency: 1. OS (Microsoft has 90%*) 2. Programming language (C++ and Javascript) 3. Browser (Google has 90%*) * of the market on devices with keyboard for production, mobile is consume only and completely meaningless for anything but reading SMTP over radio (unless you consider writing mails on a touch interface productive). You do not want two huge companies to be…

> * of the market on devices with keyboard for production, mobile is consume only and completely meaningless for anything but reading SMTP over radio (unless you consider writing mails on a touch interface productive).

I don't generally say this lightly, but I used to be a bit like you not long ago. The future is now, old man!

You can do a lot on mobile devices. You can't do as much as on desktops, but entire generations of people are being born and educated and live their lives using nothing but mobile devices. This will become progressively more so, than the opposite.

And those are a lot more gatekept than the desktop ever was.

The battle was brief and it was lost. And only ever got a chance not because of open source, which was trojaned by corporations almost from the start, but because IBM was dumb and made the only truly successful, mass market, open architecture.

I'll believe that RISC-V and open GPUs and whatever are the future when I can use for all my daily computing needs at roughly the same performance as the latest cutting edge proprietary architecture.

That's very unlikely to happen. Do you know why? Because there's no money in that. Money moves the world. Money makes things happen. Even volunteers have to eat, pay rent, pay tuition, take their partners on dates, etc.

And if those open architectures do win, you'd better be careful. It will most likely mean that the battle has moved at an entirely different level and those open architectures on their own are useless, the average person won't be able to do anything meaningful with them because the gatekeeping is now done at a higher level.

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

#326

Post by oblio »

Shikadi wrote: post #232
oblio wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you try it on mobile, it's mostly crap. Let's not treat HTML tables as being some super special ability. If HN were implemented exactly the same but with flexbox or grid for layout, it would be objectively better with no drawbacks I can think of.

Definitely works fine on mobile for me

You never miss the upvote/downvote buttons?

Quotes don't sidescroll to infinity for you?

I could go on and on...

It's okish, but it's no pinnacle for usability, that's for sure.

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

#327

Post by oblio »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #287
criddell wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problems on mobile (small screens) do you see? > no drawbacks Would it be slower or use more CPU or memory to render?

Are we really worried about the CPU/memory impact of flexbox vs HTML tables?

Well, maybe we should! The site should be super smooth on my Amiga! :-p

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

#328

Post by geokon »

alin23 wrote: post #324
geokon wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks you for all that! It does look like it simplifies stuff in that there are no more config files! So that's really cool. I will need to read the docs a bit later b/c from the landing page it's all still confusing. This is probably a function of the tech "debt". It has example commands like caddy file-server --domain example.com - If it's a file server.. shouldn't it be something like FTP/FTPS? Everything on the…

File server in this context only means a HTTP(S) server that serves static files (which can be webpages like index.html, but not limited to that). When you run `caddy file-server` in a folder it just starts serving all the files in that folder. You can serve MP3 files if you want, or .txt files, it doesn’t have to be webpages. It just happens to serve them over the HTTP protocol because that’s what the browser speaks…

Woah - thank you for taking the time to explain everything. It's challenging to find all the info so concisely in one spot. This has been really useful and educational :)

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

#329

Post by exodust »

dwkns wrote: post #102
nbzso wrote: post #80

I have a question. Would someone please give me some form of enlightenment about the practice of product placement in blog posts? Is this the new normal? >I'm Simeon, a in and Solution Engineer @ Sanity.io > Some major bias at play here but when I came across Sanity I finally found "the CMS I'd always hoped existed". It is cool, that he acknowledges the "bias", but this is more in "conflict of interest" category in m…

The OP used to work for me. He was a massive fan of Sanity before he went to work for them. I think that in part that is why he went to work for them. Knowing him, I am sure that he was was not consciously doing any product placement, rather showing what he genuinely feels about the product and heading off any conflict of interest concerns others might have. As to the practice of product placement in blog posts. This…

> I am sure that he was was not consciously doing any product placement

But it reads like product placement. You said yourself that product placement is huge.

From the article...

> "And if there's anything you feel it can't yet do, it's only because you haven't spent enough time building it yourself yet. There's no stopping you."

There's no stopping me? That reads like marketing spin.

> "it happens to be the best CMS."

Says the guy who works there.

> "incredibly generous free tier"

So not just regular generosity, "incredible" generosity!

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

#330

Post by post-it »

notriddle wrote: post #303
Enginerrrd wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's easily one of THE best mobile sites I use.

The touch targets are way too small, and I don’t even have fat fingers.

Anecdotally, I've found that iOS handles small touch targets much better than Android. I had an HTC Raider, a Moto G, and a Moto X Play, and I felt very fat-fingered on all of them. Then I switched to an iPhone 6s and now an iPhone 12 Mini and with both of them I've had zero problems with small touch targets, even ones that are close to each other like with Nonograms.
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