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There's never been a better time to build websites

simeongriggs.dev

41–50 of 337 posts

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

#41
I can't disagree more.

Static websites are valid and incredibly relevant, no need to prop up the friends at Remix (which is a nice product, just not the end all, be all - we were doing this 20 years ago as well).

You can very well show changes immediately with different strategies - but having a single artifact of what's online is invaluable. Caching dynamic content is fine, but having a log of what changed is nice as well.

A setup I like particularly is to have a real time cms available privately or locally - and a big publish button which build the static website and serve it.

That said, the only positive of today's web is that crossplatform compatibility is mostly a solved problem.

Performance went down the drain to the point that you need a beefy computer to browse multiple websites at once. Data usage is at all time high. Browsing on a payg phone is pretty expensive.

The development world went batshit crazy (likely driven to resume driven development and cargo culting), which means your average codebase today is massively more un-neededly complicated compared to your average codebase 20 years ago.

Development experience in your average codebase is also way slower with all that transpiling (running on a scripting language with bad performances). My rust feedback loop (not the fastest compiler among backend languages) is faster than my typescript one.

20 years ago I loved creating websites, despite the challenges. Today, I try to avoid it as much as I can and do backend.

I still create frontend for my own websites and it's overall as great as 20 years ago - but I don't use the slow mainstream tools which I'm forced to use when working with clients.

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

#42
I used to be excited about building websites ~10 years ago when it was about building web pages (you know, the thing HTML and friends were designed for). I "rage quit" after people started (ab)using web development to build approximations of apps. The reality that in the end the majority of people don't care about "use the right tool for the job" hit me hard. I would have never imagined that big companies with good enough budgets would still build applications with HTML just because "everyone knows JavaScript". It is all so demotivating -.-

These days I just try to find niches where people still care about using the right tool for the job and writing efficient GUI software. Lets see how long these continue to exist.

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

#43
post #21
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear so many people recommend Tailwind but every time I look at examples it reminds me of an entry for the 17th Annual Esoteric Programming Language Competition. Maybe you get used to it but hell it looks hard to parse visually.

Tailwind is definitely a Marmite framework (either you love it or you hate it). Yes it can be difficult to read. And it can be difficult to debug and fix something where you make a small change and it cascades 'upwards' somehow. But... the problems I have with Tailwind are no different to the ones I had with CSS and all the various magic methodologies that were supposed to "fix" css - things like BEM & SMACCS). But t…

There's something about Tailwind (which I use, love, and evangelize to all who will listen and many who won't) that makes me think of the phrase "You can't fire me, I quit!"

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

#44
post #2

> Remix.run gives us the best of both worlds. Still writing your site predominately with JavaScript. [...] This point is stated as if it's a widely accepted truth. Is that really the case? I still labour under the misapprehension that one should aim to use as little javascript as possible.

Also, TFA praises Tailwind CSS as "solving CSS", and as great as it may be, I guess that statement lacks a bit of nuance.

I kind of agree with the author that Tailwind is the best thing to happen to CSS. But yeah he definitely oversteps when he says that CSS is solved.

It most certainly is not a solved problem lol. UI still feels way fucking harder than it should, in all kinds of ways.

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

#45

> CSS is effectively solved. Tailwind CSS is the best thing to ever happen to CSS. I cannot imagine ever writing CSS in a separate file and having to think of names for elements. It's also an excellent resource for beginners. I work with developers still have difficulty with concepts like specificity and cascading even though they have been working with CSS for many years. I don't think statements like this are true…

I thought that was a weird statement. Tailwind solves (kind of, to me) the problem of organizing CSS. I mean, you still have to pick the right rules to write.

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

#46
post #21
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear so many people recommend Tailwind but every time I look at examples it reminds me of an entry for the 17th Annual Esoteric Programming Language Competition. Maybe you get used to it but hell it looks hard to parse visually.

Tailwind is definitely a Marmite framework (either you love it or you hate it). Yes it can be difficult to read. And it can be difficult to debug and fix something where you make a small change and it cascades 'upwards' somehow. But... the problems I have with Tailwind are no different to the ones I had with CSS and all the various magic methodologies that were supposed to "fix" css - things like BEM & SMACCS). But t…

Yes. The true test of a CSS framework is how easily you can change it without breaking shit. I haven’t found a better solution than Tailwind in that regard. Emotion comes close but it also encourages you to componentize everything, which can cause change issues. In Tailwind I found my components disappear because I didn’t need them.

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

#47
post #2

> Remix.run gives us the best of both worlds. Still writing your site predominately with JavaScript. [...] This point is stated as if it's a widely accepted truth. Is that really the case? I still labour under the misapprehension that one should aim to use as little javascript as possible.

Also, TFA praises Tailwind CSS as "solving CSS", and as great as it may be, I guess that statement lacks a bit of nuance.

TFA ?

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

#48

I'm also developing for 25 years, I also really really like websites and coding, but not for the reasons the OP sums up. For me, it's not about all kinds of solved or unsolved technical questions. Today is a very good time to build websites, because a good website is the only way to push back to Big Tech and it's practices. Your website can be build on techniques invented in a time where the dream of the internet was…

It is against the TOS of the largest ISP in my country to even host a server of any sort. Colocation isn't that fun.

[deleted]

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

#49
post #12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still labour under the misapprehension that one should aim to use as little javascript as possible. Well, this is so 2005.

You say that like it's a bad thing?

I'm saying it in jest, but also as an observation. The TFA writer takes it for granted, but then again, so do many (most?) today.

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

#50

I'm also developing for 25 years, I also really really like websites and coding, but not for the reasons the OP sums up. For me, it's not about all kinds of solved or unsolved technical questions. Today is a very good time to build websites, because a good website is the only way to push back to Big Tech and it's practices. Your website can be build on techniques invented in a time where the dream of the internet was…

It is against the TOS of the largest ISP in my country to even host a server of any sort. Colocation isn't that fun.

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