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That Time I Made A Website

tiffany-young.com

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Re: That Time I Made A Website

#91

Post by potatolicious »

lsc wrote: post #76
mb_72 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well .... making a website != programming. Maybe it's because I'm old (41, starting programming on a TRS-80 in the early 80s), but I'm astonished sometimes at how much fuss is made over such relatively minor achievements. This is lowering the bar on what stories are 'interesting', and - honestly - turns me off coming to HN because of the (for me) lower signal : noise ratio. And I disagree that accessibility is so imp…

>Well .... making a website != programming. Oh man, I remember when everyone looked down on web programmers and PHP monkeys. Hah. (I also did my much of my early programming on a trs-80, but mine was an obsolete tandy model 100 that I brought to school in the mid-90s, mostly to automate the 'guess and check' rote math homework.) It used to be that there was a strong hierarchy. I know in the '90s and the first half of…

> "Will we have 'visual FoxPro' for the web?"

IMO we've already seen the automation of web-CRUD. It used to be a lot of work to set up even a simple CRUD app on the web, now a brain-dead simple CRUD app is 15 minutes in skilled hands.

This differs from Visual FoxPro substantially. Our jobs are being automated, but instead of automating into the hands of an army of lay users, it's automating into the hands of a few skilled practitioners.

The productivity of the modern web programmer is at least an order of magnitude beyond where we were 10 years ago. What used to take a veritable army of CS majors takes 3 people and a fridge full of Red Bull.

Our tools and processes are getting better every day. So far "stuff that needs to be done" seems to be outpacing "increasing efficiency per programmer", but I doubt that will hold true forever.

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#92

Post by bcoates »

mb_72 wrote: post #43
jmduke wrote: post #25

This is why I love programming -- and the programming community, warts and all. Tiffany's an Environmental Science major who had a month of free time so she decided to learn how to make web pages. That's the same way I started (albeit as an English major), and the cocktail of instant feedback and ease of discovery kept me as a happy addict of the command line ever since. To me, accessibility and approachability are t…

Well .... making a website != programming. Maybe it's because I'm old (41, starting programming on a TRS-80 in the early 80s), but I'm astonished sometimes at how much fuss is made over such relatively minor achievements. This is lowering the bar on what stories are 'interesting', and - honestly - turns me off coming to HN because of the (for me) lower signal : noise ratio. And I disagree that accessibility is so imp…

I hope this doesn't sound like piling on, but I agree with your parallel to music and come to the opposite conclusion. Even a small amount of ability is better than none, and it's a good thing that the barriers to access and boundaries between professional and amateur are being blurred. Being untalented and unable to produce music anyone would pay for is a terrible reason to give up on making music.

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#93

Post by simantel »

bender80 wrote: post #28
teddynsnoopy wrote: post #5

Hi everyone, sorry it went down for a few minutes. I was hosting it on Dropbox but turns out that's not a good idea for HN traffic, so I switched to using a copy of it. Thanks for reading :)

Looks like your website is mostly static. Look into hosting using github pages which is free. Nice progress by the way.

Or Neocities!

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#94

Post by mb_72 »

bcoates wrote: post #92
mb_72 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well .... making a website != programming. Maybe it's because I'm old (41, starting programming on a TRS-80 in the early 80s), but I'm astonished sometimes at how much fuss is made over such relatively minor achievements. This is lowering the bar on what stories are 'interesting', and - honestly - turns me off coming to HN because of the (for me) lower signal : noise ratio. And I disagree that accessibility is so imp…

I hope this doesn't sound like piling on, but I agree with your parallel to music and come to the opposite conclusion. Even a small amount of ability is better than none, and it's a good thing that the barriers to access and boundaries between professional and amateur are being blurred. Being untalented and unable to produce music anyone would pay for is a terrible reason to give up on making music.

Putting aside the payment issue, as that's a confusing one even for 'professionals' in this modern music world - I find it difficult to believe people will get much joy from something they have no talent at. More to the point, there is the opportunity cost; time is better spent on something they have more ability for, and hence will derive more enjoyment from.

Taken to an extreme, lack of talent that is disclosed in public causes people a lot of stress. Take a look at any kind of 'world's next best singer' program for many examples of this.

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#95

Post by mb_72 »

iamwil wrote: post #49
mb_72 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well .... making a website != programming. Maybe it's because I'm old (41, starting programming on a TRS-80 in the early 80s), but I'm astonished sometimes at how much fuss is made over such relatively minor achievements. This is lowering the bar on what stories are 'interesting', and - honestly - turns me off coming to HN because of the (for me) lower signal : noise ratio. And I disagree that accessibility is so imp…

Of course it's interesting, but especially if you think of the context and a broader scope when you look beyond the immediate story. I'll start with the smallest scope and zoom out. On its face, it's a person talking about their personal accomplishment in making a static HTML/CSS website--something that you seems minor to you as a professional that has been doing it for as as long as you have--but I think you forgot…

As a beginner to programming I had enough self-awareness to realise that my achievements were of little to no interest to those with more ability and experience, and certainly would not have been worth publishing in a magazine (as the equivalent would have been at the time). This is 'Hacker news' - but these days the word 'Hacker' has been diluted in meaning to something that doesn't really mean 'hacking' any more.

The car metaphor is not a valid comparison - we are not talking about the operation of a tool, but gaining of skills in an area that requires both natural and learned abilities.

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#96

Post by madhuprasanna »

theseoafs wrote: post #87
KirinDave wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a nice, comfy thought but it's just not true. Actually I think most people found it profoundly uncomfortable . > Any suitably competent and experienced programmer could pick up a new programming language in a week or two of focused study, but they'll basically be starting from scratch if they're learning HTML + CSS for the first time. This has nothing to do with your point. Most programmers struggle to pick…

> Much as it pains me to do this, I cite Node.js as a counter example. People can and do write systems software using their understanding of Javascript as a basis. They may not do it well, but I know for a fact I could write certain types of servers acceptably well with it (I would prefer other tools, though). Well, Javascript is a proper programming language. If you've got a web developer who knows Javascript, you'v…

> If you only know Python, you don't have the tools and knowledge it takes to make an attractive static website.

1. Pelican 2. Frozen Flask 3. Many more!!

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#97

Post by theseoafs »

KirinDave wrote: post #90
theseoafs wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much as it pains me to do this, I cite Node.js as a counter example. People can and do write systems software using their understanding of Javascript as a basis. They may not do it well, but I know for a fact I could write certain types of servers acceptably well with it (I would prefer other tools, though). Well, Javascript is a proper programming language. If you've got a web developer who knows Javascript, you'v…

> If you only know HTML and CSS, you aren't a "programmer" because you don't have the tools and knowledge it takes to write programs that do any nontrivial computation. This is not a requirement for being a "programmer." It never has been. > If you only know Python, you don't have the tools and knowledge it takes to make an attractive static website. Nor, um, do you necessarily have the tools to do anything...

> This is not a requirement for being a "programmer." It never has been.

Programmers program computers. We call them programmers because they program. If you can't write programs, you're not a programmer. What other definition of "programmer" could you possibly be using?

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#99

Post by qu4z-2 »

qu4z-2 wrote: post #86
kmfrk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The submission shows a great capacity for humility. I hope that's not a trait unique to women, but one wonders.

I'm highly skeptical that humility is unique to women. Nearly as skeptical as I am of the claim that programming/tech is unique to men.

Do people disagree?

I've met plenty of humble men and plenty of excellent female programmers. That seems to disprove both theories, as far as I can see.

Anyone wanting to prove a universal in the face of counterexamples is welcome to have a go though :)

Re: That Time I Made A Website

#100

Post by aj700 »

I feel like my personal site should reject all current web design practice and just have Times with the occasional {h1} black on #ccc with #00f links. You'll never come up to the standard people expect in this world of ajax, tumblr and css3, so why not just do it CERN and Netscape style?

Dark green on yellow is actually the easiest to read, but that's garish.

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