5 ms·

While I like the sentiments here, a few things stand out is very weird and counter-productive to the message: 1) This is obviously hosted on some kind of dynam

While I like the sentiments here, a few things stand out is very weird and counter-productive to the message: 1) This is obviously hosted on some kind of dynamic site. Producing 8kb took over 20ms, with most of it in TTFB. Even clearly static resources had this. 2) The stylesheet is 2x the size of the page and contains tons of extraneous content. 3) For a brutalist style, it's quite fiddly about letting userscripts touch its styling. The stylesheet contains a ton of directives with !important and not all are about positioning. (If accessibility and performance really are features, it feels like the author didn't care to work too hard on those features even in the simplest case.) 4) Also: I do not appreciate seeing ANY tracking pings from something like gaug.es. You certainly didn't inform me that you were sharing my presence with a third party that doesn't recognize any of my rights. If you're gonna do this, at least do it on your compute and I/O time and don't waste someone else's. Have your server pass connection details up to your analytics. That also limits the amount of fingerprinting the tracking ping can do to me, were I not blocking it.

dagenix 8y ago
> This is obviously hosted on some kind of dynamic site So? It still loaded fast for me. > The stylesheet is 2x the size of the page and contains tons of extraneous content. The article is about what the author terms Brutalist design - not minimalism code gold. The author doesn't say anything about producing the smallest possible CSS file. And the CSS file is 14KB with 7KB of content - that is quite tiny. > For a brutalist style, it's quite fiddly about letting userscripts touch its styling. I'm not sure where in the article he talked about avoiding !important or about Brutalist style involving making it easy for a user to customize the website. > Also: I do not appreciate seeing ANY tracking pings from something like gaug.es Fair enough - but, that has nothing to do with any point that the article made. I don't see how any of your complaints relate to the article.
gruez 8y ago
>1) This is obviously hosted on some kind of dynamic site. Producing 8kb took over 20ms, with most of it in TTFB. Even clearly static resources had this. If you check the headers, it's served from s3 via cloudfront. At the bottom of the page, there is a link to a github page that confirms it's a static site. >2) The stylesheet is 2x the size of the page and contains tons of extraneous content. >3) For a brutalist style, it's quite fiddly about letting userscripts touch its styling. The stylesheet contains a ton of directives with !important and not all are about positioning. It looks like it contains at least 2 frameworks, which could explain why. I'm guessing they're needed for the "normal" website comparisons. >4) Also: I do not appreciate seeing ANY tracking pings from something like gaug.es. You certainly didn't inform me that you were sharing my presence with a third party that doesn't recognize any of my rights. Your "rights? You're being a little melodramatic here. If you don't want random code to be executed, you should have disabled javascript. I use noscript and it works fine without scripts. >If you're gonna do this, at least do it on your compute and I/O time and don't waste someone else's. Who cares? It's not like they're mining cryptocurrencies. They wasted maybe $0.000001 worth of your precious computing resources. >Have your server pass connection details up to your analytics. That also limits the amount of fingerprinting the tracking ping can do to me, were I not blocking it. not really viable for a static website hosted on S3
- KirinDave 8y ago
  Oops! I missed it. S3 ain't that slow for my site tho... But as for #4, I'm inclined to say if you can't do something with at least a modicum of effort towards user safety, you shouldn't do it at all.
  - briandear 8y ago
    How is your “safety” being harmed. Really. What is the actual harm from gaug.es? Have you ever used it? Share the story please of a single person, anywhere at any time that suffered a harm because of gaug.es. We throw terms like “safety” around so much that they lose their meaning. There are sites (especially news orgs) that do harmful things when it comes to tracking, retargeting and such. But some little site that wants some basic analytics? Come now. That’s comparing a lemonade stand with a Tesco.
    - KirinDave 8y ago
      Every such site is a potential component in a combination attack against my system. They aren't publicly audited, I don't have a privacy agreement in them. I have no way of knowing if their ownership changes hands, and the authors are doing noting to assert it doesn't become malware. It's irresponsible.
- flycaliguy 8y ago
  For me though, if you are going to make a site all about how hardcore your design style is... So hardcore that you can’t be bothered to at least choose some less painful colours and typography. Then I want to open your code and get a hardcore hacker vibe like it was made with a punch card or something.
  - pininja 8y ago
    This article isn’t really about code design. It’s about information and interaction design primarily. The audience the author was writing for is probably more focused on the design rather than code. With that said, this site is open source and so the community could help it become a example of cleaner/clearer/more minimal coding practices too.
danShumway 8y ago
The number of supposedly minimalist websites that still use 3rd party trackers is surprising to me. Even http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ loads Google Analytics. It's like, I get it. Responsible tracking is often useful. But so is NPM. If the entire point of your website is to satirically get across that overengineering creates its own problems, if the whole point is that content doesn't strictly speaking need the other stuff we attach to it, that it literally just needs a text editor and an ftp server, that everything we do has tradeoffs and that the default state of the web is performant and responsive and readable - then maybe that's the one scenario where it might be good to skip including analytics?
- GuB-42 8y ago
  > Even http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ loads Google Analytics. From the page source, before the Google Analytics script 
  - danShumway 8y ago
    Ugh, they always try to pull this trick too. Joking about it doesn't make it any less ridiculous that the builder couldn't turn off whatever analytics addiction they have for the single site that is literally about not including extra stuff. If they had rendered the entire page in React and downloaded 3 MB of web fonts, sticking  in a comment wouldn't make me less annoyed at them. How hard can it be to commit to the bit for one single page? Then they can go back to their blog or whatever and load whatever extra stuff they want.
    - 9935c101ab17a66 8y ago
      I agree 100%, it's a pretty crappy form of deflection. At the very least, they could at least outline their reasoning for it rather than throwing in a glib comment.
  - CM30 8y ago
    Ah, the old 'lampshade our mistakes/bad decisions and hope that makes them okay' trick. It's super common in both web development and media to be honest, and I can't even count the number of TV shows, books, games and other works that think being 'meta' makes up for bad writing, lazy characterisation or deus ex machina esque conclusions. As someone I follow on YouTube says, lampshading your problems does not make them go away.
nautilus12 8y ago
I knew it was just a matter of time before the top comment is something disparaging about the story which was already disparaging about typical modern web design. And this comment beats them all because its disparaging about that comment. I dont know why people on hacker news have to one up each other all the time. Sometimes you just gotta let something be what it is.
- xbkingx 8y ago
  On the contrary, THIS comment one ups YOUR comment by both disagreeing and proposing the opposite of what you said as a thought experiment. Further, I propose that all the above opinions are equally wrong and right, both absolutely and relatively. I for one, am one that begins my sentences with, "I for one." You have no option but to agree. Now, if someone could wrap this up with an anecdote about working with a famous air-headed media icon or esoteric master of a mundane, niche talent that makes them sound sophisticated, we can call this a thread. Farewell, netizens. I bid you...(flourishing bow)... adieu.
- KirinDave 8y ago
  I will 100% find reasons to be mad about sites with tracking bits on them. It could literally explain how to reliably become immortal and I'd say, "And now we can live for eternity under the grip of our gaug.es overlords." But for what it's worth, you're a better web programmer than I am. I mistook the long loading time for dynamica but it's just S3 being it's usual awful self. Clearly I haven't looked at these numbers enough.
  - pvg 8y ago
    It could literally explain how to reliably become immortal Then, like Bowerick Wowbagger, you could travel from internet forum to internet forum indefinitely and yell at everyone who has a tracker on their site. In alphabetical order.

dagenix 8y ago

> This is obviously hosted on some kind of dynamic site So? It still loaded fast for me. > The stylesheet is 2x the size of the page and contains tons of extraneous content. The article is about what the author terms Brutalist design - not minimalism code gold. The author doesn't say anything about producing the smallest possible CSS file. And the CSS file is 14KB with 7KB of content - that is quite tiny. > For a brutalist style, it's quite fiddly about letting userscripts touch its styling. I'm not sure where in the article he talked about avoiding !important or about Brutalist style involving making it easy for a user to customize the website. > Also: I do not appreciate seeing ANY tracking pings from something like gaug.es Fair enough - but, that has nothing to do with any point that the article made. I don't see how any of your complaints relate to the article.

gruez 8y ago

>1) This is obviously hosted on some kind of dynamic site. Producing 8kb took over 20ms, with most of it in TTFB. Even clearly static resources had this. If you check the headers, it's served from s3 via cloudfront. At the bottom of the page, there is a link to a github page that confirms it's a static site. >2) The stylesheet is 2x the size of the page and contains tons of extraneous content. >3) For a brutalist style, it's quite fiddly about letting userscripts touch its styling. The stylesheet contains a ton of directives with !important and not all are about positioning. It looks like it contains at least 2 frameworks, which could explain why. I'm guessing they're needed for the "normal" website comparisons. >4) Also: I do not appreciate seeing ANY tracking pings from something like gaug.es. You certainly didn't inform me that you were sharing my presence with a third party that doesn't recognize any of my rights. Your "rights? You're being a little melodramatic here. If you don't want random code to be executed, you should have disabled javascript. I use noscript and it works fine without scripts. >If you're gonna do this, at least do it on your compute and I/O time and don't waste someone else's. Who cares? It's not like they're mining cryptocurrencies. They wasted maybe $0.000001 worth of your precious computing resources. >Have your server pass connection details up to your analytics. That also limits the amount of fingerprinting the tracking ping can do to me, were I not blocking it. not really viable for a static website hosted on S3

KirinDave 8y ago
Oops! I missed it. S3 ain't that slow for my site tho... But as for #4, I'm inclined to say if you can't do something with at least a modicum of effort towards user safety, you shouldn't do it at all.
- briandear 8y ago
  How is your “safety” being harmed. Really. What is the actual harm from gaug.es? Have you ever used it? Share the story please of a single person, anywhere at any time that suffered a harm because of gaug.es. We throw terms like “safety” around so much that they lose their meaning. There are sites (especially news orgs) that do harmful things when it comes to tracking, retargeting and such. But some little site that wants some basic analytics? Come now. That’s comparing a lemonade stand with a Tesco.
  - KirinDave 8y ago
    Every such site is a potential component in a combination attack against my system. They aren't publicly audited, I don't have a privacy agreement in them. I have no way of knowing if their ownership changes hands, and the authors are doing noting to assert it doesn't become malware. It's irresponsible.
flycaliguy 8y ago
For me though, if you are going to make a site all about how hardcore your design style is... So hardcore that you can’t be bothered to at least choose some less painful colours and typography. Then I want to open your code and get a hardcore hacker vibe like it was made with a punch card or something.
- pininja 8y ago
  This article isn’t really about code design. It’s about information and interaction design primarily. The audience the author was writing for is probably more focused on the design rather than code. With that said, this site is open source and so the community could help it become a example of cleaner/clearer/more minimal coding practices too.

danShumway 8y ago

The number of supposedly minimalist websites that still use 3rd party trackers is surprising to me. Even http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ loads Google Analytics. It's like, I get it. Responsible tracking is often useful. But so is NPM. If the entire point of your website is to satirically get across that overengineering creates its own problems, if the whole point is that content doesn't strictly speaking need the other stuff we attach to it, that it literally just needs a text editor and an ftp server, that everything we do has tradeoffs and that the default state of the web is performant and responsive and readable - then maybe that's the one scenario where it might be good to skip including analytics?

GuB-42 8y ago
> Even http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ loads Google Analytics. From the page source, before the Google Analytics script 
- danShumway 8y ago
  Ugh, they always try to pull this trick too. Joking about it doesn't make it any less ridiculous that the builder couldn't turn off whatever analytics addiction they have for the single site that is literally about not including extra stuff. If they had rendered the entire page in React and downloaded 3 MB of web fonts, sticking  in a comment wouldn't make me less annoyed at them. How hard can it be to commit to the bit for one single page? Then they can go back to their blog or whatever and load whatever extra stuff they want.
  - 9935c101ab17a66 8y ago
    I agree 100%, it's a pretty crappy form of deflection. At the very least, they could at least outline their reasoning for it rather than throwing in a glib comment.
- CM30 8y ago
  Ah, the old 'lampshade our mistakes/bad decisions and hope that makes them okay' trick. It's super common in both web development and media to be honest, and I can't even count the number of TV shows, books, games and other works that think being 'meta' makes up for bad writing, lazy characterisation or deus ex machina esque conclusions. As someone I follow on YouTube says, lampshading your problems does not make them go away.

nautilus12 8y ago

I knew it was just a matter of time before the top comment is something disparaging about the story which was already disparaging about typical modern web design. And this comment beats them all because its disparaging about that comment. I dont know why people on hacker news have to one up each other all the time. Sometimes you just gotta let something be what it is.

xbkingx 8y ago
On the contrary, THIS comment one ups YOUR comment by both disagreeing and proposing the opposite of what you said as a thought experiment. Further, I propose that all the above opinions are equally wrong and right, both absolutely and relatively. I for one, am one that begins my sentences with, "I for one." You have no option but to agree. Now, if someone could wrap this up with an anecdote about working with a famous air-headed media icon or esoteric master of a mundane, niche talent that makes them sound sophisticated, we can call this a thread. Farewell, netizens. I bid you...(flourishing bow)... adieu.
KirinDave 8y ago
I will 100% find reasons to be mad about sites with tracking bits on them. It could literally explain how to reliably become immortal and I'd say, "And now we can live for eternity under the grip of our gaug.es overlords." But for what it's worth, you're a better web programmer than I am. I mistook the long loading time for dynamica but it's just S3 being it's usual awful self. Clearly I haven't looked at these numbers enough.
- pvg 8y ago
  It could literally explain how to reliably become immortal Then, like Bowerick Wowbagger, you could travel from internet forum to internet forum indefinitely and yell at everyone who has a tracker on their site. In alphabetical order.