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Looking at the bloated and checked in node_modules folder makes me wanna cry. Yah it's probably all just dev dependencies but building a static website shouldn’

Looking at the bloated and checked in node_modules folder makes me wanna cry. Yah it's probably all just dev dependencies but building a static website shouldn’t feel like rocket science. People were creating wedding websites in the 90s with just one html file and that’s it. Welcome to the age of total bloat.

andrewguenther 8y ago
The package.json declares 4 build dependencies and 3 runtime. Most of that bloat probably comes from Gulp, which is one of the most ridiculously bloated tools I've ever seen.
- ptd 8y ago
  What is the alternative to tools like Gulp or Gatsby for those of us who want to make (fairly)simple websites? In my case, I’m a Data Scientist looking to make a portfolio website. Nothing too crazy but more than hello world. Should we just work with HTML? Materialize CSS? GitHub pages w/ Jekyll? Nextjs? Bootstrap? Should we just head back to Wordpress and Wix? Wixcode? Is Gulp the best option? Is it worth paying a professional to create the site for me? I’m very intereted in developer opinions. Any feedback is much appreciated. Thank you.
  - austincheney 8y ago
    One alternative is to not use them. If your target website actually is simple then prove it by not imposing a slow bloated architectural failure.
  - andrewguenther 8y ago
    > What is the alternative to tools like Gulp or Gatsby for those of us who want to make (fairly)simple websites? Gulp has nothing directly to do with building a website, it is a compilation tool of sorts that allows you to transform your source files into something you'll end up deploying via various plugins. For example, you can use gulp to collapse all your JS source files into one or to transpile it into something more cross browser compatible. The reason I dislike Gulp is that it has a massive number of dependencies and really is just an overcomplicated reimplementation of pipes. Personally, I prefer Webpack. It is also a fairly large tool, but at the very least it actually does something useful out of the box. When I migrated our projects from Gulp to Webpack, I replaced a over 500 lines of gulp code with about 50 lines of config and a small bash script.
dang 8y ago
Most of us share that view, but it's against the Show HN rules to post indignant rants about someone's work, so please don't do it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
- austincheney 8y ago
  Taken from your link: > When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is. But don't be gratuitously negative. The comment you replied to is accurate and not gratuitously negative.
  - xeromal 8y ago
    The OP said they wanted to cry and crying is reserved for pretty sad things. Seems over-the-top negative to me
    - austincheney 8y ago
      This is bad and nobody is required to pretend otherwise. Sensitivity to a critical opinion doesn't make the opinion a form of attack or hostility.
      - jakelazaroff 8y ago
        Saying something makes you want to cry isn't constructive criticism. It's just mean.
      - tomhoward 8y ago
        Are you really sure you want to carry on swinging over the importance of HN accepting harsh criticism of someone's wedding site? I mean, it's a _wedding_ site. Maybe just let it go?
        austincheney 8y ago
        It is a policy violation or it isn't. You can't have it both ways because of sympathy confusion. At any rate, it doesn't matter. A moderator has already interjected.
vedantroy 8y ago
You sound like a "get off my lawn type of person"... let's take a look at the dependencies: "animate.css" - as the name would imply, this is for css animations. "font-awesome" - provides icons for vector graphics "waypoints" - a easy way to trigger a function when you scroll to an element This doesn't seem like "bloat". It's not like they used a full fledged framework like React. And, I think it would be pretty hard to replicate this site with "just one html file". I'm sure its possible to make something similar without these 3 dependencies, but it would 1] be a lot harder and 2] probably not look as good
- dang 8y ago
  > You sound like a "get off my lawn type of person" I appreciate your standing up for the OP, but please don't be mean even if someone else was mean. That only makes this place worse. Your comment would be much better without that swipe.
rampatra 8y ago
The only reason node_modules is there in the repo is because I have hosted the website on github (via github pages) no personal server. And github pages doesn't support `npm install` if you know what I mean. So I need to have all the files in the repo for github to serve my website. If you have a personal server then you do not need node_modules folder in your repo. You can just do `npm install` in your server.

andrewguenther 8y ago

The package.json declares 4 build dependencies and 3 runtime. Most of that bloat probably comes from Gulp, which is one of the most ridiculously bloated tools I've ever seen.

ptd 8y ago
What is the alternative to tools like Gulp or Gatsby for those of us who want to make (fairly)simple websites? In my case, I’m a Data Scientist looking to make a portfolio website. Nothing too crazy but more than hello world. Should we just work with HTML? Materialize CSS? GitHub pages w/ Jekyll? Nextjs? Bootstrap? Should we just head back to Wordpress and Wix? Wixcode? Is Gulp the best option? Is it worth paying a professional to create the site for me? I’m very intereted in developer opinions. Any feedback is much appreciated. Thank you.
- austincheney 8y ago
  One alternative is to not use them. If your target website actually is simple then prove it by not imposing a slow bloated architectural failure.
- andrewguenther 8y ago
  > What is the alternative to tools like Gulp or Gatsby for those of us who want to make (fairly)simple websites? Gulp has nothing directly to do with building a website, it is a compilation tool of sorts that allows you to transform your source files into something you'll end up deploying via various plugins. For example, you can use gulp to collapse all your JS source files into one or to transpile it into something more cross browser compatible. The reason I dislike Gulp is that it has a massive number of dependencies and really is just an overcomplicated reimplementation of pipes. Personally, I prefer Webpack. It is also a fairly large tool, but at the very least it actually does something useful out of the box. When I migrated our projects from Gulp to Webpack, I replaced a over 500 lines of gulp code with about 50 lines of config and a small bash script.

dang 8y ago

Most of us share that view, but it's against the Show HN rules to post indignant rants about someone's work, so please don't do it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

austincheney 8y ago
Taken from your link: > When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is. But don't be gratuitously negative. The comment you replied to is accurate and not gratuitously negative.
- xeromal 8y ago
  The OP said they wanted to cry and crying is reserved for pretty sad things. Seems over-the-top negative to me
  - austincheney 8y ago
    This is bad and nobody is required to pretend otherwise. Sensitivity to a critical opinion doesn't make the opinion a form of attack or hostility.
    - jakelazaroff 8y ago
      Saying something makes you want to cry isn't constructive criticism. It's just mean.
    - tomhoward 8y ago
      Are you really sure you want to carry on swinging over the importance of HN accepting harsh criticism of someone's wedding site? I mean, it's a _wedding_ site. Maybe just let it go?
      - austincheney 8y ago
        It is a policy violation or it isn't. You can't have it both ways because of sympathy confusion. At any rate, it doesn't matter. A moderator has already interjected.

vedantroy 8y ago

You sound like a "get off my lawn type of person"... let's take a look at the dependencies: "animate.css" - as the name would imply, this is for css animations. "font-awesome" - provides icons for vector graphics "waypoints" - a easy way to trigger a function when you scroll to an element This doesn't seem like "bloat". It's not like they used a full fledged framework like React. And, I think it would be pretty hard to replicate this site with "just one html file". I'm sure its possible to make something similar without these 3 dependencies, but it would 1] be a lot harder and 2] probably not look as good

dang 8y ago
> You sound like a "get off my lawn type of person" I appreciate your standing up for the OP, but please don't be mean even if someone else was mean. That only makes this place worse. Your comment would be much better without that swipe.

rampatra 8y ago

The only reason node_modules is there in the repo is because I have hosted the website on github (via github pages) no personal server. And github pages doesn't support `npm install` if you know what I mean. So I need to have all the files in the repo for github to serve my website. If you have a personal server then you do not need node_modules folder in your repo. You can just do `npm install` in your server.