5 ms·

>This isn't true. Something creative, some web toy, gets linked on HN's front page at least once a day. it's pretty undeniable that the web was more unique bef

by serf 5y ago

>This isn't true. Something creative, some web toy, gets linked on HN's front page at least once a day. it's pretty undeniable that the web was more unique before the tooling and resources existed for laymen to easily spin up a site using an off-the-shelf solution, style-sheet, template, etc. The grainy photo of slipknot may have been the same one from site to site -- digital media was uncommon and was generally scavenged from band sites and similar -- but many of those sites had hand-written code to facilitate the photo. Handwritten code that was unique and different from site to site. Yeah, there is more artwork and toys on the internet now -- that's a function of the massive surge in popularity and accessibility and the world's populations finally getting to 'come online' -- but 'uniqueness'? That's way down ever since GeoCities and getting worse every day since. It's now trivial to go find 1000s of Hugo/Gatsby/Hexo/Jekyll that all use the same exact style sheets and templates, but with different data on each site. That's nice from an accessibility stand-point, but we lost a degree of uniqueness and creativity without a doubt.

noduerme 5y ago
I'm old enough that I had to hand-write all my web code when I started in the business, and I still do. Primarily because I never liked templates or wanted to learn how to tweak them - that's learning someone else's framework and being at their mercy. As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it. So I can charge $200/hr while someone building a template site might be making $15/hr. And my code isn't necessarily as flexible or future-proof. But it's built to do [insert specialized UI/data feature] that nothing on the open market does. I really miss the efforts of early self-built websites, experiments, online games - even the really bad ones. I also think that having to jump through hoops to publish content made people think harder about what they were putting out in the world. Making the process of publication brainless lowers the bar of entry to, well, brainless people.
- MarblePillar 5y ago
  > As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it. Where do you find companies and individuals willing to pay $200/hr for basic, non-templated web code? (Or is it one of those things where they find you...)
  - pixelrevision 5y ago
    It sounds like a really relaxing way to make a lot of money
  - another-dave 5y ago
    Yeah I was wondering that too. If you worked a four day week & took 12 weeks holidays a year, that's still over $250k annually.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I rely on word of mouth and repeat business. There are a number of sites I've rewritten 3 times since the early 2000s - first in HTML/PHP, then in Flash/PHP, then in JS/PHP or Node. The code isn't (usually) that basic. I got known in the '00s for doing large, complex Flash sites - some fun ones on the art side, for bands and games, but mainly on the business side, doing online stores, CMSs and reservations systems totally in Flex/Flash. These were not what you'd associate with crazy animated Flash pages; my training was in graphic design, and these were pretty glossy, full-page responsive sites. They were also full-stack jobs, so when mobile became a thing and Flash died, a lot of clients came back needing a new front-end for an existing SQL/PHP stack that still worked. Now a lot of those have been refactored again as PWAs. For really "basic" stuff, like doing a static website with a couple forms for an auto shop or something, I usually advise people to just go with a template solution. But one of the advantages of being solo is I've built up a really extensive set of tooling over the years, including my own lightweight CMS that's applicable for certain things where non-technical users just want to occasionally edit and preview content in-page. So that's deployed in some places. Really, the $200/hr rate is to keep away cheap clients. It kind of obscures the fact that I work fast, so, if a client knows exactly what they want from a static website with a couple forms, I might knock it out in 8-12 hours, plus another 16 from the graphic designer I work with (who's billed separately at $100/hr). This isn't unreasonable for, say, a lawyer or a mechanic who wants something high-quality that doesn't look like every other site. We're a one-stop shop, so we'll also do logos, print pieces, etc. at the design rate. I also handle all the hosting, server management and domain registration for smaller clients (everything except email servers) and just send them a retainer bill for $400/year that includes all that plus 2 hours of support. On the higher end, there are a few companies whose stores and business apps I wrote way back who just need to keep making upgrades and changes, so I'm usually booked out for six months and rarely take new clients anymore. I think the pricing works for a couple reasons. Initially I did it because I was tired of clients changing their minds or requesting endless unnecessary features that I felt cluttered up what should have been clean, easily navigated UIs. This was very prevalent in the Flash age when everyone wanted unnecessary animations and crazy splash pages. I would give an estimate for the number of hours involved at the beginning of a job based on the original features they requested, and anything beyond that I would start charging the hourly rate; it dissuaded them from waffling on "let's try this" and ruining their own websites. Over time I came to realize that a certain group of people like to show off a little and say they paid extra for something unique or higher-quality, or from "this guy who's the best" - and the people they bragged to would want to show that they weren't cheap either. Whereas I'm a guy who's like, "guess how cheap I got these boots", CEOs tend to be more of the "look what I can afford" type. And I'm not above tapping into that psychology. An additional benefit turned out to be that as a result of paying more, they actually trusted me more to make good calls about UI/UX, because you trust someone more who comes personally recommended, but also because professionals trust someone more who charges in or above their own income range. I realized this when I found out my in-laws' tiny mortgage office was paying a database specialist $500/hr - back in 2006 - to come in once in awhile and work on their Salesforce installation, back when I was only charging $50/hr for full stack web work. To them, she walked on water. I started raising my rate annually. One lesson I learned from the art and design world, before I even got into coding, was that under-pricing your own work is the kiss of death. Keeping my rates high enough to drive some clients away has given me more free time and let me shape my career in a direction I actually want.
- mch82 5y ago
  In 1997 a classmate would write HTML on paper with a pencil during class. It slipped my memory until recently & now I like to imagine it worked out well for him.
  - cgriswald 5y ago
    I learned perl on paper and pen with a copy of Larry Wall’s Perl in a hotel room in Long Beach. (An ex’s business trip, nothing to do during the day and too young to rent a car.) Having to check my own work with no interpreter (until I got home) really made me think both when I wrote it and when I reviewed it. Helped grok the concepts that were new and the syntax.
- prirai 5y ago
  Looks like I'm going on a similar path. Your comment gave me relief.
md8z 5y ago
I'm a little confused to be reading comments where people are nostalgic for that. I feel like I always have to remind people that the web was horrible back then. All I remember from that era is that everyone used Myspace, which allowed you to load arbitrary Javascript and CSS into your profile page. When you visited a new person's page, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not it would slow your browser to a crawl because of all the auto playing videos and javascript animations. And also it seems to have allowed any number of XSS attacks. So maybe the code was "unique" but it was all unified in its singular purpose to annoy you and crash your browser and get your account hacked. If you consider Myspace to be the apogee of that internet generation then you could say Facebook was the product that killed it off completely, which now seems to bring its own hell of annoyances, security issues, and autoplaying videos. Maybe not much has really changed after all?
- bityard 5y ago
  Where are you getting myspace out of that comment? The author seemed to be talking about regular static or semi-static sites with hand-crafted HTML and CSS, perhaps driven by a bit of Perl or PHP. Yeah, myspace was terrible, but it was the facebook of the time. Very popular with teens and some adults. Not so much with those of us who had been denizens of the net (not just the web) for a decade prior.
  - md8z 5y ago
    I didn't mention that because I think the "website with just some simple HTML and CSS" has moved mostly to Facebook and Medium and things like that. "Small bit of Perl and PHP" has been replaced with Wordpress and Squarespace. Those things are still around in a modern form. Nobody needs to do things the old way so they don't. My observation was just that if you're looking for the vibe of the old Geocities web, to me that disappeared along with the death of Myspace, for very good reason. The other thing I remember about the web back then is that it seems to have had (relatively speaking) about as many cranks, kooks, conspiracy theorists, and other "outsider" types as it does now. There's still plenty of weird stuff to find. The only difference is they do it with memes on facebook now instead of on a Geocities site filled with stolen animated gifs. Some things just never change.

by serf 5y ago

noduerme 5y ago

I'm old enough that I had to hand-write all my web code when I started in the business, and I still do. Primarily because I never liked templates or wanted to learn how to tweak them - that's learning someone else's framework and being at their mercy. As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it. So I can charge $200/hr while someone building a template site might be making $15/hr. And my code isn't necessarily as flexible or future-proof. But it's built to do [insert specialized UI/data feature] that nothing on the open market does. I really miss the efforts of early self-built websites, experiments, online games - even the really bad ones. I also think that having to jump through hoops to publish content made people think harder about what they were putting out in the world. Making the process of publication brainless lowers the bar of entry to, well, brainless people.

MarblePillar 5y ago
> As it turns out, writing your own code is a lost skill and the companies and individuals who do need that service are willing to pay an arm and a leg for it. Where do you find companies and individuals willing to pay $200/hr for basic, non-templated web code? (Or is it one of those things where they find you...)
- pixelrevision 5y ago
  It sounds like a really relaxing way to make a lot of money
- another-dave 5y ago
  Yeah I was wondering that too. If you worked a four day week & took 12 weeks holidays a year, that's still over $250k annually.
- noduerme 5y ago
  I rely on word of mouth and repeat business. There are a number of sites I've rewritten 3 times since the early 2000s - first in HTML/PHP, then in Flash/PHP, then in JS/PHP or Node. The code isn't (usually) that basic. I got known in the '00s for doing large, complex Flash sites - some fun ones on the art side, for bands and games, but mainly on the business side, doing online stores, CMSs and reservations systems totally in Flex/Flash. These were not what you'd associate with crazy animated Flash pages; my training was in graphic design, and these were pretty glossy, full-page responsive sites. They were also full-stack jobs, so when mobile became a thing and Flash died, a lot of clients came back needing a new front-end for an existing SQL/PHP stack that still worked. Now a lot of those have been refactored again as PWAs. For really "basic" stuff, like doing a static website with a couple forms for an auto shop or something, I usually advise people to just go with a template solution. But one of the advantages of being solo is I've built up a really extensive set of tooling over the years, including my own lightweight CMS that's applicable for certain things where non-technical users just want to occasionally edit and preview content in-page. So that's deployed in some places. Really, the $200/hr rate is to keep away cheap clients. It kind of obscures the fact that I work fast, so, if a client knows exactly what they want from a static website with a couple forms, I might knock it out in 8-12 hours, plus another 16 from the graphic designer I work with (who's billed separately at $100/hr). This isn't unreasonable for, say, a lawyer or a mechanic who wants something high-quality that doesn't look like every other site. We're a one-stop shop, so we'll also do logos, print pieces, etc. at the design rate. I also handle all the hosting, server management and domain registration for smaller clients (everything except email servers) and just send them a retainer bill for $400/year that includes all that plus 2 hours of support. On the higher end, there are a few companies whose stores and business apps I wrote way back who just need to keep making upgrades and changes, so I'm usually booked out for six months and rarely take new clients anymore. I think the pricing works for a couple reasons. Initially I did it because I was tired of clients changing their minds or requesting endless unnecessary features that I felt cluttered up what should have been clean, easily navigated UIs. This was very prevalent in the Flash age when everyone wanted unnecessary animations and crazy splash pages. I would give an estimate for the number of hours involved at the beginning of a job based on the original features they requested, and anything beyond that I would start charging the hourly rate; it dissuaded them from waffling on "let's try this" and ruining their own websites. Over time I came to realize that a certain group of people like to show off a little and say they paid extra for something unique or higher-quality, or from "this guy who's the best" - and the people they bragged to would want to show that they weren't cheap either. Whereas I'm a guy who's like, "guess how cheap I got these boots", CEOs tend to be more of the "look what I can afford" type. And I'm not above tapping into that psychology. An additional benefit turned out to be that as a result of paying more, they actually trusted me more to make good calls about UI/UX, because you trust someone more who comes personally recommended, but also because professionals trust someone more who charges in or above their own income range. I realized this when I found out my in-laws' tiny mortgage office was paying a database specialist $500/hr - back in 2006 - to come in once in awhile and work on their Salesforce installation, back when I was only charging $50/hr for full stack web work. To them, she walked on water. I started raising my rate annually. One lesson I learned from the art and design world, before I even got into coding, was that under-pricing your own work is the kiss of death. Keeping my rates high enough to drive some clients away has given me more free time and let me shape my career in a direction I actually want.
mch82 5y ago
In 1997 a classmate would write HTML on paper with a pencil during class. It slipped my memory until recently & now I like to imagine it worked out well for him.
- cgriswald 5y ago
  I learned perl on paper and pen with a copy of Larry Wall’s Perl in a hotel room in Long Beach. (An ex’s business trip, nothing to do during the day and too young to rent a car.) Having to check my own work with no interpreter (until I got home) really made me think both when I wrote it and when I reviewed it. Helped grok the concepts that were new and the syntax.
prirai 5y ago
Looks like I'm going on a similar path. Your comment gave me relief.

md8z 5y ago

I'm a little confused to be reading comments where people are nostalgic for that. I feel like I always have to remind people that the web was horrible back then. All I remember from that era is that everyone used Myspace, which allowed you to load arbitrary Javascript and CSS into your profile page. When you visited a new person's page, it was a crap shoot as to whether or not it would slow your browser to a crawl because of all the auto playing videos and javascript animations. And also it seems to have allowed any number of XSS attacks. So maybe the code was "unique" but it was all unified in its singular purpose to annoy you and crash your browser and get your account hacked. If you consider Myspace to be the apogee of that internet generation then you could say Facebook was the product that killed it off completely, which now seems to bring its own hell of annoyances, security issues, and autoplaying videos. Maybe not much has really changed after all?

bityard 5y ago
Where are you getting myspace out of that comment? The author seemed to be talking about regular static or semi-static sites with hand-crafted HTML and CSS, perhaps driven by a bit of Perl or PHP. Yeah, myspace was terrible, but it was the facebook of the time. Very popular with teens and some adults. Not so much with those of us who had been denizens of the net (not just the web) for a decade prior.
- md8z 5y ago
  I didn't mention that because I think the "website with just some simple HTML and CSS" has moved mostly to Facebook and Medium and things like that. "Small bit of Perl and PHP" has been replaced with Wordpress and Squarespace. Those things are still around in a modern form. Nobody needs to do things the old way so they don't. My observation was just that if you're looking for the vibe of the old Geocities web, to me that disappeared along with the death of Myspace, for very good reason. The other thing I remember about the web back then is that it seems to have had (relatively speaking) about as many cranks, kooks, conspiracy theorists, and other "outsider" types as it does now. There's still plenty of weird stuff to find. The only difference is they do it with memes on facebook now instead of on a Geocities site filled with stolen animated gifs. Some things just never change.