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Nope, you're not missing anything really, but I'm sure glad that not every website looks like a Bootstrap 3. I think these government ones are more about keepi

by wanda 5y ago

Nope, you're not missing anything really, but I'm sure glad that not every website looks like a Bootstrap 3. I think these government ones are more about keeping a consistent style and look across departmental websites, than advertising a product for general use. In fact, I think the government would not take very kindly to hobbyists making official-looking websites serving a non-government agenda. Front-end isn't that difficult for websites that primarily display information and at most require a contact us form or some basic CRUD. So, naturally, given what may be an unconscious existential dread that one day the world may realise that front-end is more or less solved, front-end developers like to make sure that there's always something new to do, rather than admit that a problem is more or less solved. And thus fashion is born. Clothing was also a problem solved. We figured out that we needed shoes, trousers, shirts, jumpers when it's cold, coats when it's raining, etc. But once you have those, well, the tailor has no income. So the idea emerges that we need to have nice shoes, shirts and trousers for special occasions. And that perhaps some clothing items are better than other clothing items. And what if you don't want to dress in white and grey tomorrow, perhaps you'd like to be eye-catching? And so, fashion was born. The basic template is the same. You have some fabric that covers your legs, genitals, torso, arms etc. and the lower half is, more often than not, a different garment to the top half, to allow for easy swapping of components for different looks etc. But the base structure is the same. And if you are so inclined, you can have a totally bespoke and crazy item of clothing made for you by a designer. Sound familiar?

Uehreka 5y ago
Honestly, in my experience, the drive for bespoke styles isn't from developers, but from product folks and stakeholders. For instance, I once had to build a CMS UI with a dropdown where users could pick how they wanted to sort their search results. The product folks also asked me to add a "Show Translations" option in the dropdown, which wasn't a sort order, and could be toggled separately. They insisted that it needed to be in this dropdown and not a separate UI control, and since they generally know what the users want better than I do, I went with it. I've semi-frequently had to build custom tree views and tree selectors with multiple modes of operation and various amenities. And sometimes the way those complicated widgets are built requires that we customize more basic components like split-buttons or dropdowns to match so that users aren't thrown off. Sometimes all of this can be accomplished by taking a library like Bootstrap and applying a theme. But sometimes the theme gets so intense that we realize we're basically just building Material UI on top of Bootstrap's code, and it makes more sense to use that library instead. And as mentioned before, sometimes there are just things that we can't get from Bootstrap or Material, but that we're going to use fairly often (last I checked, Bootstrap didn't have a 5-star rating widget). The "It's Fashion!" narrative seems very appealing to people on HN, to the point that I'd advise people to double check that they're not falling for confirmation bias before proffering it as an explanation.
pishpash 5y ago
> I think these government ones are more about keeping a consistent style and look across departmental websites, than advertising a product for general use. And how long will this last? Until the next administration who hates the association with the predecessor's style?
- vel0city 5y ago
  A lot of the people in the GSA are civil service employees. They don't have a lot of turn over administration to administration. To an extent the spoils system has been a bit in the past for a while.
reidjs 5y ago
I wonder if there is some hidden value to fashion trends. There are obvious reasons to wear clothes like you mentioned, to stay warm, protect from elements, carry your wallet, etc. but it also helps you identify in group/out group. Your style conveys your age and generation. Your music preferences. Where you are from. I think web design can convey similar things, sometimes at the cost of utility. For example, a website may want to convey that it’s for professionals and businesses. Or that it’s fun & silly like a toy. Or that it’s for academics and learning. The style of the site helps to identify if you’re in the right place for your “group”. users can look past bad UI. In fact, they will often complain if you decide to “improve” the UI without their consent.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  A lot of fashion trends can also come from advancements in materials or changes in their cost which allow new kinds of experimentation. As an example (not necessarily positive) fast fashion was enabled by ruthlessly cutting costs of production. Polyester was really big in the ‘60s after its commercial release. And so on.
gedy 5y ago
> I'm sure glad that not every website looks like a Bootstrap 3 Just to clarify, Bootstrap is designed to be themeable, they don't hardcode styles. Examples: https://www.bootstrapcdn.com/bootswatch/ https://www.bootstrapcdn.com/bootswatch/
alephnan 5y ago
> The basic template is the same It’s obvious you are a tech person who did not study fashion design and don’t know what you’re taking about. No one would use the term template. There are silhouettes and there are patterns (that’s a technical term). There’s a reason Uniqlo is respected by fashion design students, but H&M / Zara is the bane of their existence, and that difference is pattern. Pattern, even more than fabric, is that difference between a $200 designer t-shirt and $5 from H&M. The layman will notice color, maybe a luxury logo, but the trained eye looks for pattern. Pretty much every MFA thesis is pushing the boundaries on pattern and silhouette among other things such as process, and that’s why the garments may appear outlandish. Every decade, a professional fashion designer comes with a distinct silhouette. Unlike students, it is more basic and rudimentary, yet no one has thought of it before. There was Alexander McQueen, now there is Demna Gsvalia, in between there is Raf Simons. Based on the way you’re describing things, I don’t expect you know who any of these people are. Yes, it’s fashion and doesn’t introduce any functional improvements, but the way you’re describing things makes fashion seem superfluous. It’s art yes, and maybe art is superfluous for you, but it’s weird to use analogies on a discipline you don’t really understand. It’s fine if you don’t care or don’t understand or don’t think fashion is important, but don’t think you know what fashion is simply because you wear clothing. I understand this as a naive and hand wavy analogy, but if I were to take it seriously then it’s quite offensive to suggest fashion is unnecessary. It’s the equivalent of a non technical MBA waxing up corporate talking points about Machine Learning or cryptography, or one of those San Francisco Uber drivers who mention their glory days as a tech executive during the Dotcom bubble, but goes in a circle of buzzwords when you ask them about the technical details. > you can have a totally bespoke and crazy item of clothing made for you by a designer This reflects your preconceived notions that there is Costco, and then fashion = couturiers. This is not 19th century Paris nor some developing country where rich people go to a local tailor who has a range of fabric in house and makes clothing from scratch. First, if people are seeking a specific “designer”, they’re going to seek out motifs or a particular style of the designer. At the same time, the designer has their specific approach, and so this is not infinite possibilities of bespokeness. There’s also nuanced distinction between tailors, designers, couturier, atelier craftspeople, pattern makers, creative director. What you think of “designer” is most likely a creative director at the helm of a fashion label. These people’s skills are management, understanding industry trends, strategically positioning their brand given budget/limited resources, deciding what the art direction for advertising should be, managing / taking risks. Nowadays many of them don’t even design or are capable of working with the garments. It’s the difference between a movie producer and a director of photography. For sufficiently small firms, they might be the same person, but at any sufficiently large project, especially with how much money is involved in fashion, it’s not. These are different roles in the industry, and there are overlap and people can change roles, but most of the time people can’t. It’s like thinking all engineers, or all engineers in tech ( SRE vs SWE), or even all software engineers are interchangeable. In Japan, I see management try to teach designers to become software engineers because to them all people work with computers are equivalent. > Clothing was also a problem solved It’s not a solved problem. New fabrics are being developed. Mount Everest, high altitude climbing, winter sports is becoming easier over the decade in part to innovation in clothing and wearables. Then there is athleisure wear, athletic wear. Fashion is symbiotic with functional improvements. Cowboywear were fashion but also function. > nice shoes Just because the shoes are nice looking doesn’t mean there aren’t improvements in comfortability, and function. Allbirds which is liked among the HackerNews crowd just IPO’d in the last year. Moving past how misunderstood the analogy is, you’re not seeing the value in brand identity and uniqueness. Coca Cola is mostly branding.
DangitBobby 5y ago
> So, naturally, given what may be an unconscious existential dread that one day the world may realise that front-end is more or less solved, front-end developers like to make sure that there's always something new to do, rather than admit that a problem is more or less solved. Can you really not think of one thing that you couldn't do in the frontend 10 years ago that you can do today? Or that is significantly easier to do today than it used to be? Nothing new or novel or of value has emerged lately? I understand that your comment was intended to be inflammatory, but come on. Use your brain.
- wanda 5y ago
  It was actually intended as a harmless joke. I spend most of my time on front-end development myself, these days.

by wanda 5y ago

Uehreka 5y ago

Honestly, in my experience, the drive for bespoke styles isn't from developers, but from product folks and stakeholders. For instance, I once had to build a CMS UI with a dropdown where users could pick how they wanted to sort their search results. The product folks also asked me to add a "Show Translations" option in the dropdown, which wasn't a sort order, and could be toggled separately. They insisted that it needed to be in this dropdown and not a separate UI control, and since they generally know what the users want better than I do, I went with it. I've semi-frequently had to build custom tree views and tree selectors with multiple modes of operation and various amenities. And sometimes the way those complicated widgets are built requires that we customize more basic components like split-buttons or dropdowns to match so that users aren't thrown off. Sometimes all of this can be accomplished by taking a library like Bootstrap and applying a theme. But sometimes the theme gets so intense that we realize we're basically just building Material UI on top of Bootstrap's code, and it makes more sense to use that library instead. And as mentioned before, sometimes there are just things that we can't get from Bootstrap or Material, but that we're going to use fairly often (last I checked, Bootstrap didn't have a 5-star rating widget). The "It's Fashion!" narrative seems very appealing to people on HN, to the point that I'd advise people to double check that they're not falling for confirmation bias before proffering it as an explanation.

pishpash 5y ago

> I think these government ones are more about keeping a consistent style and look across departmental websites, than advertising a product for general use. And how long will this last? Until the next administration who hates the association with the predecessor's style?

vel0city 5y ago
A lot of the people in the GSA are civil service employees. They don't have a lot of turn over administration to administration. To an extent the spoils system has been a bit in the past for a while.

reidjs 5y ago

I wonder if there is some hidden value to fashion trends. There are obvious reasons to wear clothes like you mentioned, to stay warm, protect from elements, carry your wallet, etc. but it also helps you identify in group/out group. Your style conveys your age and generation. Your music preferences. Where you are from. I think web design can convey similar things, sometimes at the cost of utility. For example, a website may want to convey that it’s for professionals and businesses. Or that it’s fun & silly like a toy. Or that it’s for academics and learning. The style of the site helps to identify if you’re in the right place for your “group”. users can look past bad UI. In fact, they will often complain if you decide to “improve” the UI without their consent.

bobthepanda 5y ago
A lot of fashion trends can also come from advancements in materials or changes in their cost which allow new kinds of experimentation. As an example (not necessarily positive) fast fashion was enabled by ruthlessly cutting costs of production. Polyester was really big in the ‘60s after its commercial release. And so on.

gedy 5y ago

> I'm sure glad that not every website looks like a Bootstrap 3 Just to clarify, Bootstrap is designed to be themeable, they don't hardcode styles. Examples: https://www.bootstrapcdn.com/bootswatch/ https://www.bootstrapcdn.com/bootswatch/

alephnan 5y ago

> The basic template is the same It’s obvious you are a tech person who did not study fashion design and don’t know what you’re taking about. No one would use the term template. There are silhouettes and there are patterns (that’s a technical term). There’s a reason Uniqlo is respected by fashion design students, but H&M / Zara is the bane of their existence, and that difference is pattern. Pattern, even more than fabric, is that difference between a $200 designer t-shirt and $5 from H&M. The layman will notice color, maybe a luxury logo, but the trained eye looks for pattern. Pretty much every MFA thesis is pushing the boundaries on pattern and silhouette among other things such as process, and that’s why the garments may appear outlandish. Every decade, a professional fashion designer comes with a distinct silhouette. Unlike students, it is more basic and rudimentary, yet no one has thought of it before. There was Alexander McQueen, now there is Demna Gsvalia, in between there is Raf Simons. Based on the way you’re describing things, I don’t expect you know who any of these people are. Yes, it’s fashion and doesn’t introduce any functional improvements, but the way you’re describing things makes fashion seem superfluous. It’s art yes, and maybe art is superfluous for you, but it’s weird to use analogies on a discipline you don’t really understand. It’s fine if you don’t care or don’t understand or don’t think fashion is important, but don’t think you know what fashion is simply because you wear clothing. I understand this as a naive and hand wavy analogy, but if I were to take it seriously then it’s quite offensive to suggest fashion is unnecessary. It’s the equivalent of a non technical MBA waxing up corporate talking points about Machine Learning or cryptography, or one of those San Francisco Uber drivers who mention their glory days as a tech executive during the Dotcom bubble, but goes in a circle of buzzwords when you ask them about the technical details. > you can have a totally bespoke and crazy item of clothing made for you by a designer This reflects your preconceived notions that there is Costco, and then fashion = couturiers. This is not 19th century Paris nor some developing country where rich people go to a local tailor who has a range of fabric in house and makes clothing from scratch. First, if people are seeking a specific “designer”, they’re going to seek out motifs or a particular style of the designer. At the same time, the designer has their specific approach, and so this is not infinite possibilities of bespokeness. There’s also nuanced distinction between tailors, designers, couturier, atelier craftspeople, pattern makers, creative director. What you think of “designer” is most likely a creative director at the helm of a fashion label. These people’s skills are management, understanding industry trends, strategically positioning their brand given budget/limited resources, deciding what the art direction for advertising should be, managing / taking risks. Nowadays many of them don’t even design or are capable of working with the garments. It’s the difference between a movie producer and a director of photography. For sufficiently small firms, they might be the same person, but at any sufficiently large project, especially with how much money is involved in fashion, it’s not. These are different roles in the industry, and there are overlap and people can change roles, but most of the time people can’t. It’s like thinking all engineers, or all engineers in tech ( SRE vs SWE), or even all software engineers are interchangeable. In Japan, I see management try to teach designers to become software engineers because to them all people work with computers are equivalent. > Clothing was also a problem solved It’s not a solved problem. New fabrics are being developed. Mount Everest, high altitude climbing, winter sports is becoming easier over the decade in part to innovation in clothing and wearables. Then there is athleisure wear, athletic wear. Fashion is symbiotic with functional improvements. Cowboywear were fashion but also function. > nice shoes Just because the shoes are nice looking doesn’t mean there aren’t improvements in comfortability, and function. Allbirds which is liked among the HackerNews crowd just IPO’d in the last year. Moving past how misunderstood the analogy is, you’re not seeing the value in brand identity and uniqueness. Coca Cola is mostly branding.

DangitBobby 5y ago

> So, naturally, given what may be an unconscious existential dread that one day the world may realise that front-end is more or less solved, front-end developers like to make sure that there's always something new to do, rather than admit that a problem is more or less solved. Can you really not think of one thing that you couldn't do in the frontend 10 years ago that you can do today? Or that is significantly easier to do today than it used to be? Nothing new or novel or of value has emerged lately? I understand that your comment was intended to be inflammatory, but come on. Use your brain.

wanda 5y ago
It was actually intended as a harmless joke. I spend most of my time on front-end development myself, these days.