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> Mind you, Hetzner webhosting starts at 2 EUR! How crazy is that? Oh yeah? and netlify is totally free for an infinite amount of sites! how crazy is that? >

> Mind you, Hetzner webhosting starts at 2 EUR! How crazy is that? Oh yeah? and netlify is totally free for an infinite amount of sites! how crazy is that? > We use a short Python script with exactly 45 lines of code. Including comments and blank lines. > > In summary, this is the simple toolchain for building our web: > > Developer updates index.src.html > Watchdog.py detects the file change and ... > ... renders Jinja template into index.html and ... > ... calls Tailwind CSS CLI to generate styles.min.css. love posts like these that insult literally any other way of doing things except their way, claiming it's "simple" when in the end they don't even show the step by step code or link to any repository that shows how it's done. regardless of "without frameworks or tons of libraries", its esoteric and definitely not an average or common way of doing things (to the rest of us), and clearly DOES use codes (and/or?) a framework!!! no description of what the heck "Watchdog.py" is, no description of what Jinja - I for one don't know what either of those are, sorry if i'm an "ignorant normie" simply put, it's quite clear you ARE using frameworks, just in your mind, perhaps, you "aren't" this whole framework vs no framework vs BS vs BS vs BS has gotten really out of hand, and 99% of devs cant see the forest from the trees what in the world did i just read

calvinmorrison 3y ago
99% of developers are out her building with php, .net or Java and its fine
- teej 3y ago
  In 2005 maybe
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Perhaps not 99%, and perhaps not new sites, but I'll bet those three environments combined run more than 80% of sites right now.
    - calvinmorrison 3y ago
      99% of code is boring, closed source, and provides business value. Most people do not work at FAANG, and do not want to. People mostly work at SMBs doing things that are not super exciting, and that's OK.
      - chefandy 3y ago
        Yep. In practice, people wanting to make something cool when they'd be way better off making something boring can be a real multi-pronged liability.
VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
They don't want to use a framework so they wrote their own framework that is most likely shittier and more impossible to debug. Also, now they have to train all their new engineers on their own home-grown shitty/impossible-to-debug framework.
- DLA 3y ago
  How is a 45 line python script that runs templates hard to debug? You’re calling something “most likely” shitty, but have you seen it? Used it? I find this post and the method they use to produce their site utterly refreshing. What is “shitty” is many dozens (being kind) of JS libraries, complex configurations, and learning multiple tools to produce the same result!
  - balder1991 3y ago
    Also many frameworks get over bloated and complicated because they’re trying to solve problems for everybody and edge cases that might not interest you. A lot of times you can get some ideas from it and build something simpler.
  - rcme 3y ago
    There’s a certain irony in calling this approach “hard to debug” vs. a library like React with its hooks implementation.
tacker2000 3y ago
Jinja is a templating framework. You can use it with ansible for example, to replace config values or secrets in a configuration file for different servers, etc
- fullstackchris 3y ago
  after some research i now know that, but there was no clear link or description of what the heck was going on
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Well, it is a decade-and-a-half old and fairly common in the Python web world. I don't think there's any shame in not knowing what it is if you haven't encountered it, but I also don't think there's any shame in assuming a developer audience reading about web development would at least know how to figure out what it is.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - motogpjimbo 3y ago
      Apart from the person who has "fullstack" in his username.
    - kiwijamo 3y ago
      I know of Jinja only because I have dabbled in some Ansible and Python. Had I not done either I probably would have been none the wiser too.
  - cowsandmilk 3y ago
    When I look at the page, there’s a link on the word Jinja. And the next word is templates. Maybe you aren’t familiar with what a template is, but they are hardly obscure. Here’s a list of large websites that used a Perl-based templating engine a decade ago: http://www.masonhq.com/sites http://www.masonhq.com/sites
ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago
It is simple, both templating and hot-reloading are fairly common programing concepts, neither are uncommon or esoteric when it comes to web development. The specific implementation is irrelevant, you could use any other piece of software to achieve it.
skiptracer 3y ago
Take a deep breath and go for a walk, there's no reason an inconsequential blog post should make you this angry.
- spicybright 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Eldt 3y ago
    The writer was belittling the OP so maybe direct that elsewhere
  - 0xEFF 3y ago
    Why are discussions of web development and JavaScript unique in that we can’t discuss alternative methods and trade offs without the discussion devolving into personal attacks and defensiveness?
- kgwxd 3y ago
  Anyone who has spent a good chunk of their life trying to keep things as minimal as possible after being “inspired” by such articles can understand the reaction. There’s no reason a sensible comment, even if it’s a bit emotionally charged, should trigger your zen master spidey sense. I’m sure they’re speaking from experience and are trying to prevent others from taking the oh so tempting bait.
echelon 3y ago
> and netlify is totally free for an infinite amount of sites! how crazy is that? Netlify is hot garbage and you should avoid them like the plague. I built a startup on a second account, invited a team, and then it started charging me for my personal websites on my first account. I didn't know about this and they cumulatively billed me hundreds of dollars. When my card info changed, they took my websites hard down. I had no idea either of these things was going to happen. When I told them their support was 100% unhelpful. No refund, not even a restoration of my websites that they completely deleted. Do not use Netlify.
szasdasdasda 3y ago
[flagged]
tetromino_ 3y ago
> they don't even show the step by step code or link to any repository that shows how it's done They describe the steps and provide the clue that it's a 45 line script including blank lines and comments. I think they expect you would be able to quickly replicate their work in a language of your choice and calling out to libraries of your choice. > no description of what the heck "Watchdog.py" is, no description of what Jinja The authors expect that their readers know how to google (or ask chatgpt) for simple coding terminology.
- chii 3y ago
  watchdog isn't simple to write, and 45 lines description is meaningless. After all, you could be `import antigravity`.
shtolcers 3y ago
Remove "fullstack" from your nickname! You have to earn it.
caboteria 3y ago
> Meet Jinja templates, which make our life much easier. Jinja allows us to use loops, include files (navigation bar, footer, etc.) and much more. > no description of what Jinja - I for one don't know what either of those are, sorry if i'm an "ignorant normie" The first mention of Jinja had both a description of what it does for them, and a link that you could have clicked to get more information about it. Guess it's easier to post snarky comments on HN.
gerdesj 3y ago
[flagged]
mickael-kerjean 3y ago
I am one of those vanilla advocate that is sick of the react for everything approach everyone seem to follow for simple stuff. To argue the point with code, I made a scaffold with examples of what such simple web app could look like in pure es6: https://mickael-kerjean.github.io/skeleton/example/index.html https://mickael-kerjean.github.io/skeleton/example/index.htm...
wild_egg 3y ago
> simply put, it's quite clear you ARE using frameworks, just in your mind, perhaps, you "aren't" You're conflating libraries with frameworks. I see no frameworks listed in TFA so they're not wrong. Seems a weird argument to be getting so angry about
assimpleaspossi 3y ago
Most such blogs are that way--not telling you everything to reproduce what they did--but I did this for 23 years. I never used a framework of any kind. I rarely used someone else's code unless I had to. I had to use npm cause the credit card service required it. I didn't build our own server software. I did use my operating system's builtins. And I can guarantee that at some point, most of you have visited one of two web sites I created. (My company created far more than that.) It wasn't hard to do what I did. I'm a programmer, damn it. And I hired programmers to do the same thing. None of them struggled with it.

calvinmorrison 3y ago

99% of developers are out her building with php, .net or Java and its fine

teej 3y ago
In 2005 maybe
- chefandy 3y ago
  Perhaps not 99%, and perhaps not new sites, but I'll bet those three environments combined run more than 80% of sites right now.
  - calvinmorrison 3y ago
    99% of code is boring, closed source, and provides business value. Most people do not work at FAANG, and do not want to. People mostly work at SMBs doing things that are not super exciting, and that's OK.
    - chefandy 3y ago
      Yep. In practice, people wanting to make something cool when they'd be way better off making something boring can be a real multi-pronged liability.

VWWHFSfQ 3y ago

They don't want to use a framework so they wrote their own framework that is most likely shittier and more impossible to debug. Also, now they have to train all their new engineers on their own home-grown shitty/impossible-to-debug framework.

DLA 3y ago
How is a 45 line python script that runs templates hard to debug? You’re calling something “most likely” shitty, but have you seen it? Used it? I find this post and the method they use to produce their site utterly refreshing. What is “shitty” is many dozens (being kind) of JS libraries, complex configurations, and learning multiple tools to produce the same result!
- balder1991 3y ago
  Also many frameworks get over bloated and complicated because they’re trying to solve problems for everybody and edge cases that might not interest you. A lot of times you can get some ideas from it and build something simpler.
- rcme 3y ago
  There’s a certain irony in calling this approach “hard to debug” vs. a library like React with its hooks implementation.

tacker2000 3y ago

Jinja is a templating framework. You can use it with ansible for example, to replace config values or secrets in a configuration file for different servers, etc

fullstackchris 3y ago
after some research i now know that, but there was no clear link or description of what the heck was going on
- chefandy 3y ago
  Well, it is a decade-and-a-half old and fairly common in the Python web world. I don't think there's any shame in not knowing what it is if you haven't encountered it, but I also don't think there's any shame in assuming a developer audience reading about web development would at least know how to figure out what it is.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - motogpjimbo 3y ago
    Apart from the person who has "fullstack" in his username.
  - kiwijamo 3y ago
    I know of Jinja only because I have dabbled in some Ansible and Python. Had I not done either I probably would have been none the wiser too.
- cowsandmilk 3y ago
  When I look at the page, there’s a link on the word Jinja. And the next word is templates. Maybe you aren’t familiar with what a template is, but they are hardly obscure. Here’s a list of large websites that used a Perl-based templating engine a decade ago: http://www.masonhq.com/sites http://www.masonhq.com/sites

ad404b8a372f2b9 3y ago

It is simple, both templating and hot-reloading are fairly common programing concepts, neither are uncommon or esoteric when it comes to web development. The specific implementation is irrelevant, you could use any other piece of software to achieve it.

skiptracer 3y ago

Take a deep breath and go for a walk, there's no reason an inconsequential blog post should make you this angry.

spicybright 3y ago
[flagged]
- Eldt 3y ago
  The writer was belittling the OP so maybe direct that elsewhere
- 0xEFF 3y ago
  Why are discussions of web development and JavaScript unique in that we can’t discuss alternative methods and trade offs without the discussion devolving into personal attacks and defensiveness?
kgwxd 3y ago
Anyone who has spent a good chunk of their life trying to keep things as minimal as possible after being “inspired” by such articles can understand the reaction. There’s no reason a sensible comment, even if it’s a bit emotionally charged, should trigger your zen master spidey sense. I’m sure they’re speaking from experience and are trying to prevent others from taking the oh so tempting bait.

echelon 3y ago

> and netlify is totally free for an infinite amount of sites! how crazy is that? Netlify is hot garbage and you should avoid them like the plague. I built a startup on a second account, invited a team, and then it started charging me for my personal websites on my first account. I didn't know about this and they cumulatively billed me hundreds of dollars. When my card info changed, they took my websites hard down. I had no idea either of these things was going to happen. When I told them their support was 100% unhelpful. No refund, not even a restoration of my websites that they completely deleted. Do not use Netlify.

szasdasdasda 3y ago

[flagged]

tetromino_ 3y ago

> they don't even show the step by step code or link to any repository that shows how it's done They describe the steps and provide the clue that it's a 45 line script including blank lines and comments. I think they expect you would be able to quickly replicate their work in a language of your choice and calling out to libraries of your choice. > no description of what the heck "Watchdog.py" is, no description of what Jinja The authors expect that their readers know how to google (or ask chatgpt) for simple coding terminology.

chii 3y ago
watchdog isn't simple to write, and 45 lines description is meaningless. After all, you could be `import antigravity`.

shtolcers 3y ago

Remove "fullstack" from your nickname! You have to earn it.

caboteria 3y ago

> Meet Jinja templates, which make our life much easier. Jinja allows us to use loops, include files (navigation bar, footer, etc.) and much more. > no description of what Jinja - I for one don't know what either of those are, sorry if i'm an "ignorant normie" The first mention of Jinja had both a description of what it does for them, and a link that you could have clicked to get more information about it. Guess it's easier to post snarky comments on HN.

gerdesj 3y ago

[flagged]

mickael-kerjean 3y ago

I am one of those vanilla advocate that is sick of the react for everything approach everyone seem to follow for simple stuff. To argue the point with code, I made a scaffold with examples of what such simple web app could look like in pure es6: https://mickael-kerjean.github.io/skeleton/example/index.html https://mickael-kerjean.github.io/skeleton/example/index.htm...

wild_egg 3y ago

> simply put, it's quite clear you ARE using frameworks, just in your mind, perhaps, you "aren't" You're conflating libraries with frameworks. I see no frameworks listed in TFA so they're not wrong. Seems a weird argument to be getting so angry about

assimpleaspossi 3y ago

Most such blogs are that way--not telling you everything to reproduce what they did--but I did this for 23 years. I never used a framework of any kind. I rarely used someone else's code unless I had to. I had to use npm cause the credit card service required it. I didn't build our own server software. I did use my operating system's builtins. And I can guarantee that at some point, most of you have visited one of two web sites I created. (My company created far more than that.) It wasn't hard to do what I did. I'm a programmer, damn it. And I hired programmers to do the same thing. None of them struggled with it.