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Yes you don’t need React for a static site. Is this news at this point? Also I find the colour scheme hard to read but maybe it’s just me.

camillomiller 3y ago
[flagged]
- willio58 3y ago
  React isn’t complicated. It’s not even considered a framework, it’s better described as a library! It’s a great way to templatize your code. Is it the only way? No. Do you even need to templatize your code? No.
  - quest88 3y ago
    Stop it. You know what they mean.
    - eropple 3y ago
      "What they mean" isn't correct or reasonable and is largely part of the same grumbling groupthink that willfully refuses to come to grips with the realities of the tools they've decided they don't like. React is not large, is of moderate complexity (most of the complexity of "a React app" lives well outside of React itself), and can be stripped down to a fully static templating language without much effort. As I've linked elsewhere, I turned React into an email templating engine once because I don't like Handlebars; rendering JSX as static, no-JS HTML is a one-liner when you throw it a React component. Using React for a static website is totally fine. So is not using it. Being weird about it is not fine.
      - yitianjian 3y ago
        My hot take: there's a general feeling of looking down on "web devs" or UI/front-end stuff. It's not really necessary to have React for a portfolio site, but it's not really an issue if they do.
        eropple 3y ago
        I wouldn't consider myself a frontend developer--I've run infra teams, built backends, built desktop applications, all that too--and I'd definitely agree with that. There's a lot of strange smugfacing about using fit-for-purpose tools that translates into the shitting on people by the old-at-heart and the underinformed. Like, stepping away from JavaScript for a second, you still see people getting mad about C++ on HN and defending the use of C outside of a micro because "just be a good programmer" even though maybe a few dozen such good programmers have ever existed. It's very weird and it's one of the things about this profession that bothers me a lot. I am fortunate that I have reached a place in my career where I can simply refuse to have that sort of person on my team.
        seattle_spring 3y ago
        Beautifully said. Ironically (or maybe not), the worst engineers I've worked with in the last 15 years are strictly backend engineers who vocalize how frontend is easy / isn't real software engineering / etc.
      - camillomiller 3y ago
        One’s free to code their portfolio in COBOL if they find a way to do it. It’s the underlying narrative of the “oh look, there are things called HTML + CSS + JS that work so well and they’re even faster” behind this kind of posts that tbh makes them quite insufferable.
        eropple 3y ago
        Agreed--it ignores that JSX, even baked statically, was a pretty nontrivial life improvement for front-end development because you got to get away from text manipulation as a first-class citizen.
    - willio58 3y ago
      I guess I don’t? Are you referring to the framework comment? Next.js is a great example of a react _framework_. It’s opinionated, it provides tools to make a fully-fledged website. If you just drop react into a site with a script tag, you get what react offers. You get a way to manipulate a virtual dom and render components. Instead of saying “you understand what they mean”, please give an example of how I mis-stepped. I don’t want to come off as antagonistic for no reason.
- tremon 3y ago
  This happens rare enough that a news event may be warranted though.
- karpour 3y ago
  I'm baffled by how how many web developers have the attitude of "React projects are too complex, let's put another layer of abstraction on top of React to simplify things". Of course, usually for things that should never have been React to begin with. Anyway, good for that guy that he discovered Vanilla HTML and CSS late in his career, but I also don't see how this is front page worthy.
  - camillomiller 3y ago
    My comment even got downvoted. There’s certainly some React diehards around I guess who really don’t want to hear that their overconvoluted approach could be simpler and leaner 95% of the time.
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      Your comment is likely downvoted because of tone, not the sentiment.
      - camillomiller 3y ago
        Ever heard of “being ironic”? I will never fully understand such a devoted stance on policing tone. Especially when the comment is not even half as harsh as half of the other comments that pile on, even calling this post unworthy of the home page.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  her craft
SkyPuncher 3y ago
I use React for static sites and really enjoy it. * as it’s simplest, it’s a really easy to use templating tool. * there are a tools that compile to mostly static HTML, so not performance hits * theres almost always something that pushes you to want some JS. React is handy to have. It also opens the door to all of the the community packages. No sense to re-invent the wheel.
- TX81Z 3y ago
  Curious what you mean by “almost always something” that makes you use JS? What besides shitty/illegal tracking code and cookies do you need to include? Honest question.
  - SkyPuncher 3y ago
    In my case, we wanted to gather feedback on a product we were launching. Because we wanted to move fast, we’re in a regulated industry, and our initial tests were simple, we decided to built a simple “chatbot” style feedback tool. More generally, forms. Forms always seems to morph into more than just simple inputs.
    - TX81Z 3y ago
      Thanks for the reply, forms are such a pain in the ass. Of course you need hard input sanitizing on the backend but just helping people fill out a form correctly can require some JS.
arrowsmith 3y ago
> Is this news at this point? If you started your career in the last 5-10 years then yes, it might be news. An entire generation of web developers has been trained to think that every app big and small needs to be a convoluted SPA. The results are a disaster.
- eropple 3y ago
  "A convoluted SPA" is fully orthogonal to React. If you're making a blog into a SPA, that's a you problem. It's been possible (and recommended for many things!) to just bake a static website with React and use JSX as a templating language for a long time.
  - arrowsmith 3y ago
    Why would you need JSX for a static website? If you need JS then it's not "static".
    - nesarkvechnep 3y ago
      Because they only know JS and it’s ecosystem.
    - ylyn 3y ago
      You can render JSX at build-time. So it's just a templating language, as the parent comment said.
    - eropple 3y ago
      React is completely happy to spit out a DOM tree as HTML for you; wiring up the in-browser JavaScript side of React is optional. This is how static site generators like Gatsby or NextJS work (with some hacks that as a user you don't really care about) and (eliding some detail) how React Server Components now work generally. I've also used it to generate email templates[1] with some success, too. I use JSX because it's a nicer templating system than EJS or similar. It allows me to write components to encapsulate reused fragments rather than text manipulation. And I like it, which counts for something. Candidly, this is something that people who fulminate about React probably should know before they start talking. [1] - https://github.com/eropple/rx-mailer https://github.com/eropple/rx-mailer
foobarbecue 3y ago
I like the colors. It's readable for me and it reminds me of sherbert. edit: hm, she says it's a yaki imo / satsuma imo color theme. I love yaki imo.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
You don't understand, it's the future ! https://www.bitecode.dev/p/hype-cycles https://www.bitecode.dev/p/hype-cycles
uxcolumbo 3y ago
It's not just you. The site has poor contrast ratio - fails all accessibility guidelines for text contrast ratio requirements.
- creata 3y ago
  Really? Firefox says the contrast ratios meet WCAG AA. For me, the main problem is the font weight. I'm sure it looks better on high-density displays, but it is way too thin to read comfortably at a regular pixel density.
  - uxcolumbo 3y ago
    Which extension are you using? I use a tool called CCA and it takes font size into consideration.
    - creata 3y ago
      I'm using the built-in Firefox accessibility pane.
      - uxcolumbo 3y ago
        I checked with other tools and yes it does pass AA for normal text. I'd still increase the contrast ratio. I use a high resolution screen and the text is rather small - hence why it's harder to read. On mobile it's OK.

camillomiller 3y ago

[flagged]

willio58 3y ago
React isn’t complicated. It’s not even considered a framework, it’s better described as a library! It’s a great way to templatize your code. Is it the only way? No. Do you even need to templatize your code? No.
- quest88 3y ago
  Stop it. You know what they mean.
  - eropple 3y ago
    "What they mean" isn't correct or reasonable and is largely part of the same grumbling groupthink that willfully refuses to come to grips with the realities of the tools they've decided they don't like. React is not large, is of moderate complexity (most of the complexity of "a React app" lives well outside of React itself), and can be stripped down to a fully static templating language without much effort. As I've linked elsewhere, I turned React into an email templating engine once because I don't like Handlebars; rendering JSX as static, no-JS HTML is a one-liner when you throw it a React component. Using React for a static website is totally fine. So is not using it. Being weird about it is not fine.
    - yitianjian 3y ago
      My hot take: there's a general feeling of looking down on "web devs" or UI/front-end stuff. It's not really necessary to have React for a portfolio site, but it's not really an issue if they do.
      - eropple 3y ago
        I wouldn't consider myself a frontend developer--I've run infra teams, built backends, built desktop applications, all that too--and I'd definitely agree with that. There's a lot of strange smugfacing about using fit-for-purpose tools that translates into the shitting on people by the old-at-heart and the underinformed. Like, stepping away from JavaScript for a second, you still see people getting mad about C++ on HN and defending the use of C outside of a micro because "just be a good programmer" even though maybe a few dozen such good programmers have ever existed. It's very weird and it's one of the things about this profession that bothers me a lot. I am fortunate that I have reached a place in my career where I can simply refuse to have that sort of person on my team.
        seattle_spring 3y ago
        Beautifully said. Ironically (or maybe not), the worst engineers I've worked with in the last 15 years are strictly backend engineers who vocalize how frontend is easy / isn't real software engineering / etc.
    - camillomiller 3y ago
      One’s free to code their portfolio in COBOL if they find a way to do it. It’s the underlying narrative of the “oh look, there are things called HTML + CSS + JS that work so well and they’re even faster” behind this kind of posts that tbh makes them quite insufferable.
      - eropple 3y ago
        Agreed--it ignores that JSX, even baked statically, was a pretty nontrivial life improvement for front-end development because you got to get away from text manipulation as a first-class citizen.
  - willio58 3y ago
    I guess I don’t? Are you referring to the framework comment? Next.js is a great example of a react _framework_. It’s opinionated, it provides tools to make a fully-fledged website. If you just drop react into a site with a script tag, you get what react offers. You get a way to manipulate a virtual dom and render components. Instead of saying “you understand what they mean”, please give an example of how I mis-stepped. I don’t want to come off as antagonistic for no reason.
tremon 3y ago
This happens rare enough that a news event may be warranted though.
karpour 3y ago
I'm baffled by how how many web developers have the attitude of "React projects are too complex, let's put another layer of abstraction on top of React to simplify things". Of course, usually for things that should never have been React to begin with. Anyway, good for that guy that he discovered Vanilla HTML and CSS late in his career, but I also don't see how this is front page worthy.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  My comment even got downvoted. There’s certainly some React diehards around I guess who really don’t want to hear that their overconvoluted approach could be simpler and leaner 95% of the time.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Your comment is likely downvoted because of tone, not the sentiment.
    - camillomiller 3y ago
      Ever heard of “being ironic”? I will never fully understand such a devoted stance on policing tone. Especially when the comment is not even half as harsh as half of the other comments that pile on, even calling this post unworthy of the home page.
arrowsmith 3y ago
her craft

SkyPuncher 3y ago

I use React for static sites and really enjoy it. * as it’s simplest, it’s a really easy to use templating tool. * there are a tools that compile to mostly static HTML, so not performance hits * theres almost always something that pushes you to want some JS. React is handy to have. It also opens the door to all of the the community packages. No sense to re-invent the wheel.

TX81Z 3y ago
Curious what you mean by “almost always something” that makes you use JS? What besides shitty/illegal tracking code and cookies do you need to include? Honest question.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  In my case, we wanted to gather feedback on a product we were launching. Because we wanted to move fast, we’re in a regulated industry, and our initial tests were simple, we decided to built a simple “chatbot” style feedback tool. More generally, forms. Forms always seems to morph into more than just simple inputs.
  - TX81Z 3y ago
    Thanks for the reply, forms are such a pain in the ass. Of course you need hard input sanitizing on the backend but just helping people fill out a form correctly can require some JS.

arrowsmith 3y ago

> Is this news at this point? If you started your career in the last 5-10 years then yes, it might be news. An entire generation of web developers has been trained to think that every app big and small needs to be a convoluted SPA. The results are a disaster.

eropple 3y ago
"A convoluted SPA" is fully orthogonal to React. If you're making a blog into a SPA, that's a you problem. It's been possible (and recommended for many things!) to just bake a static website with React and use JSX as a templating language for a long time.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  Why would you need JSX for a static website? If you need JS then it's not "static".
  - nesarkvechnep 3y ago
    Because they only know JS and it’s ecosystem.
  - ylyn 3y ago
    You can render JSX at build-time. So it's just a templating language, as the parent comment said.
  - eropple 3y ago
    React is completely happy to spit out a DOM tree as HTML for you; wiring up the in-browser JavaScript side of React is optional. This is how static site generators like Gatsby or NextJS work (with some hacks that as a user you don't really care about) and (eliding some detail) how React Server Components now work generally. I've also used it to generate email templates[1] with some success, too. I use JSX because it's a nicer templating system than EJS or similar. It allows me to write components to encapsulate reused fragments rather than text manipulation. And I like it, which counts for something. Candidly, this is something that people who fulminate about React probably should know before they start talking. [1] - https://github.com/eropple/rx-mailer https://github.com/eropple/rx-mailer

foobarbecue 3y ago

I like the colors. It's readable for me and it reminds me of sherbert. edit: hm, she says it's a yaki imo / satsuma imo color theme. I love yaki imo.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

You don't understand, it's the future ! https://www.bitecode.dev/p/hype-cycles https://www.bitecode.dev/p/hype-cycles

uxcolumbo 3y ago

It's not just you. The site has poor contrast ratio - fails all accessibility guidelines for text contrast ratio requirements.

creata 3y ago
Really? Firefox says the contrast ratios meet WCAG AA. For me, the main problem is the font weight. I'm sure it looks better on high-density displays, but it is way too thin to read comfortably at a regular pixel density.
- uxcolumbo 3y ago
  Which extension are you using? I use a tool called CCA and it takes font size into consideration.
  - creata 3y ago
    I'm using the built-in Firefox accessibility pane.
    - uxcolumbo 3y ago
      I checked with other tools and yes it does pass AA for normal text. I'd still increase the contrast ratio. I use a high resolution screen and the text is rather small - hence why it's harder to read. On mobile it's OK.