3 ms·

One thing I recently started doing is not caring about what I "should" be doing when I program. I used to love coding up random sites in basic html javascript

One thing I recently started doing is not caring about what I "should" be doing when I program. I used to love coding up random sites in basic html javascript with a few jQuery calls. But I was told I "should" be using react js, node js, hosting on specific cloud providers instead of a vps. I'm not saying all the new tools are bad, but I think the problem with the modern web, is it's less about building what you want and much much more about building what is considered "best practice". I think if you want adventures in the web, just start building janky weird stuff. AI is a help in that if you know what to ask for. Just have fun.

steve_adams_86 2y ago
This is a great point. Back in the early internet days, that stuff we enjoyed was proper garbage on the inside. It was the ugliest stuff I ever saw. But it worked and we loved it. I’d rather have garbage code I love using than best practices I’m not particularly interested in working on or using. A friend of mine is such a pro at slapping stuff together that is technically bad, but definitely works. And he has great ideas, so his outputs are awesome despite the internal quality. I really envy how good he is at just making stuff. He has no shame about any of it. If anything he would feel shame about not letting his ideas out, which is so much more sensible. I am a huge fan of janky weird stuff. It’s the best way to get your ideas out there.
- mips_avatar 2y ago
  I think Kanye West put it best "if every move you make you're trying to meet people's expectations, then every day is a test day. And what day was the most stressful in school? Test day"
rchaud 2y ago
The "shoulds" start piling up when the motivating factor for creating a website is to "get a job". As a result, most of those sites are useless Hello World/Todo projects or the same Ghost/Hugo blog hosted on Github pages that a million other people have.
mettamage 2y ago
I'm doing this with chrome extensions
trilinearnz 2y ago
Extremely well said.

steve_adams_86 2y ago

This is a great point. Back in the early internet days, that stuff we enjoyed was proper garbage on the inside. It was the ugliest stuff I ever saw. But it worked and we loved it. I’d rather have garbage code I love using than best practices I’m not particularly interested in working on or using. A friend of mine is such a pro at slapping stuff together that is technically bad, but definitely works. And he has great ideas, so his outputs are awesome despite the internal quality. I really envy how good he is at just making stuff. He has no shame about any of it. If anything he would feel shame about not letting his ideas out, which is so much more sensible. I am a huge fan of janky weird stuff. It’s the best way to get your ideas out there.

mips_avatar 2y ago
I think Kanye West put it best "if every move you make you're trying to meet people's expectations, then every day is a test day. And what day was the most stressful in school? Test day"

rchaud 2y ago

The "shoulds" start piling up when the motivating factor for creating a website is to "get a job". As a result, most of those sites are useless Hello World/Todo projects or the same Ghost/Hugo blog hosted on Github pages that a million other people have.

mettamage 2y ago

I'm doing this with chrome extensions

trilinearnz 2y ago

Extremely well said.