3 ms·
How is HN not an app? All the content is user generated. Everything is interactive. What's the difference?
by xyzsparetimexyz 1y ago
How is HN not an app? All the content is user generated. Everything is interactive. What's the difference?
- dzhiurgis 1y agoMost of the time spent is content consumption (viewing html documents), rather interaction (which is only 2 simple actions).
- xyzsparetimexyz 1y agoI suppose that's valid. Feels fairly arbitrary though
- da_chicken 1y agoNavigating to a thread isn't much different than navigating to a store. Upvoting isn't much different than adding to the cart. Payment isn't much different than adding a comment. I think the interaction levels are incredibly similar. The primary difference is the amount of images displayed, but that really isn't a significant aspect of web design or Internet traffic in 2025.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoWhen you posit like that makes me think doordash shouldn’t be an app at first place.
- layer8 1y agoDocument-centric, form-driven websites aren’t traditionally called apps. The Wikipedia website isn’t an app. Web forums aren’t apps. “App” implies that essential parts of the interaction logic are driven by client-side code (JS, not HTML) that couldn’t similarly be implemented by HTML forms.
- chuckadams 1y agoSure Wikipedia is an app, long as you think of static websites as a subset of web apps. One might say that makes the term meaningless, I say it's a deliberately vague term because people don't want or need to get cornered by fine distinctions. Otherwise it's endless quibbling over whether things like search do or do not count toward a site being a "real" app.
- layer8 1y agoYour definition of the term simply doesn’t match common usage.