alt Hacker NewsSo many Web designers put zero thought into how their page looks when it is not loaded or not scrolled exactly past the trigger. So many sites say "0 happy customers", because someone thought showing incrementing numbers is cool. On this page, it opens up with a "100%" loading indicator, for a site that appears to have no interactivity that would require JS, just to show a pointless animation.
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Yeah, I thought those code samples would run immediately, in which case maybe the loading would be justified (although surely very easy to avoid). Instead, they're links to a different page that has the same code sample and a link to run the code, meaning I need to press twice to see what the code does when it runs, which isn't a lot but is surely at least one (possibly two) clicks more than necessary.
That said, it's cool seeing some of those samples, because they're honestly not really what I expected. For example, I didn't expect the list subtraction to work at a set operation, so seeing that example gives me a feel for what sort of things I can do with Ruby code.
It even loads the code snippets in separate HTTP requests :-( But the snippets themselves are really good! I'm going to update mine on https://mastrojs.github.io
I really like the 90s-esque aesthetic of sites like HN.
Low bandwidth, minimal in an artistic way.
I wish less sites would try to make them look like a wordpress from the early twenty aughts.
Yep, and for such cases it is usually very easy to make it work properly, if only a web developer put a little thought to it. We have most or all of the tools we need in HTML and APIs to make it work regardless. Like for example for the happy customer counter one could easily have a noscript fallback, that uses the number one already needs to retrieve to show the animation, but puts it there immediately. Then, iff JS gets executed, one can still animate the shit out of it.
It is part of what distinguishes actually good web devs from move fast and break everything kind of people.
I am sure that the designers had to juggle a massive amount of community input and feedback and I know that this is not easy. Kudos to them for (i) leading with some very apt code examples, (ii) the 4 "whys" and (iii) the multilingual support.
Speaking from experience (recently we rebuilt https://raku.org), I am sure that they will come back and optimize, but tbh this is not the priority with a new site where the hits will top out at ~ 10k / hour.
I am no great fan of animations, simpler is better imho - and I have resisted requests to add a sandbox to the Raku site since https://glot.io/new/raku does such a good job anyway... but I think Ruby is likely to appeal to a wider audience via a cool design vibe, whereas Raku is still in the early adopter / geek phase of adoption.
btw Ruby is a fantastic language!