
Ask HN: Why is hackernews so old-fashioned? - _bxg1
As a web developer, it&#x27;s always seemed strange to me that a tech incubator would have such an old-fashioned website.<p>It&#x27;s nice in some respects - pages load extremely quickly and the layout is compact and to-the-point. I was starting to think it was just minimalist by choice and not actually outdated, but then someone mentioned that async requests are done through an &lt;img&gt; tag instead of ajax, so now I&#x27;m wondering what the story is there?<p>Has it just been left alone because it&#x27;s not broken? Or because they&#x27;re worried people would get upset about changes? Or for maximum backward-compatibility? I&#x27;m not complaining; I&#x27;m just really curious.
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waitButWhy
Dude, this is the only site that loads when I hit my data cap on my phone, and
my 4G LTE " _unlimited_ " data plan slows down to something akin to a 56k
modem from 1995.

Literally almost no other site loads in under a whopping minute, because all
of them slam 10MB of transpiled javascript, and another 20MB of CSS,
background images and high resolution sprite sheets for widgets I'll never
even click on. Not to mention the pixels and third-party ad-tech, which may or
may not be baked into the initial JS payload.

Then the document.ready() kicks in, and maybe a hundred other resources are
invited to the party, and the videos try to autoplay with sound, while all the
gifs start their loops.

You say old fashioned, but even wikipedia is bloated and horrible when my
bandwidth allowance gets throttled by my mobile carrier. If HN didn't load,
I'd either have to find a hobby and talk to people (The Horror), or cough up
like $90 a week (what would actually happen) because every other web page
tries to show me 2GB of video in ads alone, as if I'm going to patronize any
business that blasts a cacaphony of unwanted sound in my face when I'm trying
to read, all of which I suspect might be a concerted effort orchestrated as
part of a conspiracy between advertisers and ISP's to poison net neutral rate
plans and price gouge the hell out of anyone using their phone for internet
related things, aka: everyone.

~~~
waitButWhy
And, as an addendum, all this ties directly into your mention of <img/> versus
$ajax();

First of all, that very mindset is the foundation of the bloat we see
everywhere else. Complicate a non-problem with a non-solution, because behind
the trend is really a desire to shun open standards, in favor of obfuscating
intellectual property as an effort to lock user behaviors, and prevent
scrapers from ripping off designs that aren't even innovative. An example of
the backlash against this sort of thing was the re-adoption of semantic and/or
restful URL paths, because so many back-end goons were packing query strings
with hundreds of CGI variable parameters, to control page state that no one
could paste or email links to each other, and even advertisers started framing
a renormalization of URLs under the SEO buzzword, because they saw their page
rank taking hits from the drop in sharability.

Second, once you introduce _$ajax()_ , not only does backwards compatibility
hang in doubt (as you mentioned) but cross-browser compatibility and _forward_
compatibility may also be sacrificed. Not to mention, you branch into an
entirely different area of development. Because in order to make sure
everything works everywhere, all the time, you'll need an ajax library, but
which one? Choose carefully, you may seal you fate, if the maintainers
disappear. Not only that, any JS error for any reason at all, including async
resource errors, could kill alllllllllll of your images. So now we need unit
tests and a QA team? Is that right? Gee, why not just use <img/> tags, like
every browser has supported by default, since... oh... the mid 90's?

~~~
krapp
You make it seem as though AJAX is some unstable, bleeding edge experimental
feature that no one ever uses. There's no danger of sacrificing backwards
compatibility, or of browsers no longer supporting AJAX in the future.

However, Hacker News does use AJAX, and I don't think it even uses whatever
img tag trick OP is referring to. The only img tags on the page are the icon
and the vote arrows. If it's there, I couldn't find it.

But read the javascript yourself - AJAX support is just a single, simple
function. No unit tests and QA team, no depending on some flaky maintainer.
Maybe they do unit tests, I don't know, this place is kind of a black box
sometimes.

~~~
theandrewbailey
I think he's annoyed that lots of people are trying to re-implement the wheel
using a poor AJAX based solution when an older solution is better, but no one
likes using anything "old".

~~~
krapp
AJAX is not really a new thing, though. It's probably older than some of the
developers who complain about it.

~~~
waitButWhy
It's still implemented differently across different browsers, past and
present, and despite being mature it isn't exactly future proof.

~~~
krapp
Cross-browser AJAX is= a solved problem at this point. You can just go to
Stack Overflow or find one of countless libraries to handle it to whatever
degree of compatibility you want.

And all code is a moving target - nothing is future proof, especially where
javascript is involved, but AJAX seems a lot more future proof than hacking
image tags to do something other than loading images. It's baked into front-
end templates and the caching strategies of the biggest sites on the web so
it's not likely to go anywhere anytime soon.

------
efiecho
See, this is the problem with the mindset of many web developers. You point
out several things that makes this website work well, so you actually answers
your own question, but I read between the lines that you think HN has to be
"modernized" and I have learned this usually means something with infinite
scrolling, Javascript required for simple things like displaying text and
pictures, lots of whitespace, bloat and many other things that would make me
prefer leprosy over using the site.

The web world would be a much better place if you web developers would rather
ask "Why are modern websites so shitty and bloated" instead of wondering why
one of the few useable sites left have not yet been "modernized".

~~~
bobbygoodlatte
Even a CSS change with better typography & legibility would go a long way. You
wouldn't have to "modernize" the site.

Screen resolutions and pixel density have increased dramatically since HN was
designed. It could at least use a fresh coat of paint :)

~~~
DanBC
> Even a CSS change with better typography & legibility would go a long way.

About 99.98% of HN readers are capable of writing custom CSS rules.

I'd be sympathetic if people were saying HN isn't accessible.

------
King-Aaron
This is what upsets me with the current 'design world'. Everyone has to keep
'updating' everything with no real need or understanding as to why it _needs_
updating. It's just an attempt to stay _trendy_.

I don't see any problems with this site that need a design solution to
improve. Information is legible and easy to digest, it's quickly accessible on
every device I have, and there's no unnecessary fluff that causes distractions
or additional load times.

What issues have you identified that need solutions?

------
MoomDog
The simplicity of the experience, nothing is there to tantalize the viewer in
a manipulating fashion. If you read HN's Vision statement they also state that
HN isn't designed to consume you in a way that Reddit or Facebook does. It's
meant to be a culmination of relevant information, and topics that allow you
to take a break from your work while still stimulating your mind. In
comparison with say.. Facebook where everything you read has to be taken with
a grain of salt, and has absolutely no foot to stand on in terms of
credibility or substance. You can go to HN and browse lightly and enjoy
yourself.

If you make an account on the website they also have a function that allows
you only to use it for a certain time duration daily (or something of that
nature) Because they realize that the world around us is already distracting
to a very dark degree, and it's meant to be enjoyable but never to consume
your attention at a level that effects your work.

It's fresh, it's simple and beautiful.

------
HiroshiSan
imo, the design of HN emphasizes the text, anything fancier and it would take
away from this. You can look at reddits new redesign as an example. I have a
lot of trouble navigating the new reddit due to a few reasons, a big one I'm
sure is that I'm just not used to it, but I'd say overall the new redesign de-
emphasizes, and that's a damn shame.

~~~
wingerlang
Except code that needs to be scrolled 5km to the right, and text with little
to no contrast. And the default font size is very small.

Neither of these are dealbreakers, but it definitely could be improved IMO.

------
c22
One thing I like about hn is I can load up a bunch of long comment threads
right before I get on a plane and have something to read for the whole flight.
Other sites will pull tricks like automatically attempting to reload when I
return them to focus, or will have their content smeared across a dozen pages,
each filled with heavy images and scripts.

~~~
FuckOffNeemo
Or even when you have massive GB$ fee's for onboard wifi on a flight, it'd
cost next to nothing to bring up HN and casually read through threads such as
this.

When I first visited HM, my sentiments were the same.

'What on earth is this fucking thing? A site... for developers... that looks
like it was written as a HTML text editor without the frills?'

Over time my position has completely changed and I now adore HN for the charm
of it's minimalist impression.

Don't fix what isn't broken.

------
veddox
Paul Graham commented on this in an essay, back in 2009:

> So the most important thing a community site can do is attract the kind of
> people it wants. A site trying to be as big as possible wants to attract
> everyone. But a site aiming at a particular subset of users has to attract
> just those—and just as importantly, repel everyone else. I've made a
> conscious effort to do this on HN. The graphic design is as plain as
> possible, and the site rules discourage dramatic link titles. The goal is
> that the only thing to interest someone arriving at HN for the first time
> should be the ideas expressed there.

([http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html))

~~~
krapp
PG's view on this is, frankly, odd and kind of condescending.

No one is drawn to a particular website merely because of the stylesheet or
UI, it's _always_ because the content and the community interests them - vapid
and mainstream that content may be. There would be no rush of mainstream users
to Hacker News with a more modern layout, nor would mainstream users be
_repelled_ by its simplicity. Mainstream users don't come here because they
don't even know the site exists and if they did, it would have nothing to
interest them. Yet apparently PG thinks most web users are basically magpies
drawn to shiny things.

~~~
gnode
> No one is drawn to a particular website merely because of the stylesheet or
> UI

I was. The minimalism of the site has always appealed to me.

Internet forums are not only their content and community, but also their
mechanics and their rules.

~~~
krapp
But if you had encountered the same community with the same level of discourse
on a site with a modern layout, would that really have mattered?

~~~
pixl97
If the modern layout was slow, yes.

There are a lot of sites with good content I don't visit. Much of the reason
is they'll eat my mobile battery, data, or both. If I'm in a place with poor
signal I can still browse HN in general. The snappyness and content keep me
coming back.

~~~
krapp
Fair enough, but it seems what PG was describing was aesthetics, not
necessarily performance.

------
bitshepherd
Funny enough, this comes up fairly often. The basicish feel of the site belies
its true nature, and it's downright intentional. Also, only brainy smarties
would intentionally go to a 90's looking website to talk about technology and
whatever else nerds and geeks discuss.

The negative sentiment usually comes from front-end oriented folks that have
things twisted. I'm not disparaging, simply noting on my observation.

------
subroutine
Not sure if this is still true (checking...): HN is implemented in _Arc._

HN was created as part- YC project, part- functional demo of Arc, a lang Paul
Graham developed (a Lisp, in Racket).

[http://paulgraham.com/arc.html](http://paulgraham.com/arc.html)

~~~
dang
Still true!

~~~
subroutine
That's really cool! Then, to clarify what I was hinting at above - my guess as
to (1) why there's some quirky html/css usage and (2) why so little has
changed over the years:

#1 is probably due to Arc.

#2 is probably due to Arc doing such a good job, still.

(please correct me if I'm wrong, @dang)

~~~
subroutine
I imagine Op's question being brought up at some early morning staff meeting
at YC headquarters:

 _Ohh and and one last thing everyone. Does anyone here who groks Arc want to
make it their priority to start hacking around with Paul Graham 's Arc code,
which helps render our extremely popular social forum for hackers, with
content that loads on both desktop and mobile at blazing speeds, and with
nothing in particular actually broken?_

(I don't imagine a lot of hands going up)

~~~
dang
No, sctb and I are pretty avid Arc programmers. We were Lisp programmers
before that, so it was a natural step.

~~~
subroutine
This was the only other logical scenario ;) Glad to have u both steering this
ship

------
0942v8653
HN does get updates occasionally, e.g. the mobile width change that happened a
couple of years ago. I suppose there hasn't been a pressing need to make any
changes.

If any sweeping redesign occurred the entire userbase would surely be angry.

~~~
Felz
There does seem to be a need for better methods of quoting. I've seen people
quote text with code blocks that look absolutely abysmal on mobile.

Most people seem to end up doing it 4chan style, sans the highlighting 4chan
provides.

Other than that though, yea- HN isn't in dire need of changes. There are
alternative frontends if you want them, though. I like the chronological
fixation of [http://hckrnews.com](http://hckrnews.com)

~~~
JdeBP
Quoting with a greater than sign, which is what I infer you are talking about,
pre-dates 4chan by years. It was used on Usenet long before 4chan even
existed.

Eric S. Raymond blamed it on an attempt to simulate having tabstops in every
column, i.e. 1 character wide tabs.

* [http://catb.org/jargon/html/email-style.html](http://catb.org/jargon/html/email-style.html)

~~~
0942v8653
Certainly. But I think the gp is referring to the idea of putting a single
greater-than sign at the beginning of a long, soft-wrapped paragraph. 4chan
(and other sites) would highlight the whole paragraph, but on HN if it is very
long it isn't immediately obvious that it's a quote. Hard-wrapping the quote
and putting a greater-than sign in front of each line, as in email or Usenet
is much clearer than the style typically used on HN.

~~~
JdeBP
That sort of quoting long pre-dates 4chan, too. It's the Fidonet convention
for paragraphing.

------
j1elo
I would love that pinching and zooming-in with my phone screen would not only
make the text bigger and easier to read, but also rearrange it to fit in the
screem. But it doesn't.

------
techjuice
It is great that they are keeping it simple. Keeps the front and the backend
fast.

~~~
_bxg1
Yes but there are things like ajax that wouldn't add any bloat, and in fact
would eliminate a lot of weird and vestigial code

~~~
theandrewbailey
What code? The only JS I get is less than 5k, and the only css is 7k. That's
not a lot to begin with, and I'm skeptical that adding AJAX wouldn't add
bloat.

------
earenndil
"old-fashioned"? That's a misnomer, imo. A website should be judged based on
form and function, and HN looks and works great for me. Does it not for you?

~~~
wingerlang
I don't think it is wrong to say it is old-fashioned. It literally uses things
that went out of fashion a long time ago (tables, not using ajax, design is
not 'modern').

Not saying it doesn't work or event that these things makes it a 'bad'
website.

------
NumberCruncher
don't fix what ain't broken

------
herewegoagain90
Less IS more. Just love HN for that. If you want something more stimulating
for your senses, go watch a movie.

------
growthexecutive
I have no problem with the layout, design or lack of javascript, in fact i
like it, but think I there are several real functional flaws in this site
which are annoying.

Why is there no search function? You have to go to a third party site to
search hacker news. Why can you only go back 3-4 pages of articles? Why is
there no mention of the formatting available to you when writing a post? I
think you have to browse the FAQs to get that data?

Even just now I had to login after writing this post and clicking "add
comment", once I logged in the post I had written was no longer in the form!
This is basic stuff guys.

Those are some issues which would be as true today as they were 10 or 20 years
ago.

------
thinkingemote
The only thing that needs a tiny bit of work is how the website works on
mobile devices. The voting arrows and collapse [-] links are too small for fat
fingers, and the top menu could also do with increasing in size. No need for
some mystery meat burger menu, just increase the text size of the menu item,
size and padding(?) of the arrows and the collapse links when on narrow
viewports.

------
rovek
I would argue the only significant area for improvement is in fact the
compactness. There is too little whitespace on the listing pages to easily
read the links, the fonts are small and the lines of text are too long. The
latter can be fixed by browser zooming-in, if you want to make your users take
actions to read your content, the former needs css.

------
rasz
The only thing missing for me was tracking seen/read stories/comments, so I
added it myself
[https://github.com/raszpl/hackahackernews](https://github.com/raszpl/hackahackernews)

------
dmlittle
Can you elaborate on the <img> tag instead of ajax for asyc requests?

------
kazinator
As a fashion designer, I cannot fathom why people wear T-shirts, jeans and
deck sneakers. I mean, I do get about how you don't have to spend 45 minutes
getting ready to go out, ...

------
duxup
It's not old fashioned... it's great.

You said it yourself

------
limeblack
I actually like the site a lot it displays well in lynx. I did wish there was
a way to up vote posts on lynx though.

------
Antoninus
HN is my favourite site because its 'old-fashioned'

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sushant20
People come here for the content and not for the UI.

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badsavage
We like it this way

------
some_account
Young devs - learn minimalism. Discover what fast means.

