
Show HN: Revived my personal website to join the nostalgia - xisnextbigthing
https://gasoved.github.io/webbew/
======
jvalencia
This takes me back to the days when so much of web apps was tied to non-web
things. Skeupomorphisms were pretty good UX, but also the fact that layouts
looks like ads or newspapers, trying to conserve room and increase information
density.

The websites themselves weren't much in the way of a destination, rather they
tied you into other real world things: family, computers systems, hobbies.
They were relevant only as much as they enriched real life.

Now the website is the full app and experience. No need to go anywhere else.
In fact it's desirable that you stay on one property, such as Facebook for as
long as possible. It's like a big box store.

But back to the point I wanted to make originally: the work has fundamentally
changed. I remember coding a backend to get old scientific python scripts to
run from commands via Sharepoint buttons. The web couldn't do anything so you
had to tie it to systems that could. Now you have to get it all running in
Javascript --- not sure how many people saw that coming :-D.

I wonder if anyone has any thoughts along those lines?

~~~
slimsag
It's also become much less accessible to your average every-day person.

I remember in 2001 my brother's community college in rural America taught HTML
and Flash development. Not only could you learn to make websites quickly, but
you were learning technology that was exactly what you would be using when
working at a company.

You could argue the technology is better these days, but it's certainly not
more clear to newcomers. I recently described to my younger sister that she
should learn React through FreeCodeCamp in order to make websites - but
suddenly you are dropped into a world talking about declarative programming
paradigms, unidirectional data flows, and lots of other foreign concepts
described as magic (the virtual DOM, Babel, etc.)

If my experience had been this growing up I would have never gained interest
in learning the specifics / details of what was going on when writing
HTML/CSS/JS code. I would've chalked it up to "there are layers upon layers of
magical things I don't understand, I guess I only need to interact with them
and slap them together."

I also think the incentives have changed - it's less about making something
cool and sharing it with your internet friends these days because there is
money to be made - it's about buffing your GitHub profile to get a job,
creating a startup that extracts $$$ from people, etc.

I feel it is very similar to early days YouTube vs. YouTube these days, and
that saddens me.

~~~
onion2k
_I would 've chalked it up to "there are layers upon layers of magical things
I don't understand, I guess I only need to interact with them and slap them
together."_

That's fine though.

If someone learns C++ today without knowing any ASM very few people would tell
them they're "doing it wrong". If someone learns Unreal Blueprints without
learning C++ senior game developers still see them as productive game
developers. If someone writes a great GLSL shader on shadertoy without knowing
how to use WebGL that's OK too. You don't have to understand all the layers in
order to use them and make good stuff.

The web is no different. I see no reason why people can't just concentrate on
learning the top level abstraction to make things until they encounter a
problem that they need to know more about the lower levels to solve. They
might _never_ have that problem.

All of this "You have to learn the underlying tech in order to use the
framework on top of it" just sounds like gatekeeping to me.

~~~
TedDoesntTalk
> "You have to learn the underlying tech in order to use the framework on top
> of it" just sounds like gatekeeping to me.

Possibly. But if you want to master your craft, you need to learn the
“underlying tech.” That’s why we have computer science degrees, after all. Not
all programmers have computer science degrees and in many cases, it shows.
Someone who understands fundamentals is often more effective at debugging and
problem solving when the s __* hits the fan.

If you just want to bootcamp it without a deep-dive, that’s fine and I agree
with you.

~~~
onion2k
_Not all programmers have computer science degrees and in many cases, it
shows._

Some programmers do have computer science degrees, and in many cases it
doesn't show. In my experience whether or not someone has a computer science
degree is a _very_ poor indicator of how good a developer they are.

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WD-42
I had a very similar homepage that is still up! I love the desktop in a
webpage aesthetic. [http://toxiccode.com/](http://toxiccode.com/)

~~~
rozab
The header looks exactly like a bandicam watermark... which does capture a
certain aesthetic

~~~
WD-42
I believe I was going for the Bluecurve look, which was the default GTK theme
for Redhat 8. The first linux distro I ever installed.

[http://toastytech.com/guis/rh8.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/rh8.html)

~~~
nix23
I buy'd RedHat 9, and i walked home with that big package under my arm knowing
that nobody knows what that is..a Unix a Operationsystem!! I felt like the a
hero, everything was fine until i realized that i had a win-modem...

~~~
WD-42
Yes! What an experience. My dad brought me to circuit city somewhere near San
Mateo to buy red hat 8. I remember holding the shrink wrapped box and thinking
about how cool it was. I don’t think I figured out how to get internet access
working for a month. I’m glad you’re still sticking with it!

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hestefisk
I think this is remnants from the days when an interactive web site was called
“DHTML”.

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slmjkdbtl
My favorite part is you can drag the portfolio image around when focused (this
particular interaction feels pretty modern tho, reminds me of some fun
interactions found on [https://cargo.site/In-Use](https://cargo.site/In-Use))

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jaffathecake
Ohh if we're doing this, here's the intro to my personal site from 2007. Only
the intro works, and requires Flash of course [https://cv-
ppguyzgojs.now.sh/](https://cv-ppguyzgojs.now.sh/)

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byteface
there was a cool Desktop UI thread on here a few weeks ago...
[https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops](https://simone.computer/#/webdesktops)

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dwohnitmok
The "No Javascript? :( Click here" link directs to a 404.

~~~
DarthGhandi
Same issue, though at least the author cares more to at least think of those
who whitelist scripts enough to mention it.

Half the large companies today will present you with a blank screen instead of
writing one line of a <noscript> tag.

~~~
Moru
It's a lot about not even knowing the <noscript> tag exists. I mean, who would
block javascript, the whole web depends on it. (I block javascript since it
came around the first time...)

~~~
shakna
JavaScript doesn't have to blocked to be unavailable. So many accessibility
devices that don't have the capability to run it, and read noscript allowed,
etc...

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mjcohen
"standards" is misspelled "standarts".

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tus88
My eyes :D

~~~
Tarsul
^^ the best part is that the first sentence starts with "This is home of user
friendly [...]". That color-scheme is everything but that ;)

