warning
This is a rant. Read at your own risk.
the rant
Let’s get a few things straight from the outset. When I work on my own website, I like to party like it’s 1989. Progressive enhancement, where you only use JavaScript for the sort of polish you just can’t implement in HTML and CSS alone, gives me a goddamned nerd-boner. I’m a fan of the UNIX philosophy1 and the “worse is better” approach.
I share a lot of preferences in personal web design with people like Vulonkaaz, who is the sort of needlessly pedantic asshole who proves negative stereotypes about computer geeks.
I don’t say any of this lightly. I can be an asshole myself, and I have to keep my own tendency toward pedantry on a tight leash. But I’m not quite the same kind of asshole as this guy, who writes shit like this:
On the importance of minimal web design (Devastatia diss track)
It seems like the current meme is to make like personal web manifestos and it seemed like a fun thing to do so here’s mine
Mine is a bit special, it is about how sites have to be the most simple possible and I figured the best way to do that is to show the best example I’ve ever seen of what NOT to do
Sorry not sorry Devastatia, but your website is just that terrible
So if you fellow reader had the great idea to click the link above, you would be welcomed by the following mess
- bright colors everywhere
- Animations everywhere, more sensory overload than the downtown of a megacity
- background image that is very contrasted which makes reading uncomfortable
- the mouse cursor drops particules for some reason
- the links fricking MOAN and some page have background music by default
- When I confronted the guy about the moaning links he told me there’s a mute button, when I told him in a rather passive agressive way that the button was hard to find for a normal visitor he told me “cry some more”
Basically all the bad stuff about ancient web design is here, but as it wasn’t bad enough this absolutely mad guy even managed to put a lot of modern soydev madness into the mix
- javascript everywhere, you can’t even load the articles without JS
- the links are javascript-based, there is not a single <a> tag on the site, they are just span that triggers some JS that MOANS and redirect you (this means normal browsing habits like middle clicking simply don’t work on this site)
- the site seems to be made with some sort of CMS that makes the code a real mess impossible to read
- The JS code is MINIFIED who the fuck does that apart from soydevs that use React and corpo freaks that don’t want us to read their scripts
- I feel like the site’s layout has really been made for high res screen in mind it looks really wrong on my 720p display but it might just be that the design is just bad so idk
Basically all those things just make a normal person want to spend as little time as possible on your website
Not that Devastatia needs me to stick up for her, but I’d be embarrassed to be associated with somebody like Vulonkaaz even though I agree with him on some points.
Sorry not sorry, but there’s something about him that just pisses me off. Maybe it’s him griping about having to manually un-minify JS so he can read it. Yeah, it’s a bit of a pain, but we’re talking First World Problems here. Suck it up and deal.
Or maybe it’s his use of words like “soydev”2, which appears to be a neologism for somebody who uses trendy/corporate-friendly tech that people who fancy themselves Real Programmers™ disdain.
Allow me to break it down for you if you have no idea what I’m on about:
| “soydevs” like | Real Programmers® like |
|---|---|
| macOS | GNU/Linux3 |
| Visual Studio Code | vim |
| JavaScript | HTML and CSS |
| PHP | CGI (Perl or shell) |
| Rust | C, C++, or Go |
| Flashy aesthetics | Plain text asceticism |
| “mininum viable product” | “worse is better” |
It’s just another bullshit holy war waged by nerds who mistake their preferences for prescriptions. You can tell by the contemptuous language they use. I’ll quote Vulonkaaz again since he’s handy.
On the opposite side of the spectrum you have sites like mine, like Luke Smith, like rms, those sites are just plain hypertext, you can clearly see the content of the website, there is not a single line of javascript, there is nothing distracting you from reading the site’s content and you can do so no matter what is the browser, you could use the Tor Browser at max security (which disable JS and some other things), you could use dillo, you could use elinks, w3m or even emacs, you could use some old-ass version of netscape or internet explorer and the site would still be perfectly comprehensible
Now the examples I gave you are rather extreme, I am not against having some aesthetic and customization on your website, but the limit should be where the aesthetical choices affect your visitors negatively, and Devastatia’s choices affect me very negatively and I don’t believe I am the only one, I can’t believe I am the only one
I do prefer minimalism on the web, with an emphasis on hypertext. I remember what it was like to use 56K dialup4 and my memories of that time are less than fond. The closest equivalent to such connections today are those found on mobile phones with shitty data plans that throttle your connection after the first gigabyte or two.
Bearing these considerations in mind, I build my website accordingly. However, I am not going to tell you how to build your website. Not unless you’re paying me an exorbitant hourly rate to play consultant.
Now, do I like Devastatia’s site? Not particularly. I don’t agree
with her use of JavaScript for everything. For example, instead of using
standard HTML anchor tags (the <a> element), she has
custom JavaScript link handlers.
My objection to the way Devastatia builds her website is based entirely on my dislike of web applications, especially single-page applications (SPAs). I would not make a SPA for myself when my site is basically a glorified blog that also publishes my fiction. I think it’s overkill for a personal website.
Nevertheless, my objections to how Devastatia builds her website are as irrelevant to her as any objections she might have to how I do things on my site are to me.
It’s her website, and she can do whatever the fuck she wants with it. If I don’t like it, I don’t have to go to her website. Likewise, if people don’t like the way I’ve built my website (or what I publish there) they can fuck off. I’ve even told people as much when given cause to do so.
This, however, is reasonable advice from Vulonkuuz:
If I have to give advices to ppl starting in site developpement, learn basic HTML and CSS, write the HTML like it’s a normal text document, the CSS comes after, the HTML is the content and CSS is what make it look good never forget about that and don’t do soydev things that make your site more complicated than what it needs to be
What Vulonkuuz doesn’t seem to get (aside from the fact that using words like “soydev” make him sound like an incel with a terminal case of 4chan-induced brain trauma) is that he doesn’t get to determine how complicated somebody else’s site needs to be. In Devastatia’s case, since she’s determined to make her website a single-page app, it needs all of the JavaScript she’s using. To produce the aesthetic she wants, she needs all of the stuff Vulonkuuz decries as unnecessary or “soydev madness”.
She’s taking his advice, which is to use tools appropriate to one’s purpose, and he’s too stuck on his idea of “The Right Way To Do Webdev” to realize it. He seems to think that other people should build their websites the way he builds his.
It’s his site; he can do as he pleases. However, if he’s going to start mistaking his preferences for prescriptions, or start treating his preferred technologies as some kind of half-assed proxy for virtue, then somebody ought to borrow Cluebringer from the nearest watery tart and hit him upside the head – especially if he’s going to use his technological preferences, his ideology, or his religion as an excuse to bully others.
Devastatia already put this clown in his place, but other, less experienced or less confident people thinking of building their own websites might be more easily intimidated, which is why this next bit annoys me.
If I had to give advices to the webmaster I’ve been making fun of this whole page, disable the sounds by default, maybe switch to a CMS that don’t require JS just to load content, less bright colors, less particles and less animations and most importantly fix the links.
This guy’s really got some nerve. Especially since he’s running a single-user Pleroma instance just to do microblogging. You can’t see shit on that site without JavaScript; I know because I’ve got my uBlock Origin extension set to block JS on all sites by default.
Sure, you can implement a microblog in a RSS feed, or just a plain
text ~/.plan file, but maybe Vulonkuuz has reasons for
choosing Pleroma. I don’t know, and I don’t care; it’s not really any of
my business anyway.
Seriously: if you’re serious enough about your online presence to lease a domain and run your own website, then you’ve got the right to run your website your way.
- You want your site to be a SPA? Do it.
- You want to use Angular, Vue, or React to build the front end? Do it.
- You want to write the back end in Java and have it store site content on a bootleg install of Oracle? Do it.
- You want to syndicate your RSS feed to Medium or Substack? Do it.
- You want to use a mauve on chartreuse color scheme? Do it5.
- You want links to be the same color as surrounding text and underline on hover? Even on mobile? Do it.
- You want the site to play “Do You Take It?” by The Wet Spots (NSFW) in Satanophonic 66.6 channel lossless digital surround sound as soon as the homepage loads? DO IT!
I don’t agree with any of these design decisions, so I don’t do any of that on my website. If you want to do it on yours, that’s your decision. That’s freedom.
It’s so simple, even a techie who majored in STEM because he wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to make a living with a liberal arts degree6 should be able to figure it out. It’s like gay sex or abortions: if you don’t want it, you don’t have to have it, but don’t tell other people they can’t.
Who am I hammering so hard on this principle? Simple: I want other people to have the same liberty I demand for myself. I want other people to be able to build their websites their way, even if I don’t like the result, because I demand the same freedom to build my website my way.
I’ve heard this sort of thinking characterized as “Gen X do-your-own-thing” bullshit by people who let idées fixe like “God”, “society”, or “the common good” assert squatters’ rights over their heads, but fuck that and fuck them.
I don’t give a single little fucking shit how you build your personal website, which is your online self-portrait, as long as you had fun doing it and are pleased with the result. And if somebody is giving you shit about how you build your personal website, have them read this.
updates
- Tue 07 Nov 2023 05:08:15 PM EST
- I’m actually starting to dislike Devastatia’s site less now that I understand what she’s trying to do and why. It’s growing on me, and unlike a lot of devs who make websites shitty because they can’t write JavaScript worth a damn, Devastatia knows her shit.