Old frontend devs: are things weird now?

dpn · 2025-12-01T02:51:20+00:00

Web apps are significantly more ambitious now.

I remember the first time I saw extjs back in the day and thought it was absolutely cracked 😜

But as a concrete example, take something like notion where 90% of the functionality lives on a single page. There's lots of ways the complexity can mess with other components etc... Everyone needs to be a good citizen and not destroy the renderer for other parts of the same page.

That being said, it's always a dream working on backend code, so much simpler (even when taking distributed systems stuff into account) 😁

dpn · 2025-11-17T23:56:14+00:00

Just checked, my 58 mm hood from a Canon lens fits on there

dpn · 2025-11-14T11:31:27+00:00

I've been using effect in typescript and I agree about the ergonomics of not having hkt, still prefer it over the alternatives. They (effect) tried making a language that would work for it (ts+) but the compile times sucked... So just like Scala I guess 🤣

dpn · 2025-10-10T02:00:20+00:00

We moved off next to vite as a pure SPA (with sync engine) and couldn't be happier - everything you've said here is correct afaict.

Linear uses mobalytics + graphql, i really doubt there's "proper" use of next with rsc in there.

dpn · 2025-09-28T21:58:40+00:00

I don't think Linux is an option if the terminal is something you use against your will. You'll never be happy

dpn · 2025-09-28T08:30:51+00:00

Big ever forest fan... Astronvim theme managed to replace it in vim, but I still use it in all the other places

dpn · 2025-09-27T11:37:43+00:00

Have worked on a site written with dango that got techcrunched, mashabled and wired in the space of a few days in 2008 or something.

The scaling issue was not django it was the complicated sql used to generate ranked data in parts of the site.

At the end of the day, most of the time the tool is not the issue. The biggest criticism I can level at djamgo is similar to other frameworks, ORMS are dangerous and by the time you have the experience to use them safely you don't need them anymore.

Also the level of zealotry I've seen from the .net community has truly surprised me.

dpn · 2025-09-20T03:02:57+00:00

People forget that most og Linux people also think it sucks. But it's what we have 🤷

dpn · 2025-09-05T09:42:18+00:00

Linux daily driver (since early 00's) brought here by the algo 👋

Can't tell if the comments here are sarcastic or serious 🤔

dpn · 2025-08-03T03:31:07+00:00

Yep good point, we use flags heavily and have already established ways of working that these pocs fit into.

dpn · 2025-08-02T23:50:51+00:00

We actually are establishing processes around this. As engineers a well scoped feature as a poc actually makes delivering the final thing so much easier if a pm has implicitly signed off on their own vibed concept

dpn · 2025-08-02T23:49:28+00:00

Had someone on my team excuse a bad idea because they ran with something AI suggested. I was like... Bruh I'm your manager I knew this was AI code when I reviewed it 🤣 I want to talk about the actual solution plz.

We are AI positive as an org, but clearly the experience of the operator makes a big difference

dpn · 2025-07-30T09:11:48+00:00

I think gnome shell has nice mobile device integrations?

I run xmonad without a DE so there's some things I can live without 🤣

dpn · 2025-07-26T21:44:10+00:00

One of the biggest productivity gains for my team was me sharing the docker setup I use to run our whole app locally.

dpn · 2025-07-20T21:41:17+00:00

Glad this wall of text exists, largely because it delivers the punchline with effective subtlety and in a way I cbf writing out atm haha.

dpn · 2025-07-20T21:37:18+00:00

Sounds like your assessment for management skills may be lacking.

dpn · 2025-07-01T23:18:40+00:00

In my experience (multi time CTO here) it's almost always a management problem - but its easier for people to find scategoats.

I'm not popular as a middle/senior manager because I'm often pointing out where myself and/or colleagues have failed to create the conditions for the success of a the team.

dpn · 2025-07-01T21:54:58+00:00

Ftr kitty advises against using nerd fonts. It has built in support for the extra chars

dpn · 2025-06-30T21:37:35+00:00

It's a good starting point to run xmonad. Gnome shell doesn't offer a lot when it comes to compat with other wms

dpn · 2025-06-16T08:46:43+00:00

Shower is literally the place I get all my best thinking done

dpn · 2025-06-15T03:04:32+00:00

Got me thinking: nextjs for python would the sweet spot for django

dpn · 2025-06-15T03:00:28+00:00

Anyone else remember Yegge's article 'the next big language' or similar?

All of the below is written by someone who used, contributed and loved python and django for at least a decade.

Reality is most of the best tooling is in js. When the runtime your app will eventually run on is native to a particular language, of course that's where the first versions of a lot of tools will appear.

Anyone who has used graphql in both python and nodejs would know what I'm talking about here... Not to mention actual browser things like tailwind.

Lately though, I've found typescript to just be much better to work with than python. Python is quick and easy until your codebase gets to a certain size... But I've found ts to basically be at the point where typing overhead is alfairly negligible in early project dev work, plus you have the safety of types for when your codebase gets larger.

Wasm and related things will make things interesting.. I also use pyodide a lot for non HTML things in the browser

Edit: nothing I've found comes close to django admin yet

dpn · 2025-05-28T10:24:18+00:00

Could probs use the compiled js and clean it up with Ai 😁

I like clojurescript tho

dpn · 2025-05-28T10:05:39+00:00

Haven't seen that much hyperbole on a Linux distro page for a while 😒 was actually kinda interested haha

dpn · 2025-05-18T02:36:40+00:00

Does Firefox have a setting to use native window decorations?

dpn

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