AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: What happened to vanilla HTML/CSS/JS development?

Top comment by yakkomajuri

The key reason web frameworks dominate these days is that it's very hard to keep the UI in sync with state.

That's it - that's the problem they solve. People started writing vanilla HTML/CSS/JS and struggling to make "reactivity" (hence React) work well when web applications got complex with a lot of state to manage. So we started building frameworks on frameworks and abstractions on abstractions and ended up where we are today.

It's gone a bit far but the overall purpose is a valid one.

(From someone who has used React professionally but uses vanilla HTML/CSS/JS for his personal website)

2. Ask HN: Location based pay is killing my motivation, how do others handle it?

Top comment by kleinsch

Your pay is based on the cost to hire your replacement. That’s it. There’s no crazy conspiracies, there’s no moral failing, they’re not running a calculator of how much value you generate. Would it sap your motivation to learn there are people doing your same job at FAANGs making double what you make? Or that some other job makes more money than you? Location based pay is just another variable. As with everything in jobs - if you don’t like the comp structure, it’s very rare you’ll argue them into changing it. If there are other companies who have comp structures you like more, go get a job there. If you can’t find any, you’ve probably learned something about the job market.

3. Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?

Top comment by kristiandupont

I am going to repeat what I always say when these book threads come up:

I love all the recommendations here but please say a word or two about why you recommend said books. Sell them to me, don't make me do the work. Dumb lists of titles are so uninteresting.

4. Ask HN: Do you use foreign keys in relational databases?

Top comment by mtts

Fear of RDBMSes is quite common. I used to suffer from it too. It’s just so annoying to have to switch your brain to a different programming paradigm every time you need to do something with the database that you start to make up all sorts of excuses as to why it’s really just better to “do it in the code”. Your coworkers argument about FKs making data migrations difficult is one of them.

Another classic is the “joins are slow” argument, which I believe goes back to a period in the late 1990s when in one, not highly regarded at the time, database, namely MySQL, they were indeed slow. But the reason “everyone” knew about this was precisely the oddness of this situation: in fact RDBMSes are highly optimized pieces of software that are especially good at combining sets of data. Much better than ORMs, anyway, or, god forbid, whatever you cobble together on your own.

There is, in my mind, only one valid reason to not use foreign keys in a database schema. If your database is mostly write only, the additional overhead of generating the indexes for the foreign keys may slow you down a little (for reading, these very same foreign keys in fact speed things up quite considerably). Even in such a case, however, I’d argue you’re doing it wrong and there should be a cache of some sort before things are written out in bulk to a properly setup RDBMS.

5. Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?

Top comment by 1024core

HotMail (remember that?) started this way.

The founders had an idea for a database hosted on the web(?), and pitched it to some VCs. They had been working on it as a side gig.

Naturally, the VCs asked: did you do it on company time? Did you communicate via the company's email system?

Nope, came the answer. We thought about that and built this email system to exchange messages while we worked on the product.

And the VCs eyes lit up: tell us more about this email system!

6. Ask HN: Is it okay to just bootstrap it, even when VCs are knocking?

Top comment by null0pointer

Congratulations on finding success and satisfaction in your work. I hope to one day find the same. Personally, I think you should keep doing what you’re doing. If you accept VC money you are now beholden to your shareholders and are no longer in control of your business. The degree of autonomy you have, the quality of your product, and the satisfaction you derive from your work will all surely suffer as a result. It’s a deal with the devil and frankly, were I running a business, I would stay away.

PS. These are merely the opinions of someone with no experience operating a business.

7. Ask HN: What happened to theregister.com?

Top comment by diodesign

Hello, I'm Chris Williams, the editor of The Register. Maybe I can answer some of these Qs.

> what caused this transformation?

All things have to evolve and move with the times. As you've said, we were known, for example, for "intentionally-obscure headlines." Guess what, that works for some people - and it was fun - but it was holding us back reaching many more people, not just from the headline tone but also aggregation and sharing. And I want our original, technical, and best coverage seen by as many folks as possible.

The Reg has been going for 20+ years. We have to keep up with what people want. And yes, some people liked the 2010s era, some missed the 2000s era, but also many more thought we weren't taking journalism seriously. We do take it seriously (we don't take ourselves too seriously) and I'd hate for headlines to hold that back.

What's really changed is that we've styled the main headlines to be more accessible in every way, and still keep our sardonic, informed voice in stories and sub-headlines. We have a mix of core IT stories; software and open source; where life meets tech; science; and more, written in a way that gives our tech readers a voice.

If you haven't read us in a while, then yes, we've changed visibly. If you've been reading us for more than a year or two, the change will have been fairly gradual as we tune our headlines to match what people expect from an irreverent technical title.

> Has it been acquired by a conglomerate?

No, it's still independently owned, with owners who give editorial free rein. It's documented in UK Companies House.

> its original Chief Editor left in May 2019

No, you're thinking of an executive editor who left around then, who wasn't in a management position (think editor-at-large).

C.

8. Ask HN: Working as a software engineer for 5 years, I've forgotten all CS stuff

Top comment by bbarn

Normal, yes.

The nice thing about forgotten knowledge is that it's much easier to jog the memory and get it back than to learn it from nothing. You likely still use a lot of the fundamental concepts without realizing it.

I am someone who came from a non-traditional, self-taught path ~25 years ago. I did get some formal schooling in electronics, which you'd think was useless, but I can think of a few times solid digital logic understanding has served me well in the past, for example. On the other side of that, I designed some shitty databases early in my career! Understanding normalization could have saved me a lot of headaches when I was new.

9. Ask HN: Should I be panicking about jobs in Europe?

Top comment by mindcrash

Yes, it's starting to get bad. As a example a huge producer of automotive parts in Germany went bankrupt today. 4000+ people lost their jobs instantly.

Nord Stream 1 has been shut down indefinitely and Germany requires it to keep their economy, heat and power supply going so lots more companies will follow.

My family is going to stock up on firewood for our fireplace soon, so at least the house will not be cold come november-december when the Netherlands will run out of their gas supply in just about 2 weeks time tops.

10. Ask HN: How do startups/lean teams successfully handle mat/pat leave?

Top comment by SkyPuncher

I've done this. I lead a lean team and took parental leave last year.

* Start now by trusting your team with absolutely anything you can. For about 2 months before my leave, I was extremely explicit with my team that I was attempting to deprecate myself. I wanted feedback on what they thought were risks.

* Consider using the time for someone else to "test try" your job. Think someone would be interested in being a manager, it's their time to try it. You will need to be explicitly clear that they own your job while you're out and they will need to make changes as they see fit.

* Ask your boss or peer to do 1:1's with the person stepping in your place

-----

On my team, this was pretty successful. It created an opportunity for me to step to the next level and someone else to follow in behind me. That situation won't be true for all teams. However, startups are intended to grow. Grow your people now, so you're ready when you really need them.