Alistair Davidsonmoh_kohn@mastodon.scot
Jun 10, 2026, 11:10 AMBlogged about the time I doubled our users by doing proper engineering instead of React slop
Replies
- Alistair Davidsonmoh_kohn@mastodon.scotJun 10, 2026, 11:10 AM
Hey if you would like a cantankerous old man to double your users with the power of proper engineering, you could even hire me
Jun 19, 2026, 5:00 PM
Goteer TxuriaGoteerTxuria@derg.socialJun 10, 2026, 1:03 PM@moh_kohn@mastodon.scot Just a heads up for the site: I don't know what happened, but I cannot read your site using waterfox nor firefox. (Ungoogled) Chrome works fine.
Might be my heavily themed OS, just check on firefox and if fine carry on!
- Alistair Davidsonmoh_kohn@mastodon.scotJun 10, 2026, 2:13 PM
@GoteerTxuria I use firefox day-to-day and it works for me, if there's a real issue I would want to fix it
- Goteer TxuriaGoteerTxuria@derg.socialJun 10, 2026, 2:14 PM
@moh_kohn@mastodon.scot Thank you for checking, then there's something seriously wrong on my machine
unnick@booping.synth.downloadJun 10, 2026, 3:34 PM@GoteerTxuria@derg.social @moh_kohn@mastodon.scot the site is also broken on firefox for me. it seems like the atkinson font the page loads doesnt render at all for some reason
- Alistair Davidsonmoh_kohn@mastodon.scotJun 11, 2026, 3:47 PM
@unnick @GoteerTxuria web development, what fun 😭
Colincolinstu@birdbutt.comJun 10, 2026, 5:18 PM@GoteerTxuria @moh_kohn works fine on Waterfox on my macOS anyways.
Also, great read!
echarlienotecharlie@social.bigcavemaps.comJun 10, 2026, 10:42 PM@moh_kohn @GoteerTxuria firefox ESR in my case; it's throwing errors like: "Content-Security-Policy: The page’s settings blocked an inline style (style-src-attr) from being applied because it violates the following directive: “style-src blob: *”. Consider using a hash ('sha256-eyEQIkqjJt2vT6Kt1pkSUhwTpB67WcyjJnghw+gdf54=', requires 'unsafe-hashes' for style attributes) or a nonce."
And again, can't see anything without disabling the CSS.
- Alistair Davidsonmoh_kohn@mastodon.scotJun 11, 2026, 12:27 AM
@notecharlie @GoteerTxuria thanks, will investigate when I get time
- Alistair Davidsonmoh_kohn@mastodon.scotJun 11, 2026, 4:03 PM
@notecharlie @GoteerTxuria could you let me know if it works now?
- echarlienotecharlie@social.bigcavemaps.comJun 11, 2026, 7:29 PM
@moh_kohn I gave it a go. CSP errors are gone. more testing suggests the issue is with how the Atkinson font is getting loaded/used in the body. I don't think chromium is using that font, but it is falling back to Helvetica Neue correctly, where firefox isn't.
Jun 10, 2026, 2:44 PMAll the text is invisible for me in Firefox on Linux when the
--font-bodyis set to"Atkinson", sans-serif. Setting it to"Atkinson Hyperlegible", sans-seriffixed it.Edit: that doesn't fix it; it just uses the default sans-serif, so "Atkinson" is correctly selecting the custom font and then it isn't displaying. I tried another machine also running Firefox on Linux and the site worked without a fuss.
- Alistair Davidsonmoh_kohn@mastodon.scotJun 11, 2026, 4:02 PM
@GoteerTxuria could you let me know if it works now?
- Goteer TxuriaGoteerTxuria@derg.socialJun 11, 2026, 4:19 PM
@moh_kohn@mastodon.scot Working just fine on my end now!
Jun 10, 2026, 1:07 PM@moh_kohn I love statically generated sites with as little JavaScript as possible. There's something calming about a website that just loads in a blink of an eye and no clutter, just ... Information. I unfortunately use corporate tools which often send many megabytes of data just to display ... A table with twenty values. And it takes sometimes tens of seconds on an up to date computer and gigabit connection. And no, the backend database and logic is not the bottleneck.
Summersummertime@aus.socialJun 10, 2026, 1:19 PM@moh_kohn “but that’s a lot more work for us.”, I remember back in my ol' day, using stuff like WTForms and the such. Server side libraries that took in the request data (or other such things) (if any) for any pre-existing filled form info, and in return, gave a form structure with HTML and validation and this and that for what it needed (if anything), or for validation error information (if any), handled it all, all server side, in a couple of function calls. Feels weird that that approach has mostly fallen off of everyone's radars.
Jun 10, 2026, 1:22 PM@moh_kohn > He was appalled and said, “but that’s a lot more work for us.”
Could it even be? Because with building things that way there's much less dependencies and so much less churn (if there's even any, like vanilla JS pretty much doesn't breaks).
Jun 10, 2026, 3:41 PM- Jun 11, 2026, 12:17 AM
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPETimWardCam@c.imJun 10, 2026, 1:29 PM@moh_kohn "... a housing benefits office ... They are singularly unlovely places."
I walked into our newly refurbished housing benefits office (it did other things as well) as a new councillor. "Hey this is good," I said, "it's decorated well enough to show that the customers are respected but not so well that it looks like we're flaunting our excessive use of public money."
"Yes," my guide said, "that was the design brief."
🏳️🌈 leberschnitzel 🏳️🌈leberschnitzel@existiert.chJun 10, 2026, 2:30 PM@moh_kohn “but that’s a lot more work for us.” something like that always makes me think: could someone make a tool that reduces the work for the maintainer?
Jun 10, 2026, 3:21 PM@leberschnitzel @moh_kohn Often I find that the software people saying "but that's a lot more work for us" are actually saying "but that's not work that I can do in my favorite framework that I want to use so I can put it on my resume because it is currently in hot demand in the job market."
I find software engineers not very interested in the customers or the company vision, but more focused on their own career growth.
Management fails to push back, unaware.
Bean Club :verified:beaiouns@is.nota.liveJun 10, 2026, 2:47 PM@moh_kohn the irony of having to disable CSS to read the article was not lost on me :ms_rofl:
edit: damn, i wasn't even the first one to comment on this. my screenshot is from mullvad's browser FWIW
BrokarBrokar@mastodon.socialJun 10, 2026, 2:48 PM@moh_kohn Every web developer should read this!
I usually use NoScript to browse (safety first) and i loathe websites which don't show anything without javascript.You don't need an overloaded engine or framework to display some text and some images. That can be done with simple CSS and HTML.
The motto should always be "customer first". If that results in more work, then so be it. That's what the employer pays you for.
Jun 10, 2026, 3:06 PM@moh_kohn not a single screenshot of the site? 😭
Daniel JonssonDanOpcode@mastodon.socialJun 10, 2026, 6:59 PM@moh_kohn thanks for sharing, excellent read
Jun 10, 2026, 10:53 PM@moh_kohn it's crazy how this reads like you're digging out some ancient forgotten technology. Probably because it is :(
seismo!allegra!utzooSeismoAllegra@mastodon.socialJun 10, 2026, 11:59 PM@moh_kohn well done. Now, where's my Netscape.
Jun 11, 2026, 8:18 AM@moh_kohn we [the world] needs far far far more of this as far less of the JS/CSS shite we are forced to endure.
Jun 11, 2026, 8:31 AM@moh_kohn brilliant, remind me of everything I loved doing ten years ago.
Jun 11, 2026, 9:39 AM@moh_kohn lovely.
Re: the coda - it really does seem like heavily optimisations die with the next developer (or it's been my experience of the last 3 things I've done something like this).
Most people seem completely unattuned to this stuff.
Jun 19, 2026, 10:45 PM@64kb @moh_kohn obviously the new hires / maintainers should be thinking of Chesterton's Fence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence - HOWEVER I think that if you can also include test benchmarks, documentation or tools to make it easy to demonstrate that the fence is still valuable, then the new maintainer can prove it to themselves. Else it might sound like preaching! It's good to re-evaluate every so often and make sure what you're doing is still worth doing. Make it simple to do so.
- Jun 19, 2026, 10:51 PM
- Jun 20, 2026, 7:35 AM
- Simon Willcockssevertz@mastodon.onlineJun 11, 2026, 9:04 PM
@moh_kohn I've always thought 50% of databases could be files in a filesystem (especially if they support links).
Simplicity rules! KISS
microplasticmicroplastic@pronounmail.comJun 12, 2026, 7:42 AM@moh_kohn you people are just calling anything slop nowadays huh
Alex P Roe :mastodon:alex_p_roe@mastodon.worldJul 6, 2026, 8:35 AM@moh_kohn Nice. Bet these pages load good and fast too! More secure too, maybe? For web pages that change infrequently, database based CMSs are overkill IMHO.
