Top all-time · #774
Chris Ferdinandi
Personal blog · gomakethings.comprogrammingweb
Chris Ferdinandi writes Go Make Things, a personal blog at gomakethings.com about programming and web. Since 2012, 85 different Hacker News readers have linked it 118 times, most often “How to make MPAs that are as fast as SPAs”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (21) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Chris Ferdinandi's writing on vanilla JavaScript, web components and plain HTML. Readers link his guides and posts as resources for building without frameworks or build tools.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- Commenters recommend the site as a resource for learning plain JavaScript, HTML and CSS, and for guides on web components and HTML-only includes.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 21 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Chris Ferdinandi is a web developer with ADHD, helping people build the web better.
Most-linked posts?
- How to make MPAs that are as fast as SPAs3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-03-02
- Tabs are objectively better than spaces3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-08-17
- XHR Instead of Fetch API3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-04-10
- Accessibility is the hardest thing for me about making things for the web2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-20
- Minification Doesn't Matter Much2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-07-28
- Abolish Patents2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-09-14
- Mutual aid and asking people what they need2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-15
- Native JavaScript (ditching jquery)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-02-07
- Google vs. the Web2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-12
- Running a business made me hate capitalism – Go Make Things2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-09-19
What Hacker News says?
timeouts/intervals are slowed down when in inactive tabs https://gomakethings.com/the-delay-on-settimeout-and-setinte...
Comment linking /the-delay-on-settimeout-and-setinterval-is-just-a-suggestion/
on “The Endless Acid Banger: algorithmic self-composing acid techno music”Submitted SPAs Were a Mistake as a story · 692 points
HN discussionWhile others may agree with them [1], Google are the ones immediately springing into action [2]. They only started collecting feedback on which sites may break after they already pushed "Intention to remove" and prepared a PR to remove it from Chromium. The main guy pushing it didn't even know RSS sites as used by podcasts until after people flooded the issue with examples and requests not to remove. E.g. https://gi…
Comment linking /google-vs.-the-web/
on “XSLT RIP”Submitted Just use a button as a story · 294 points
HN discussionIf you read [his next blog post]( https://gomakethings.com/how-to-make-mpas-that-are-as-fast-a... ) you'll see he has lots of experience with architecting an advanced, cache-heavy multi-page application which works and behaves much like you describe.
Comment linking /how-to-make-mpas-that-are-as-fast-as-spas/
on “SPAs Were a Mistake”Submitted Just Use HTML as a story · 127 points
HN discussion>> He was just unable to follow and understand the trend, and thinks that therefore the whole industry made a MISTAKE :D That's not true, though. If you read [his next blog post]( https://gomakethings.com/how-to-make-mpas-that-are-as-fast-a... ) you'll see he has lots of experience with architecting an advanced multi-page application which works and behaves much like an SPA. It makes his anti-SPA post kind of redund…
Comment linking /how-to-make-mpas-that-are-as-fast-as-spas/
on “SPAs Were a Mistake”Submitted Accessibility is the hardest thing for me about making things for the web as a story · 95 points
HN discussionOr, alternatively, not ideal. For example: https://www.programming-idioms.org/idiom/174/make-http-post-... On Fetch: https://gomakethings.com/why-i-still-use-xhr-instead-of-the-...
Comment linking /why-i-still-use-xhr-instead-of-the-fetch-api/
on “Programming Idioms”Submitted Tech Interviews Are Stupid as a story · 68 points
HN discussionI love seeing vanilla JS projects getting some love. I started one last year ( https://github.com/CarlMungazi/aprender-js ) and I feel it has made me a better programmer. If anyone wants to learn more vanilla JS stuff, you should check out https://gomakethings.com by Chris Ferdinandi.
Comment linking /
on “Mini projects built with VanillaJS. No frameworks or libraries”Submitted Building accessible websites and apps is a moral obligation as a story · 54 points
HN discussionIt’s not ideal, but t it does exist in pure html… and the OP didn’t seem to note it. A bit of vanilla JavaScript with WebComponents is a few lines: https://gomakethings.com/html-includes-with-web-components/ Edit: “t” was supposed to be the object tag.
Comment linking /html-includes-with-web-components/
on “Why can't HTML alone do includes?”Submitted The web is mostly links and forms as a story · 44 points
HN discussionWell, it's Google who jumped at the opportunity citing their own counters and stats. Just like they did the last time when they tried to remove confirm/prompt[1] and were surprised to see that their numbers don't paint the full picture, as literally explicitly explained in their own docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RC-pBBvsazYfCNNUSkPqAVpS... You'd think that the devs of the world's most popular browser wou…
Comment linking /google-vs.-the-web/
on “"Remove mentions of XSLT from the html spec"”Submitted React is actively harmful if your website is static as a story · 33 points
HN discussionDefinitely, https://gomakethings.com is what I instantly thought of after reading the OP.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Good resource on writing web app with plain JavaScript/HTML/CSS?”Submitted Tabs are objectively better than spaces as a story · 15 points
HN discussionI was in the same boat with wanting to just learn plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Mozilla docs didn't quite do it for me but I swear by W3SCHOOLS website. I also found this guy's website helpful: https://gomakethings.com/ I think the author is on HN; he swears by plain JS. For me I just wanted to write a simple cross platform app, I decided Dart/Flutter was the way to go in the end.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Good resource on writing web app with plain JavaScript/HTML/CSS?”Submitted Building websites that work on an e-ink Kindle as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI graduated graphic design in 2009, I worked from 2009-2011 building Joomla and WordPress websites for companies, then went freelance and I’ve been doing responsive front-end web stuff for about five years now. Here’s how I got from where you’re at to where I am now. The web is built using three technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Literally every other technology that gets used with the web has to interface to…
Comment linking /ditching-jquery
on “Ask HN: Best way to learn HTML and CSS for web design?”Submitted Senior developers create more senior developers as a story · 8 points
HN discussionGreat site! Love the idea. I would love to see the ability to alter the background color. I may also suggest you never default the background to pure black. https://gomakethings.com/design-tip-never-use-black/ You will now notice this on most websites you visit. You may also consider adding more sound effects and/or royalty free light background music that can be toggled on/off. Good luck!
Comment linking /design-tip-never-use-black/
on “Show HN: I built a jigsaw puzzle website”Submitted A Web Component UI library for people who love HTML as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSure! :) But I think it's all just about few principles. Elaborated a bit more on them: 1. Tailwind CSS classes extracted with purge-css, all inlined. 2. Favicon inlined, small images (<4kb) inlined. Not sure what’s the best threshold. Here is all https://turboeshop.com/inlinedimages/ is all page in one requests. Meaning two big images that are https://turboeshop.com/fastestpageintheworld/ were inlined - results are…
Comment linking /articles/
on “The mythical “fast” web page”Submitted SPAs were a mistake as a story · 6 points
HN discussionAgreed - the perceived tone of the post is not very convincing. The sibling post ( https://gomakethings.com/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-website-o... ) is also really light on facts. "In many countries around the world, accessibility is a legal requirement." Would have been nice to name a few. AFAIK it's not that clear cut in the US for example. It depends on your industry, your physical presence (judges seem to apply…
Comment linking /theres-no-such-thing-as-a-website-or-web-app-that-doesnt-need-to-be-accessible/
on “Accessibility is the hardest thing for me about making things for the web”Submitted Ditching jQuery book as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI've gone for tabs ever since I realized it helps with accessibility https://gomakethings.com/tabs-are-objectively-better-than-sp... Every developer can control how those tabs are rendered to their preference.
Comment linking /tabs-are-objectively-better-than-spaces/
on “CamelCase vs underscores: Scientific showdown (2011)”Submitted Creating a Semantic Color Palette as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
