Top all-time · #1808
Paul Lewis
Personal blog · aerotwist.comwebprogramming
Paul Lewis writes Aerotwist Blog, a personal blog at aerotwist.com about web and programming. Since 2011, 43 different Hacker News readers have linked it 57 times, most often “The Anatomy of a Frame (in Chrome)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-01-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- The Anatomy of a Frame (in Chrome)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-02-15
- React Performance3 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2015-07-03
- The Cost of Frameworks3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-11-16
- FLIP Your Animations3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-01-12
- Polymer for the performance obsessed2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-06-15
- The Web Needs Containment2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-12-11
- On translate3d and layer creation hacks2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-03-16
- Slicing SVG 9 Ways2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-08-30
- When everything's important, nothing is2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-12-12
- Case Study: Hitting 60FPS on the mobile web2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-07-02
What Hacker News says?
> There are already many steps taken to improve DOM performance over these years. However, DOM is designed for documents. The performance can never be good enough when it is abused for non-document usage. JavaScript was originally designed for simple tweaks, but we've significantly expanded and improved the language over the years to adjust it for what it's used for *today*. I don't see why DOM is special. Sure it w…
Comment linking /blog/flip-your-animations/
on “Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering”Submitted React Performance as a story · 145 points
HN discussion>Ironically enough considering your rather petty criticism, A lot of your response seems to be emotionally laden. Bad form. >Redux I've been reading about Redux, and as soon as another app project comes along for me to try it out, I'm planning to give it a try. As I've said more than once in this thread, to a large degree my own opinion is still forming on this topic. React does things that feel to me like "bad code…
Comment linking /blog/react-plus-performance-equals-what/
on “What is a coder's worst nightmare? (2014)”Submitted The Cost of Frameworks as a story · 89 points
HN discussionYes I've been "doing my research." I've done everything but write an entire app in React, but I only have so much time. I don't see Angular great either, for what it's worth, so please don't think that I'm holding Angular up as a "better" solution. Both are heavy in the wrong ways. I got roped into using Angular because of its popularity, but I'm actively looking for a more solid and optimized replacement. React sho…
Comment linking /blog/react-plus-performance-equals-what/
on “What is a coder's worst nightmare? (2014)”Submitted Pixels are expensive as a story · 79 points
HN discussionI've heard good things about Mithril performance. I'll need to take a look. Virtual DOM as a panacea may be overrated, though. Maybe React's just isn't fast enough, but if you use another way to keep track of what parts of the DOM to change, simply pushing things into the DOM can be WAY faster than using a Virtual DOM. [1] Cycle.JS still hits my "HTML in code BAD" reaction. An example from the front page: .map(name…
Comment linking /blog/react-plus-performance-equals-what/
on “What is a coder's worst nightmare? (2014)”Submitted Slicing SVG 9 Ways as a story · 30 points
HN discussionUntil you hit something the framework wasn't design to do (which happens 100% of the time in my experience). Now you're working for the framework instead of it working for you. This guy said it better: “Frameworks invert control. They control the lifecycle of the app, and give you entry points where your code runs. You’re still responsible for the final code, but you’re not in control.” https://aerotwist.com/blog/th…
Comment linking /blog/the-cost-of-frameworks/
on “PHP 7 Released”Submitted When everything's important, nothing is as a story · 15 points
HN discussionCurrently to make it work you have to run it locally after downloading from github: https://github.com/maroslaw/rainyday.js In Firefox it runs fine at the beginning but then the fps decreases (running in 1920x1200), in Chrome it's "better" because it seems to use both CPU cores fully on a dual core while Firefox uses only one. Anyways it should use the GPU more (using WebGL) and not so much the CPUs, but i understan…
Comment linking /tutorials/an-introduction-to-shaders-part-1/
on “Rainyday.js”Submitted How JavaScript frameworks prioritize component booting as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> but I can't think of an application that wouldn't be well suited to React. A truly complex app where speed is crucial. [0] Like Atom. [1] [0] https://aerotwist.com/blog/react-plus-performance-equals-wha... [1] https://github.com/atom/atom/pull/5624
Comment linking /blog/react-plus-performance-equals-what/
on “React Makes You Sad?”Submitted The Cost of Frameworks as a story · 6 points
HN discussionOne of the primary selling points of React is better performance of the virtual DOM, which apparently has no prove in benchmarks [1]. [1] https://aerotwist.com/blog/react-plus-performance-equals-wha...
Comment linking /blog/react-plus-performance-equals-what/
on “React Color – Color Pickers from Sketch, Photoshop, Chrome and More”Submitted Don't Guess it, Test it: improving site and app performance as a story · 5 points
HN discussionA lot of people are complaining about putting this into CSS, but I think that people are forgetting that using null transform hacks[0] is already the status quo for making animated elements more performant. What this property does is lets us continue doing the same thing, but in a way that the intent is clear ("I'm using this property to make the animation on this element more performant" vs. "I want to add a transf…
Comment linking /blog/on-translate3d-and-layer-creation-hacks/
on “Everything You Need to Know About the CSS will-change Property”Submitted CORS: A Problem with Web Apps, a Boon for Native as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis smells like a shill piece by a Google developer advocate [1] with a horse in the race [2]. The key benefit of React is an extremely low cognitive load. There are only three simple concepts to grok (props, state and lifecycle) to get productive. The code is very easy to reason about (components are essentially pure functions of props and state) and debugging is much simpler than with vanilla JS or jQuery on a pr…
Comment linking /blog/polymer-for-the-performance-obsessed/
on “React Performance”Submitted The Anatomy of a Frame (in Chrome) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI tend to learn best by example, so I learnt from; https://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/ http://learningthreejs.com/ https://aerotwist.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-three-j... There are a few books about WebGL but the tech moves so fast they're largely out of date already. There's a tutorial series on Youtube too if that's your thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fg93FzfamU&list=PLOGomoq5sD...
Comment linking /tutorials/getting-started-with-three-js/
on “Live-Coding Blender with Hy”Submitted BigRig web performance analysis dashboard and tools as a story · 3 points
HN discussionOr code it is as a vertex-shader to run on the GPU. https://aerotwist.com/tutorials/an-introduction-to-shaders-p...
Comment linking /tutorials/an-introduction-to-shaders-part-1/
on “Show HN: Monkberry – a JavaScript library for building web user interfaces”Submitted CSS Triggers [blog post] as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSee also "Inside Look At Modern Web Browser" series: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/09/inside-bro... And "Anatomy Of A Frame": https://aerotwist.com/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-frame/ Also "Inside A Super Fast CSS Engine: Quantum CSS (AKA Stylo)": https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/08/inside-a-super-fast-css-en... If you dig around chromium.org you can find lots of details about Chromium's guts, too.
Comment linking /blog/the-anatomy-of-a-frame/
on “How Browsers Work (2012)”Submitted Dart: on its merits as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThere are more WebGL and other experiments on the same site: http://aerotwist.com/lab/
Comment linking /lab/
on “WebGL demo of easing equations running on the GPU”Submitted The Web Needs Containment as a story · 3 points
HN discussionCan't believe I never saw this set. I was a bit of a collector of these "how browsers work" resources for a while. I can remember these off top-of-head; what am I forgetting? * https://developer.chrome.com/blog/inside-browser-part1/ * https://developer.chrome.com/blog/inside-browser-part2/ * https://developer.chrome.com/blog/inside-browser-part3/ * https://developer.chrome.com/blog/inside-browser-part4/ * https://ae…
Comment linking /blog/the-anatomy-of-a-frame/
on “Populating the page: how browsers work”Submitted Hello, Blink as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
