Top all-time · #1084
Zach Leatherman
Personal blog · zachleat.com/webwebprogramming
Zach Leatherman's personal blog at zachleat.com covers web and programming. Since 2011, 61 different Hacker News readers have linked it 72 times, most often “A Historical Reference of React Criticism–Zachleat.com”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Zach Leatherman's posts on web font loading and performance, plus his critiques of React and web components. They are valued as practical references on fonts and as a detailed case against React.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A web development blog written by @zachleat.
Most-linked posts?
- A Historical Reference of React Criticism–Zachleat.com9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2023-02-06
- A Comprehensive Guide to Font Loading Strategies3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-07-14
- Use Speedlify to continuously measure site performance3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-07-01
- Netlify is no longer sponsoring full-time development on 11ty3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-06-20
- The many definitions of Server-Side Rendering2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-23
- Lazy Loading Web Fonts Is Probably Not What You Want2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-12-03
- Which Static Site Generator Builds Markdown the Fastest?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-12
- A Front End Engineer’s Manifesto2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-09-03
- Netlify's disingenuous survey-based attack on Next.js (and eleventy, too)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-12-19
- The Sneaky Costs of Scaling Serverless2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-08-11
What Hacker News says?
Websites were much more varied and creative in the jQuery era, and even more so in the Flash era that came before. Different interaction paradigms, wild animations, full-screen effects, etc etc. Not necessarily "better", but React didn't really enable anything we couldn't have before - even today when real performance is required you will resort to canvas/webgl, alternative rendering approaches and skipping react's…
Comment linking /web/react-criticism/
on “React is winning by default and slowing innovation”Submitted Never write your own date parsing library as a story · 265 points
HN discussionHmm, I just did a search for web fonts with data URIs In this article: https://www.zachleat.com/web/web-font-data-uris/ mr. Leatherman advises against (because of the bulkiness of web fonts blocking rendering for too long) but he has not taken into account rolling your own custom mini-font with just the glyphs you need. So I think your idle musing may indeed have merit! Perhaps those more knowledgeable and preferabl…
Comment linking /web/web-font-data-uris/
on “Self-host your fonts for better performance”Submitted Trailing slashes on URLs: Contentious or settled? as a story · 95 points
HN discussionIt's not very common. If you want to learn more about fonts on the web, this is an excellent resource: https://www.zachleat.com/web/comprehensive-webfonts
Comment linking /web/comprehensive-webfonts
on “How Stripe Designs Websites (2017)”Submitted A Comprehensive Guide to Font Loading Strategies as a story · 67 points
HN discussionCertainly! Here's a good start (React is the main focus, but it extends to many other frameworks) https://infrequently.org/2024/11/if-not-react-then-what/ (there's MUCH more at this site as well) https://www.zachleat.com/web/react-criticism/
Comment linking /web/react-criticism/
on “Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps”Submitted Font Loading Checklist as a story · 23 points
HN discussionThere have been many that have hit the front page over the years. If you're not aware of a technology's shortcomings then you're a bad proponent of said technology. They're also almost the antithesis of what the HTMX crowd also preaches as "the one true way" and meanwhile, Wordpressers will continue developing the majority of the world's websites blissfully unaware that either technology even exists. https://dev.to/…
Comment linking /web/good-bad-web-components/
on “Lit: a library for building fast, lightweight web components”Submitted BigText Makes Text Big, a Typography jQuery Plugin as a story · 14 points
HN discussionZach Leatherman has my favorite hamburger menu implementation on his homepage: https://zachleat.com
Comment linking /
on “Using hamburger menus? Try sausage links (2019)”Submitted The Art of Deception, Lighthouse score edition as a story · 11 points
HN discussionhttps://www.zachleat.com/web/glyphhanger/
Comment linking /web/glyphhanger/
on “Faster web fonts”Submitted A Front End Engineer’s Manifesto as a story · 6 points
HN discussionAll you really need to do to get a 100 perf score is to cut out any unused elements, only load the CSS you need, load any JS you need as late as possible (defer the <script> at least), and optimize your fonts and images. If you're using a decent host that has a point of presence fairly close to where Lighthouse is running then you should get a decent score. My own website has a 4x100 Lighthouse score. If you're inte…
Comment linking /web/speedlify/
on “Getting Postmark’s Lighthouse Performance Score to 100”Submitted Netlify is no longer sponsoring full-time development on 11ty as a story · 5 points
HN discussionPlease read the associated blog post that went along with the site. http://www.zachleat.com/web/manifesto/ "I’ve been reluctant to share the slides because I certainly don’t want developers to take them as dogmatic truth. Rather, I’d love for people to see a forest using trees they’ve planted themselves." Certainly scrolling could be improved. I'll definitely look into improving the performance. I honestly had no id…
Comment linking /web/manifesto/
on “A Front End Engineer's Manifesto”Submitted The Sneaky Costs of Scaling Serverless as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis is a better and more concrete example of the point made in the article: - https://www.zachleat.com/web/details-utils The `details-utils` component enhances the behavior of the built-in HTML `detail` component. If for any reason you have JavaScript disabled, then using a web component like this would be just fine because the `detail` component would continue to behave like it always does. If you have JS enabled…
Comment linking /web/details-utils
on “HTML Web Components”Submitted An Attempted Taxonomy of Web Components as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI think anyone who is going to listen to a react critique has already heard it. For those looking for a more in-depth critique of react, this article looks good: https://www.zachleat.com/web/react-criticism/ Although that focuses more on the objective legal and performance issues, if anyone can recommend something focusing more on architectural and developer ergonomics issues I'd love to see it.
Comment linking /web/react-criticism/
on “Htmx is far far better than ReactJS”Submitted I’m Taking Ownership of My Tweets (2019) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionyeah check out https://front-end.social - some popular front end dev accounts: https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs https://social.lol/@db https://front-end.social/@piccalilli https://mastodon.social/@davatron5000 https://indieweb.social/@addyosmani https://front-end.social/@jensimmons https://mastodon.social/@adactio https://zachleat.com/@zachleat https://front-end.social/@rem https://front-end.social/@chriscoyi…
Comment linking /@zachleat
on “Ask HN: Where do all the web devs talk?”Submitted A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO FONT LOADING STRATEGIES as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSee the related post by Zach Leatherman, https://www.zachleat.com/web/jamstack-future
Comment linking /web/jamstack-future
on “Future of Jamstack Survey”Submitted All of my 300 browser tabs are beautiful as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Defaulting on Single Page Applications as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted A tiny bit-O-CSS for Stable Scrollbar Gutters as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Want to Intercept Boolean Coercion for Objects in JavaScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Eleventy v3.0.0 is now available as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
