Re:Show HN: NimForum – A lightweight alternative to Discourse
by beagle3 on Saturday May 26, 2018 @11:43AM
(#17162613)
For sure, the new version is much more aesthetically pleasing and (if JS is enabled) at least as functional. I wasn't trying to criticize anything, just point it out as a matter of fact. I think it's a good decision too, even though I generally like non-js sites. Did you verify that Google and DuckDuckGo manage to index the forum topics? That would be my concern, much more than the "no JS, lame" crowd.
Every programming language forum has, in about 80% of the answers including a code sample, a disclaimer of the ".. or something like this, I didn't actually try to run it" -- and usually the answer also has a type, missing import/include, etc - which makes it less useful for newbies, even though it's usually helpful enough to more experienced users.
The only languages for this isn't true (that I've seen) are the APL/J/K family, where a complete working answer is usually 2-3 lines so people try it in a console before posting; and Nim since you introduced the "run" button to the older forum.
I've thought about continuing the non-SPA nature of the original forum, but with Araq's new Karax framework being available I couldn't resist using it (and of course Araq really wanted me to as well). Even though the forum doesn't run without JS I do still think this was a good decision. In the long run we can probably render the page on the server side, because the front end is written in Nim this should be fairly simple.