[reaperducer]

331K transferred. Less than 1K of actual readable text.

In the about section, the author brags about using Sketch, Gulp, SASS, Nunjucks, and a third-party font. Seriously? He couldn't have just envisioned that thing in his head and put it straight to code?

[LeifCarrotson]

It's actually 1.3kB of text. Here's the entire contents of the page, for anyone else who can't read the original. Clicking on each entry brings you to a page with the same text and a Wikipedia quote on the origins of the law and a couple sources for further reading:

1. Fitts's Law: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.

2. Hick's Law: The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.

3. Jakob's Law: Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.

4. Law of Prägnanz: People will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images as the simplest form possible, because it is the interpretation that requires the least cognitive effort of us.

5. Law of Proximity: Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together.

6. Miller's Law: The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.

7. Parkinson's Law: Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent.

8. Serial Position Effect: Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a series.

9. Tesler's Law: Tesler's Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced.

10. Von Restorff Effect: The Von Restorff effect, also known as The Isolation Effect, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered.

[TeMPOraL]

Basically, the whole contents of this website fits in a average-sized HN comment.

This is what I mean when I say about "toys" vs. "tools", or "designing for sellability" vs. "designing for delivering value". Your version of that site delivers pure value. Anything more than that - like e.g. images vaguely related to content - is just wasting user's attention, bandwidth, compute and power bill.

[Jugurtha]

Law/Effect:

1. Fitts: The distance to and size of a target dictate the time to acquire it.

2. Hick: The number and complexity of choices increase the time to make a decision.

3. Jakob: Users prefer your site to work similarly to sites they know.

4. Prägnanz: People exert the least cognitive effort to interpret complex images.

5. Proximity: Proximate objects are grouped.

6. Miller: The average person can only keep 7 +/- 2 items in their working memory.

7. Parkinson: A task's duration matches its allocated time.

8. Serial Position: Users best remember the first and last items in a series.

9. Tesler (aka "Conservation of Complexity"): A system has irreducible complexity.

10. Von Restorff (aka "Isolation"): What stands out is remembered best.

[mikewhy]

> He couldn't have just envisioned that thing in his head and put it straight to code?

That's a pretty snobby thing to say. So what they needed to design something in Sketch. So what they used Sass and Gulp.

If you're deriding someone for using a tool to help them with something, can you be derided for using a napkin to sketch an algorithm or something?

[Kalium]

I believe the author is being derided for being inefficient to the tune of 33000% or so.

It's like buying 300-some-odd napkins and a similar number of pens so you can scribble a phone number on one.

[mikewhy]

I'm not so sure, unless it's a total misunderstanding from the person chiding them.

Sketch doesn't add to final size. Neither does Gulp. Sass and Nunjucks might, but it's a website. They tend to need HTML and CSS.

[Kalium]

You're absolutely right! Sketch and Gulp don't add to the final size. And HTML and CSS are needed.

So let's be generous! I'll assume that 4x the core content size (1.3k) is needed for markup and presentation, for a total of 6.5k. Round a bit... that's still 5100% inefficient.

I can see why some might consider that a bit inefficient. Of course, I can also see why some might consider the design the most important part of the site.