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Comment by laxatives | Hacker News Reader

Everyone is going nuts about the presentation/scrolling/UI of worrydream, but they are missing out on the goldmine of what he's actually been working on: http://worrydream.com/#!/Showreel2012

Its absolutely insane someone could be that productive in 2 years. A lot of the ideas in that showreel are incredible. Yeah many of them probably don't work, but I saw dozens of new interactions that don't exist anywhere else. Plus the demo is >4 years old. That's amazing.

His CV has the following quote: “One of the greatest user interface design minds in the world today.” — Alan Kay

People are obsessed with getting immediate gratification and have little to no attention span these days.

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It's not a demand for instant gratification so much as a demand for functional websites. The page was so weighed down by javascript bloat that it lagged on my phone when trying to scroll. I gave up in disgust and never made it to the allegedly-awesome showreel.

I'd certainly never hire that guy based on my first impression, which is that he doesn't value performant code.

Honestly, this guy is a genius. And people can't get over that their scroll wheel doesn't work on a website that hasn't been updated in half a decade.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

That's the point.

If a genius can't make a tricky personal website without breaking things, what chance do normal people have?

Just make a normal website.

Brett Victor is awesome. If you copy his website, you're learning exactly the wrong lessons from him.

In the context of a showcase website, first impressions matter. You want the work to be front and center. Not the fact that you can't design a usable website.

To a degree. Sometimes it's OK for the user to have to put a modicum of effort in, especially for something which is not a product or service.

Where "a modicum of effort" is have a specific type of machine?

The thing that got to me about how amazing his website was is how many of his sites I've actually seen, used and been impressed with that were all built by him.

I also honestly can't say I've faced the usage issues other people have. It was a pleasure to look through a bunch of his stuff and I actually kept on looking for fun.

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