This team is really something when it comes to transparency.<p>For a government entity, an unreasonably large amount of their work is on GitHub. Examples:<p>Front end design system:
<a href="https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-frontend" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-frontend</a><p>Project board:
<a href="https://github.com/orgs/alphagov/projects/4" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/orgs/alphagov/projects/4</a><p>Requests for comment:
<a href="https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-rfcs" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-rfcs</a><p>Gov.uk infrastructure as code (WIP):
<a href="https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-infrastructure" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-infrastructure</a><p>“The GDS way”: How they work, tech stack, processes, etc
<a href="https://github.com/alphagov/gds-way" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alphagov/gds-way</a><p>“Terraform modules for on-boarding with Cyber Security services eg define the IAM SecurityAudit role”:
<a href="https://github.com/alphagov/cyber-security-shared-terraform-modules" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alphagov/cyber-security-shared-terraform-...</a><p>Full GitHub org with >1,500 repos:
<a href="https://github.com/alphagov" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alphagov</a>
For anyone thinking that this is an insignificant saving of "only" 32kb, it's really important to remember that many of the site's users will be amongst the poorest in society. Many of them will be accessing it using the oldest, slowest devices; things far slower than the average HN reader's last few phones. <i>Anything</i> that can be done make the site work better for them is worth the effort.<p>Terence Eden has a really good blog post about just this topic: <a href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/" rel="nofollow">https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven...</a>
Yes but how much the js-code parts grew because longer scripts length in vanilla javascript? And how much added for another ajax library?
I don't see that using vanilla js instead of jquery gives enough advantage compared to that i have a much more pain writing that frontend code with vanilla.
And specially replacing ajax or get (fetching json) with error handling (no server at all, server error, data not found -cases) is just awful with axios for example.
This article is an excellent “how to” recipe for going about this sort of refactoring, from the importance of training and of getting the backend folks on side, to clever use of attrition (no more jquery in new, then start removing it from old), and identifying sites that still needed it and accommodating them.<p>Seems like a well managed project.<p>(Yes, yes, this could be a very glossed over account that ignores frictions and factions along the way, but I quite enjoy taking it at face value.)