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   Alex Russell (slightlyoff@toot.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 01:37:14 JST Alex Russell

   A decade ago, a tribe of JS partisans took the web by the reins, forked HTML and JS syntax, and yeeted userland abstractions into the critical path because "a better user experience".

   This was premised on the idea that everyone's CPUs/networks would get faster the way their top-end phones did.

   They could not have been more wrong.

   JS-first web development has been a planetary-scale exercise in the rich making life harder for the less well-off.

   https://httparchive.org/reports/state-of-javascript#bytesJs

   https://infrequently.org/2022/12/performance-baseline-2023/

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     Alex Russell (slightlyoff@toot.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 01:38:10 JST Alex Russell

     in reply to

     Ever since, the frontend community has poured its investment and attention into minor permutations of the same 2008-browser-centric frameworks and approaches.

     It isn't working. We lost an entire decade on one great branch mispredict. The trends that used to deliver for "everyone" only continued for the rich.

     For the rest, Moore's Law meant first-time access through hand-me-down CPUs and networks as prices fell. 2014's A53 Core still shows up in new budget phones today.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Alex Russell (slightlyoff@toot.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 01:38:11 JST Alex Russell

     in reply to

     There have, of course, been good reasons to lean on userland abstraction – Safari sandbagged platform advancement, much the way IE6 used to – but repeated warnings didn't cause a change in developer behaviour.

     The pushback to this sitrep in 2016 was *furious*:

     https://youtu.be/4bZvq3nodf4?si=A7MLssnnn-GKnv8c

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     Alex Russell (slightlyoff@toot.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 01:39:01 JST Alex Russell

     in reply to

     Anyway, just a reminder to hire people to solve problems with HTML and CSS, not too make them with JS.

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     Alex Russell (slightlyoff@toot.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 01:39:02 JST Alex Russell

     in reply to

     These folks can't be serious thought leaders because they aren't in touch with reality outside the privilege bubble.

     It's fine to ignore them. They haven't been right for a decade, and I think that's long enough.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: repeated this.
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     Alex Russell (slightlyoff@toot.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 01:39:03 JST Alex Russell

     in reply to

     But world-historically rich programmers didn't want to hear about it, and browsers let them get away with UX murder.

     Frontend's Lost Decade is now a threat to the value of the web to businesses and users. A collective failure to cap JS emissions that has destroyed value at shocking scale:

     https://infrequently.org/2023/02/the-market-for-lemons/

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     Alex Russell (slightlyoff@toot.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 05-Dec-2023 01:39:03 JST Alex Russell

     in reply to

     None of this is new, and none of the bad effects have abated at scale enough to relax. New projects are still being started on react and angular. The JS emitters have no shame because they largely don't think they did anything wrong.

     Something something "interactivity" (for rich users) something something.