And desktop “apps”
Half of them are just fancy electron javascript websites
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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I mean, this post makes no valid argument against JavaScript, there’s no benchmarks or anything aside from an opinion.
I don’t personally like webdev and don’t like to code in JavaScript, but there are good and bad web applications out there, just like any software.
A single page can send out hundreds or even thousands of API requests just to load, eating up CPU and RAM.
The author seems to know the real problem, so I don’t know why they’re blaming it on JavaScript.
Because only JS is able to do that in a web browser. Everything else is just a dependency tree.
That's not necessarily special to JS. It's special to client-side code. A mobile app writing in swift could do this. A cli tool written in any language could do this.
This isn't an argument against JS, it's an argument against misuse of client resources.
edited my comment to include the excruciatingly obvious assumption.
Neglects to mention some of the slowness is real-time ad auctions.
People use the internet without adblockers?
I don't use the internet with less than a hazmat suit.
Surprisingly, yes. I'm flabbergasted every time someone says, "I'm tired of these ads. I'm going to download an adblocker. Got any recommendations?"
Normies do. They vastly outnumber the "barely computer literate"
Article is correct but kind of low effort. Web slow from too much JS and self serving framework vendors, got it.
Most of the web now is like that article.
AI has a role in turning pages and pages of text into one sentence.
It took me 3 hours to think and write that article. Maybe you wouldn't call it AI generated if it was actually AI generated.
I appreciate you taking time out to write that. I enjoyed reading it, I think what the parent comment was trying to offer as criticism is that it ended sort of abruptly. I was hoping for a couple more paragraphs on either examples of modern sites or platforms that don’t overly rely on js or a way for end users to use these sites loading only the bare minimum js.
I could just google that information but I was enjoying your point of view. Anyway that’s just my 2 cents
Thanks! You're right, I should have given some examples like reddit.com is too slow on low end hardware, and how amazon.com loads faster than aliexpress.com for not relying too much on JavaScript. But I thought anyone could 'sense' which website has more javascript, but I was wrong.
AI has a role in turning pages and pages of text into one sentence.
Right now it's generally used the other way round.
Much like conservatives think someone who talks a lot with conviction is right.
Only if what they're saying is bigoted or a scam.
How current web developers no longer knowing what graceful degradation is ruining the web
Oh the author is here. Thank you for the article.
Here are some of my thoughts of some of your points as professional web developer for startups to some of the biggest companies in the world.
Your first point of developers getting dependent on a framework or library doesn't really matter. Look at the average developer's resume with 6 years of experience. They have a lot of things listed because this is what the culture is. We have to learn or miss the opportunity working for a company that uses React rather than Angular.
Besides a professional setting, learning the new hip thing and talking about why it sucks, is programming culture and human nature.
I think this topic can be its own article especially since any contribution to open source even if it from corpos, is not bad to me but moving on.
what I am going to write next is what good web architects do. I am not saying they all do this.
Web architects look at stats of their current users or target users. They have to find a balance of server performance and user experience. Some even have a list of old devices just to test out the results to make a decision on what devices should be excluded.
You showed a video of old tech using the internet now. Some of those devices are less powerful than Raspberry Pis now. Those devices aren't even meant to handle a flat high res image. Also this is rare. Should a company spend thousand of dollars for every unique User Agent they get? No, especially since those are easily spoofed.
You are right about some sites slowing down because of JS but a lot of those, like on your own website which uses a lot of Google code, use code to stream a video in tiny bits. It makes the experience of the user a lot better. It takes a lot of logic to predict how many chunks video a user will use at a given time. I definitely wouldn't wait for a 50 mb video to stutter and load on website.
Other examples like infinite scrolling aka doom scrolling. Social media use lazy loading for images an videos. Try shoving hundreds videos and high res images with sound on a page. It would be horrendous for the user. People would log off. Say what you want about doom scrolling, but it does its job keeping users on the page.
If you want to blame Javascript, you should also blame browsers since they run the code. Firefox is at version 135. Version 1 was less than 9 mb. Version 25 is at 45 mb. Version 50 is at 82 mb. Version 100 is at 121 mb. Version 135 is at 151 mb. You want to look at slow downs, make sure you have enough RAM is run the apps you are using.
I enjoy this topic and would enjoy what you think about what I wrote. Again, than you for posting.
NoScript ftw
Great now nothing works 🫠
You're welcome.
Give a hoot! Read a book!
Has saved my life. I find myself disabling it for an entire tab several times per day to do things like make a purchase or log in, but I'd still rather that than not have it on the rest of the sites.
Yeah even if you do that you can at least see the huge list of crazy scripts any given site is running. News sites are just amazing how they throw the kitchen sink at any visitors.
I like NoScript but I miss the old XUL version of NoScript. :(
I found htmx the other day looks like a good fix for most of the js bullshit
I got bad news for you… htmx is written in JavaScript.
Yeah but I'd rather 1 piece of js instead of 6000
Yeah I was being a little sarcastic. I agree that using a single lightweight framework is ideal.
Runtime js for rendering your page is still bad for performance of course. Best to use static html where possible.
It is pretty great. We use it throughout PieFed if you're interested in a working example.