I'd rather attribute that to ads, especially terrible ones that cause page reflow, than just javascript.
Page reflow is nothing compared to es flying on top of the thanks to some overengineered JS code.
JavaScript growth and third parties
11–20 of 77 posts
Re: JavaScript growth and third parties
#12I don't understand why JavaScript is so ubiquitous now. There seem to be very few cases where it is actually necessary and useful (e.g. a calculator form that does computations client side that would otherwise overwhelm the server). I am constantly surprised at the number of sites that should be totally static (e.g. a local restaurant's menu page) that display nothing at all when I visit with JavaScript disabled. Can…
It tends to be things like trackers that report back what browser versions, supported plugins, cookies for directed adverts.
Re: JavaScript growth and third parties
#13Google Mail feels like it's transmitting over a 57.6k modem these days. If developers at Google can't make fast JavaScript front ends, what are the odds that an average front end developer can?
To be fair, Google for years have been perfect examples of developers that can't optimize to save their life. Virtually every other site is faster than any of their sites.
Re: JavaScript growth and third parties
#14Fixed:
Ad-tracking libraries is the main cause for making websites slow
Re: JavaScript growth and third parties
#15EDIT: The HN title changed so I don't know if this comment is relevant anymore. That sounds like saying "living is the leading cause of death". I mean, I don't particularly like JS, but it seems like we decided long ago that plain documents and links won't cut it. Everything, apparently, needs to be a rich web application with huge images and a gazillion of ads. Why is that Javascript's fault?
It is entirely possible to build rich web apps with very small size. As shown in the article, the main source of bloat are 3rd party scripts: ads, tracking, metrics, retargeting, security...
Re: JavaScript growth and third parties
#16I don't understand why JavaScript is so ubiquitous now. There seem to be very few cases where it is actually necessary and useful (e.g. a calculator form that does computations client side that would otherwise overwhelm the server). I am constantly surprised at the number of sites that should be totally static (e.g. a local restaurant's menu page) that display nothing at all when I visit with JavaScript disabled. Can…
It may not be functionally necessary from the user's perspective, but much of this JavaScript is included because of the business model of the publisher. It has a function, even though it's not a function that's visible to the user.
Re: JavaScript growth and third parties
#17I don't understand why JavaScript is so ubiquitous now. There seem to be very few cases where it is actually necessary and useful (e.g. a calculator form that does computations client side that would otherwise overwhelm the server). I am constantly surprised at the number of sites that should be totally static (e.g. a local restaurant's menu page) that display nothing at all when I visit with JavaScript disabled. Can…
A wild guess is that these days the developers tend to specialise along the front/back end line. So a user-facing Web interface of any kind is usually assigned to front-end developers, which is now mostly synonymous with "Javascript developer", or even more specifically "React/Angular/etc developer" (just like on the back end side we commonly have Django/RoR/Magento/etc developers").
I used to be a full-stack developers, trying to balance my apps/pages just right between the server and browser side. But lately it's much easier to just focus on building APIs and let the front-end devs deal with all the interaction, forms and other user-facing stuff.
Re: JavaScript growth and third parties
#18Google Mail feels like it's transmitting over a 57.6k modem these days. If developers at Google can't make fast JavaScript front ends, what are the odds that an average front end developer can?
It's 6MB (closer to 7 if you round it).
Re: JavaScript growth and third parties
#19I don't understand why JavaScript is so ubiquitous now. There seem to be very few cases where it is actually necessary and useful (e.g. a calculator form that does computations client side that would otherwise overwhelm the server). I am constantly surprised at the number of sites that should be totally static (e.g. a local restaurant's menu page) that display nothing at all when I visit with JavaScript disabled. Can…
> I am constantly surprised at the number of sites that should be totally static (e.g. a local restaurant's menu page) that display nothing at all when I visit with JavaScript disabled.
I am constantly surprised at the number of people that explicitly disable JavaScript to make their lives difficult in 2018.
My point is, JavaScript makes it easy to build nice websites at scale. Plenty of CMS platforms (like Wix.com) use JavaScript by default.
If 99.9999999% of people are fine with JavaScript, then why should a website cater to your need by providing a version specific to people who disable JavaScript?
Re: JavaScript growth and third parties
#20EDIT: The HN title changed so I don't know if this comment is relevant anymore. That sounds like saying "living is the leading cause of death". I mean, I don't particularly like JS, but it seems like we decided long ago that plain documents and links won't cut it. Everything, apparently, needs to be a rich web application with huge images and a gazillion of ads. Why is that Javascript's fault?
It's not the fault of JavaScript the language, but JavaScript as the name we give to the parts of a web page that are not HTML and not CSS.
And it's not really "living is the leading cause of death"; most of that JavaScript is superfluous garbage - ad scripts, trackers, bloated frameworks. You don't need this for a page to serve a socially useful purpose. You just need someone in your company with enough clout, who's willing to say, "out of respect for our users and for engineering as a practice, we will not partake in the latest iteration of the insanity that is the modern web".