Why I'm turning JavaScript off by default

JS in browsers is a blessing and a curse.

Running stuff on clients instead of servers minimizes server load, but all the junk that bad web-devs had loaded onto their servers now gets loaded to the clients.

I'm almost in the same camp as the author. I don't particularly enjoy a lot of the front-end fancy gimmicky that goes on in websites, but at the same time, I do appreciate some of the UX improvements it affords us. Client-side validation makes my life easier, UI elements like sliders and trees are very useful, and so on. What I would like is a middle-ground - NoScript implementation that could switch off JS based on particular client-side events - turn off everything that listens to onScroll and onHashChange, but leave things on input element focus/blur and form submit events for example.

But, as a relatively experienced web developer, I realise that would break pretty much every website ever. Shame really.

Angular and Backbone applications aside, doesn’t this just boil down to bad development and lack of understanding?

I’m a firm believer that the web should be usable with JavaScript disabled, JavaScript is there to add a layer of interactivity to your web page, not core function. All those people that keep coming up to me quoting ‘but everyone has JavaScript enabled’ miss the point - the web needs to be accessible and JavaScript isn't the answer.

You interpreted my drunken rant about the poor user experience of bad client-side scripting as an argument against user experience? Okaaay.

(Many/most) Publishers want to be able to monetize and create complicated sales funnels and all that sort of stuff.

(Many/most) Web users just want to "read a goddam text document".

This tension is unlikely to be resolved.

Of course, some useful things on the web truly are 'apps'. Text isn't, and probably never will be.