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I can only think that modern front end development has failed

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Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#12
post #5

You cant even find a website that passes html validation these days.

I like valid HTML as much as the next guy and try to always write valid HTML myself, but it’s not the be-all-end-all: if Safari, Chrome and Firefox can parse your site 99% of users are happy. No end-user cares if you have charset set on a script that doesn’t have a src attribute, or that you’re technically not supposed to put style tags inside noscript tags.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#14
I recently lost my internet provider, so while I wait for a new one I'm tethering from my phone. The Verizon unlimited data plan actually throttles me to modem speed, about 56k, so it's actually not unlimited. Anyway, it's been interesting to judge various websites by how fast they load at that speed. Hacker News comes right up. Twitter is acceptable. Facebook is terrible and often does not even load at all. The same for any site that uses React. I'm not sure why Facebook uses such a bloated system when they are trying to expand their user base into much of the world that does not have high speed internet.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#15

I don't think that web is slow, unless you're running seriously underpowered computer. That's not the case for me. Web is not as fast as it could be. And that's because customer does not want to pay for fastest website in the world. It should be fast enough and then features matter. You can spend year making your website load in 0.1 second while your competitor will implement important features and his 2-second loadi…

All of that is true until it isn’t. Ask all the stock trading apps how Robinhood out-UXed them. When the out-user-experienceing happens, you pretty much will lose your entire business if you don’t undertake a paradigm shift. Stay ahead of the curve a bit.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#18
post #12
post #5

You cant even find a website that passes html validation these days.

I like valid HTML as much as the next guy and try to always write valid HTML myself, but it’s not the be-all-end-all: if Safari, Chrome and Firefox can parse your site 99% of users are happy. No end-user cares if you have charset set on a script that doesn’t have a src attribute, or that you’re technically not supposed to put style tags inside noscript tags.

The problem is that nobody can create anew browser engine because you not only need to implement all the standards you also need to make your browser work with broken html and work in the same way Chrome and Firefox work.

IMO we would need 2 split the document part from the application part. Have a set of elements and a document format just for blogs and news websites , and more complex components and APIs for application websites. Then you could have a browser that would be more simple that will be enough to browse blogs,forums and news sites and a more complex browser for SPA applications.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#19

I don't think that web is slow, unless you're running seriously underpowered computer. That's not the case for me. Web is not as fast as it could be. And that's because customer does not want to pay for fastest website in the world. It should be fast enough and then features matter. You can spend year making your website load in 0.1 second while your competitor will implement important features and his 2-second loadi…

Most software I use wasn’t written from scratch in the last 10 years. It’s new only in that of people are still maintaining it, but I don’t get to decide what features I want it’s an all or nothing buffet.

On a new an powerful computer most of the web is dog slow. There is no reason most websites should take more than 1/10th of a second from click to fully rendered. Anything past that is simply wasting my time.

Re: I can only think that modern front end development has failed

#20

I don't think that web is slow, unless you're running seriously underpowered computer. That's not the case for me. Web is not as fast as it could be. And that's because customer does not want to pay for fastest website in the world. It should be fast enough and then features matter. You can spend year making your website load in 0.1 second while your competitor will implement important features and his 2-second loadi…

reddit.com is a slow and flickering mess even on my gaming PC. It's the worst example that comes to mind though. But if that same PC can run incredibly complex open world games while simulating (for instance) an aircraft complete with the cockpit and displays driven by emulated onboard computers at 60+ fps, it's not too much to ask the same from a webpage that "just" needs to do text layout and display a couple of images.

Also: it's considerably faster and cheaper to build a fast webpage than to build a slow webpage. I'm quite sure the "new Reddit" was a lot more expensive to build than the "old Reddit".

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