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JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

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Re: JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

#11

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

aliqot wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm just getting old, but Javascript jumped the shark at some point. Hydration, lazy loading, managing flashes of unstyled content, a lot of this is built to address things that wouldn't be problems if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is and not be so dang wasteful. im sure someone with shinier boots than mine will pop in and tell me how im wrong, and perhaps youre right, but the web was a much better…

> if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is

I have no idea what this means. Isn't a dojo a place for learning or meditation? I don't understand how that fits the browser, the internet, or web development.

Re: JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

#13

Post by phailhaus »

aliqot wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm just getting old, but Javascript jumped the shark at some point. Hydration, lazy loading, managing flashes of unstyled content, a lot of this is built to address things that wouldn't be problems if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is and not be so dang wasteful. im sure someone with shinier boots than mine will pop in and tell me how im wrong, and perhaps youre right, but the web was a much better…

"Am I out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong."

This is an old, tired take that boils down to "we should be ashamed for wanting nice things." If only everyone would just accept simple websites like HackerNews! This is backwards, it is user-blaming. It turns out that the web is an incredible platform that has revolutionized the world, and thousands of people have worked hard to build tools that make it easier to develop on. "Web fundamentals" can't give you Google Docs.

Re: JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

#14

Post by waboremo »

aliqot wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm just getting old, but Javascript jumped the shark at some point. Hydration, lazy loading, managing flashes of unstyled content, a lot of this is built to address things that wouldn't be problems if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is and not be so dang wasteful. im sure someone with shinier boots than mine will pop in and tell me how im wrong, and perhaps youre right, but the web was a much better…

Do you have any proposed solutions for the problems that exist? Going back to fundamentals doesn't eradicate the problems, it will only recreate them in a slightly altered state.

One of the most commonly proposed solutions is we keep the web to only static content. Well now we've just shifted all the media-heavy interactive content onto a dedicated app instead of the browser, shifting all the same exact problems onto a new platform instead.

Re: JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

#15

Post by erokar »

aliqot wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm just getting old, but Javascript jumped the shark at some point. Hydration, lazy loading, managing flashes of unstyled content, a lot of this is built to address things that wouldn't be problems if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is and not be so dang wasteful. im sure someone with shinier boots than mine will pop in and tell me how im wrong, and perhaps youre right, but the web was a much better…

I agree with you from a technical standpoint — something created for displaying and navigating between documents is being misused for distributing apps.

At the same time though none other model affords the same distribution, write once run everywhere. No other distribution platform can compete. And users have become accustomed to the web being apps as well as documents. In fact, many have become accustomed to more or less treating their web browser as an OS (or more realistically, not giving the distinction any thought).

Maybe an interesting way forward could be a web model specifically for apps, which of course many would say would be WebAssembly. The HTML/CSS/JS combo has been remarkably successful and resilient though, so I'm not convinced it will be dethroned easily.

Re: JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

#16

Post by morelisp »

phailhaus wrote: post #13
aliqot wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm just getting old, but Javascript jumped the shark at some point. Hydration, lazy loading, managing flashes of unstyled content, a lot of this is built to address things that wouldn't be problems if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is and not be so dang wasteful. im sure someone with shinier boots than mine will pop in and tell me how im wrong, and perhaps youre right, but the web was a much better…

"Am I out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong." This is an old, tired take that boils down to "we should be ashamed for wanting nice things." If only everyone would just accept simple websites like HackerNews! This is backwards, it is user-blaming. It turns out that the web is an incredible platform that has revolutionized the world, and thousands of people have worked hard to build tools that make it easi…

Users don't want this shit, startups do.

Re: JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

#17

Post by zozbot234 »

scrollaway wrote: post #5
aliqot wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm just getting old, but Javascript jumped the shark at some point. Hydration, lazy loading, managing flashes of unstyled content, a lot of this is built to address things that wouldn't be problems if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is and not be so dang wasteful. im sure someone with shinier boots than mine will pop in and tell me how im wrong, and perhaps youre right, but the web was a much better…

> Hydration, lazy loading, managing flashes of unstyled content, a lot of this is built to address things that wouldn't be problems if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is and not be so dang wasteful. What's your point here, exactly? That if random wordpress blogs and recipe websites were less wasteful, the problems these solutions are addressing would not exist? I can make you an extremely non-wasteful weba…

HTML has native support for lazy-loading images these days. No need for added JS.

Re: JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

#18

Post by sopooneo »

aliqot wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm just getting old, but Javascript jumped the shark at some point. Hydration, lazy loading, managing flashes of unstyled content, a lot of this is built to address things that wouldn't be problems if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is and not be so dang wasteful. im sure someone with shinier boots than mine will pop in and tell me how im wrong, and perhaps youre right, but the web was a much better…

I remember when HTML5 and CSS3 were just in the RFC phase and many web developers thought they would make their jobs simpler. Because the things they were being asked to do, for which they were currently creating tortured workarounds, could be done directly with the new standards.

But of course the job did not become simpler. The fixed value turned out not to be what clients would demand, but the quantity of tortured workarounds devs could be enticed to endure.

Re: JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

#19

Post by phailhaus »

morelisp wrote: post #16
phailhaus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Am I out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong." This is an old, tired take that boils down to "we should be ashamed for wanting nice things." If only everyone would just accept simple websites like HackerNews! This is backwards, it is user-blaming. It turns out that the web is an incredible platform that has revolutionized the world, and thousands of people have worked hard to build tools that make it easi…

Users don't want this shit, startups do.

This is an incredibly broad statement based on practically nothing. You don't think it's weird that most of the largest, most successful websites have mountains of tooling and frameworks to help them remain performant and reliable? All these tools either help the user directly, or solve real problems for companies to help them build more quickly.

I also think you grossly overestimate the average user's abilities. They literally cannot tell what is possible and what is not. They don't want simple, they want something to solve everything, as easily as possible.

Re: JavaScript hydration is a workaround, not a solution

#20

Post by swatcoder »

aliqot wrote: post #2

Maybe I'm just getting old, but Javascript jumped the shark at some point. Hydration, lazy loading, managing flashes of unstyled content, a lot of this is built to address things that wouldn't be problems if we treated the browser as the dojo that it is and not be so dang wasteful. im sure someone with shinier boots than mine will pop in and tell me how im wrong, and perhaps youre right, but the web was a much better…

My boots are pretty dusty too, and a web browser isn’t usually how I usually want to engage with a tool or toy.

But the systems architecture model of infinitely beefy backends with simply-adequate thin clients predates both of us. Browsers, the cloud, and all this obnoxious javascript tooling are the contemporary implementation of that and not without reason. They do it pretty well!

Like with any new tool, people get carried away and start using it for things that really don’t need it. I’m with you that most websites don’t need all this stuff and get caught up in it anyway.

But that’ll burn off, and in the meantime, we’ll end up with a rich, mature thin client system for the solutions that need it and that system will be around for decades. No sharks jumped.

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