I wish that it did actually break the web so I didn't have to see this same dumbass article every two weeks
seriously. add to it the endless streams of comment in the same vein every time something related to frontend development is announced
JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
11–20 of 171 posts
Re: JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
#12Saying JS broke the web when your website loads 754kB of JS across 13 separate requests makes me wonder if you're very serious about the problem.
Well, it's just wordpress and captcha can only be done in js (half the requests).
Re: JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
#13Saying JS broke the web when your website loads 754kB of JS across 13 separate requests makes me wonder if you're very serious about the problem.
[dead]
Re: JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
#14> The result?
Broken back buttons.
Image bloat.
Inaccessible markup.
URLs that don’t behave like URLs.
Metadata that disappears.
Content you can’t copy.
Buttons you can’t keyboard to.
Modals that trap you.
Scroll positions that reset for no reason.
Headlines that shift mid-read.
Analytics that don’t match reality.
Preview environments that lie.
And pages that load… eventually.
--
None of that is the fault of Javascript, it's on the people building them. I'm pretty sure in an alternate universe of no JS, we would see the same articles but about the horrible user experiences of full HTML or native apps.
Re: JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
#15I often see people say “JS is unstable,you’re always rewriting your code for the latest and greatest framework” and I always wonder where do you work? If I told the people I report to I can’t deliver that for you because we’re rewriting the app, I’d be out of the door soon.
The JS ecosystem is like any technology ecosystem, things change over time but you don’t have to chase the trends, be pragmatic about what you follow and trust me your life will be golden.
Re: JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
#16Saying JS broke the web when your website loads 754kB of JS across 13 separate requests makes me wonder if you're very serious about the problem.
Well, it's just wordpress and captcha can only be done in js (half the requests).
This is the 'no true Scotsman' argument.
"Websites that use JS are terrible and broken."
"Your website uses a ton of JS."
"JS is fine in my case. It's all those other websites that are broken!"
You can implement a captcha without JS. You don't need jQuery or jQuery-migrate in 2025. The site is using Quill for some typography tweaks that could mostly be done in CSS.
FWIW I don't think there's anything wrong with the way the site is built. It looks nice. It loads pretty fast. JS is great - it enables a bunch of capabilities for things that you can't do on a web page without it, and if you're looking for something very specific or hugely interactive it's essential. But I can make that argument because I'm not saying JS is bad. If you say JS is bad and you use it anyway for things you don't really need you're undermining your own point quite a lot.
Re: JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
#17>This isn’t evolution. It’s self-inflicted complexity. And we’ve normalised it – because somewhere along the way, we started building websites for developers, not for users.
We started building websites for the marketing department, not developers or users.
Re: JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
#18> The result? Broken back buttons. Image bloat. Inaccessible markup. URLs that don’t behave like URLs. Metadata that disappears. Content you can’t copy. Buttons you can’t keyboard to. Modals that trap you. Scroll positions that reset for no reason. Headlines that shift mid-read. Analytics that don’t match reality. Preview environments that lie. And pages that load… eventually. -- None of that is the fault of Javascri…
Javascript is a platform that gave developers the ability to modify the core UX of web browsers. That's a platform problem, not a builders problem - if you don't want crappy apps on the web that break things, then don't give developers the power to break things.
Re: JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
#19JavaScript is named JavaScript because it was intended to "bridge browser and Java applets"
if you read all the old press releases, they try to push the Java applet connection a lot.
The original plan was to run Java applets everywhere and JavaScript as a "glue". I think we are much better off now than with Java applets. It could have been much, much worse.
Re: JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
#20Saying JS broke the web when your website loads 754kB of JS across 13 separate requests makes me wonder if you're very serious about the problem.
You are being generous, most sites ships at least few MB of JS garbage.