Reasons I will not take your "the web is broken" blogpost seriously (non-exhaustive):

- Does not distinguish between different ways of using tools that are designed to be used in multiple ways
- Does not distinguish between tools and their ecosystems (where those are plausibly separate)
- Recommends as the 'solution' some hyped-up novel thing that fails to clearly explain how it actually solves problems better than previous options
- Recommends as the 'solution' some commercial product
- Assumes that anything that is "standard" (usually for a remarkably narrow definition of the term) is automatically qualitatively better
- Recommends as the 'solution' some sort of strange infrastructure design that seems conveniently designed to fit one specific service provider (looking at you, Netlify)
- Does not recognize or understand the reason that "web apps" exist, and that that is a separate consideration from what web *sites* should look and work like
- Suggests replacing technologies that have nothing to do with the problem being described (usually HTTP is the victim there)

Seriously, there are so many valid criticisms to make, and so many possible paths forward. Do better, people.

Also yes, I have encountered every single one of these in the wild, repeatedly

Here, have a starter pack of *valid* criticisms to make about the web instead:

1. Standards development is, de facto, controlled by Google; because they are the only implementor with any serious weight to throw around anymore
2. The web development industry, like the broader software development industry, has a serious problem with susceptibility to hype; technology choices are almost entirely marketing-driven
3. Individual developers (again, like the rest of the software industry), especially the well-off and privileged ones, often feel no responsibility whatsoever for the accessibility and effects of what they build
4. The incentives in designing libraries and frameworks are such that it is always more appealing to develop a monolithic difficult-to-maintain framework, even though that is technologically the worst choice; because it gives you a clearly brandable and marketable unit rather than a forgettable tool in the toolbox
5. The educational pathways for web development are almost entirely controlled by large tech corporations (directly or indirectly), and serve as "potential future employee" training courses rather than genuine in-depth education

You will notice that the common factor is "capitalism and kyriarchy", and not "javascript"

Want to bet that the reason for bloggers etc. constantly blaming "javascript" and "frameworks" and whatnot for the demise of the web, is that talking about the *actual* reason would violate their "no politics in technology" ideology?

@joepie91 The only justifiable reason for complaining about the overuse of javascript and frameworks is that website front-ends should be as lean and performant as possible for the benefit of users on dodgy mobile or super overpriced metered connections.

A bad/slow connection should never be the reason a front-end degrades to barely usable simply because an obscene amount of AJAX requests timeout and fail. >..>

@dragonarchitect Oh, certainly. But unfortunately a lot of the criticisms that *seem* to be that on the surface, actually aren't that either - because there are plenty of ways to use JS responsibly that aren't taken into account in them.

Some cases I've seen people unjustifiedly extend that criticism to:
- Server-side JS (doesn't affect client at all)
- Progressively-enhanced JS (doesn't have the problems)
- Use of UI/state management libraries (including but not limited to React) for things that *need* client-side state, like soft-realtime applications
- Use of JS in narrowly-defined ways where it is verified(!) to improve the situation over a non-JS implementation

Certainly most real-world use of client-side JS is inappropriate, because capitalism, but these sorts of cases *do* actually exist, they *are* actually valid and they *do* actually need to be separated out from the criticism, and most people just don't :/

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@dragonarchitect I guess the whole thing summarizes as "throwing the baby out with the bathwater", to sometimes a religious degree

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