It has been educational to watch the SerenityOS / Ladybird team implement browser features. As they make real websites work, you can see how the technologies for even simple brochure sites have changed. For example, logos may be SVG instead of simple images which makes sense given the range of screen sizes and resolutions that need to be supported.
You can also see that CSS continues to grow but in pragmatic ways that actually reduce the amount of JavaScript to do the kinds of things that users expect these days.
On the performance and capability front front, WASM is a game changer.
Regardless of what JS framework is in vogue, I do not think it is fair to say that we are doing the same thing on the web as we always have or even to say that the base technologies are getting more complex for no reason. At least, it is no more fair than any other programming domain. I mean, we can look at Excel and VisiCalc and say that we are creating the same apps that we always have with more complexity and bloat. I mean, people do say that but there is an awful lot left out of that analysis. Even more so if I compare VisiCalc and Excel via Office365 in a browser.
Regular people are routinely accomplishing far more with their computers than they have in the past. More and more of that is being done in web browsers.
> Regardless of what JS framework is in vogue, I do not think it is fair to say that we are doing the same thing on the web as we always have or even to say that the base technologies are getting more complex for no reason.
Certainly. The things you can do on the web have vastly increased, but the things we actually are doing are mostly the same. Read some text, make an account, login, submit a form, make a payment, upload a file. That's what the vast majority of the web has been and still is, yet the path you take to get there is many times more complex and the user experience hasn't proportionally gotten that much better. Arguably, it's gotten worse.
Well, I think you can break it into two parts. I see the underlying tech getting better, making it easier, and making it faster. Look at the HTML dialogue element as an example.
So, “the path you take to get there” CAN be much improved as a developer.
Now, as a user, you may find that sites that could be simpler are much heavier and complex than you want them to be. My question is why? My argument is that both users and producers of these sites WANT them to be more complex. Which means blaming the technology is misplaced.
Certainly we CAN still make the sites that ran in Netscape 4. Why don’t we?
You can also see that CSS continues to grow but in pragmatic ways that actually reduce the amount of JavaScript to do the kinds of things that users expect these days.
On the performance and capability front front, WASM is a game changer.
Regardless of what JS framework is in vogue, I do not think it is fair to say that we are doing the same thing on the web as we always have or even to say that the base technologies are getting more complex for no reason. At least, it is no more fair than any other programming domain. I mean, we can look at Excel and VisiCalc and say that we are creating the same apps that we always have with more complexity and bloat. I mean, people do say that but there is an awful lot left out of that analysis. Even more so if I compare VisiCalc and Excel via Office365 in a browser.
Regular people are routinely accomplishing far more with their computers than they have in the past. More and more of that is being done in web browsers.