How JavaScript Overuse Ruined the Web

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Much like conservatives think someone who talks a lot with conviction is right.

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NoScript ftw

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It took me 3 hours to think and write that article. Maybe you wouldn't call it AI generated if it was actually AI generated.

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I appreciate you taking time out to write that. I enjoyed reading it, I think what the parent comment was trying to offer as criticism is that it ended sort of abruptly. I was hoping for a couple more paragraphs on either examples of modern sites or platforms that don’t overly rely on js or a way for end users to use these sites loading only the bare minimum js.

I could just google that information but I was enjoying your point of view. Anyway that’s just my 2 cents

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Great now nothing works 🫠

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How current web developers no longer knowing what graceful degradation is ruining the web

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Has saved my life. I find myself disabling it for an entire tab several times per day to do things like make a purchase or log in, but I'd still rather that than not have it on the rest of the sites.

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I like NoScript but I miss the old XUL version of NoScript.

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I mean, this post makes no valid argument against JavaScript, there’s no benchmarks or anything aside from an opinion.

I don’t personally like webdev and don’t like to code in JavaScript, but there are good and bad web applications out there, just like any software.

A single page can send out hundreds or even thousands of API requests just to load, eating up CPU and RAM.

The author seems to know the real problem, so I don’t know why they’re blaming it on JavaScript.

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Oh the author is here. Thank you for the article.

Here are some of my thoughts of some of your points as professional web developer for startups to some of the biggest companies in the world.

Your first point of developers getting dependent on a framework or library doesn't really matter. Look at the average developer's resume with 6 years of experience. They have a lot of things listed because this is what the culture is. We have to learn or miss the opportunity working for a company that uses React rather than Angular.

Besides a professional setting, learning the new hip thing and talking about why it sucks, is programming culture and human nature.

I think this topic can be its own article especially since any contribution to open source even if it from corpos, is not bad to me but moving on.

what I am going to write next is what good web architects do. I am not saying they all do this.

Web architects look at stats of their current users or target users. They have to find a balance of server performance and user experience. Some even have a list of old devices just to test out the results to make a decision on what devices should be excluded.

You showed a video of old tech using the internet now. Some of those devices are less powerful than Raspberry Pis now. Those devices aren't even meant to handle a flat high res image. Also this is rare. Should a company spend thousand of dollars for every unique User Agent they get? No, especially since those are easily spoofed.

You are right about some sites slowing down because of JS but a lot of those, like on your own website which uses a lot of Google code, use code to stream a video in tiny bits. It makes the experience of the user a lot better. It takes a lot of logic to predict how many chunks video a user will use at a given time. I definitely wouldn't wait for a 50 mb video to stutter and load on website.

Other examples like infinite scrolling aka doom scrolling. Social media use lazy loading for images an videos. Try shoving hundreds videos and high res images with sound on a page. It would be horrendous for the user. People would log off. Say what you want about doom scrolling, but it does its job keeping users on the page.

If you want to blame Javascript, you should also blame browsers since they run the code. Firefox is at version 135. Version 1 was less than 9 mb. Version 25 is at 45 mb. Version 50 is at 82 mb. Version 100 is at 121 mb. Version 135 is at 151 mb. You want to look at slow downs, make sure you have enough RAM is run the apps you are using.

I enjoy this topic and would enjoy what you think about what I wrote. Again, than you for posting.

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Only if what they're saying is bigoted horseshit.

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You're welcome.

Give a hoot! Read a book!

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Yeah even if you do that you can at least see the huge list of crazy scripts any given site is running. News sites are just amazing how they throw the kitchen sink at any visitors.

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It is pretty great. We use it throughout PieFed if you're interested in a working example.

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Because only JS is able to do that. Everything else is just a dependency tree.

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That's not necessarily special to JS. It's special to client-side code. A mobile app writing in swift could do this. A cli tool written in any language could do this.

This isn't an argument against JS, it's an argument against misuse of client resources.

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edited my comment to include the excruciatingly obvious assumption.

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And desktop “apps”

Half of them are just fancy electron javascript websites

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Thanks! You're right, I should have given some examples like reddit.com is too slow on low end hardware, and how amazon.com loads faster than aliexpress.com for not relying too much on JavaScript. But I thought anyone could 'sense' which website has more javascript, but I was wrong after seeing some comments.

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Thanks for your comment. I agree with some of your points, but I really don't understand why we should use JS frameworks for everything and render pages on the client’s device. I'm not against JavaScript, but no website should be made entirely of it.

A few years ago, I came across a Chinese e-commerce site where the product page falsely displayed an "out of stock" message until the website fully loaded. Imagine how many people left the page, thinking the product wasn’t available. This issue wouldn't exist with server-side rendering.

Regarding companies that prioritize users with newer devices, this approach may not be economically beneficial and feels deceptive to users. If they don’t want users with older devices, they should clearly state it on their website by checking the user agent. For example, Amazon.com works even without JavaScript and runs smoothly on all devices. Any company serious about its profits should prioritize user experience, and making a webpage lightweight is one of the best ways to achieve that. It seems like these JS frameworks and their modules aren't really about improving user experience. What's even more concerning is that many newcomers to programming rely on these frameworks without understanding basic HTML or JavaScript.

There are many older people who still use their old laptops, and buying newer models makes it harder for them to adapt. Additionally, discarding older devices increases e-waste. This makes the behavior of big tech companies seem hypocritical—like Apple, which stopped including chargers with new iPhones while claiming to be environmentally friendly.

Back in 2011, we could use YouTube on our laptops without any issues. So why not make older versions available for older devices? I understand that companies want to block bots, but if that’s the goal, why allow old device user agents to access the site in the first place? If they assume all older devices are potential bots but still want users from those devices, why not provide an older frontend for signed-in users?

I'm sorry for the rant, but this is how I feel about modern web development.

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How JavaScript Overuse Ruined the Web