Alex Russell

2022 is turning into a big year for Team Finding Out, and there's still a couple of weeks left, so join me in deciding that frontend's lost decade can also come to a close.

We can decide that the JS thinkfluencers actually *didn't* know what they were talking about and go HTML-first. And it can be better.

h/t, @noam:

https://calendar.perfplanet.com/2022/an-html-first-mental-model/

An HTML-first Mental Model

... while building a fast movies app Overview The Movies App The TasteJS movies app is a showcase for different frameworks. I was excited about it because it gave me an opportunity to test some hypothesis, and see if it holds in the context of an app that's a bit less trivial than TodoMVC.

Web Performance Calendar
Dec 19, 2022 at 9:43pmWeb
Show threadJules 🍺Dec 19, 2022
@slightlyoff @noam
I'm a Web developer who does stuff by building html templates and serving them to the browser.
I've noticed that this tends to be as fast as single page sites and generally less fragile.
There is a temptation to go down the js pile route, it's very well paid, but I can't bring myself to do it, every time I run into a site built that way weather as a user or as a developer I feel a strong urge to scream as the difficulties pile up. Especially on a mobil
Show threadNoam RosenthalDec 20, 2022
@julesbl @slightlyoff Yea I come from the same place... I was a web developer a decade before I was a browser developer and the everything-in-JS thing always felt like the wrong way to look at web dev.
Show threadRyan BarrettDec 20, 2022
@julesbl @slightlyoff @noam it - ALWAYS - depends on what you're doing. If you're replacing software which would otherwise be a Windows app then yeah, a SPA might be good.
For most information heavy sites (about 95% of the internet)? It's not defensible. HTML + server-side rendering all the way.
Show threadRyan BarrettDec 20, 2022
@julesbl @slightlyoff @noam I've been coding for 30 years, writing HTML for about 22 years now - this pattern repeats itself every few years as new inexperienced people come on, follow some "influencer" (99.9% of whom are better marketers than developers) and do stupid things.
Show threadJules 🍺Dec 20, 2022
@radicalbyte @slightlyoff @noam yes, I get it when you are building stuff like, say, Google mail, sure single page app but most stuff does not need that. Recently found a site admin written as a single page app, something used by 10 people at the most, not looking forward to doing the necessary mods 😔
Show threadAlex RussellDec 20, 2022

@julesbl @radicalbyte @noam for many sessions, even gmail's default stack is worse than gmail's HTML version:

https://infrequently.org/2022/03/a-unified-theory-of-web-performance/#page-load-isn't-special

I've got a post brewing on session-depth weighted metrics that will perhaps clarify.

Towards a Unified Theory of Web Performance

Is there a generic, unform way to think about web performance? What is web performance? What's it for? A humble attempt to answer those very deep questions. [republished]

Alex Russell
Show threadBrad NeubergDec 19, 2022
@slightlyoff @noam interesting, what do you see as the webs lost decade? I’d love to hear that idea expanded upon.
Show threadAlex RussellDec 19, 2022

@bradneuberg @noam it's an idea that's been percolating in my brain stem for a few years now; it was pretty clear to me by 2016 that we were in for a rough ride because the privilege bubble had no counterweight, and everything predicted has (sadly) come to pass.

A lot of it is in this talk from 2019:

https://vimeo.com/364402896

Alex Russell - The Mobile Web: MIA

Responsive Design didn't work, at least not the way we hoped it would. How do we know? Nearly a decade into the new reality of mobile eating everything, the…

Vimeo
Show threadNoam RosenthalDec 20, 2022
@slightlyoff I really hope so!
As I pointed out in the article, I still think there are a few things missing to empower team velocity with HTML-first, mainly a clearer/typed API surface between your HTML & your CSS/JS-selectors. Hopefully we can improve on that in the web platform or external tools
Show threadNoam RosenthalDec 20, 2022
@slightlyoff ... I think the confusion created by syncing 3 languages is one of the reasons people go the everything-in-JS route, and I have some empathy towards that.