Drew Powers10 things I’ve changed my mind about regarding #WebDev over the years. May change my mind again, who knows.
1/ JavaScript isn’t *that* bad. Yes, yes, I know. Addy Osmani. Alex Russell. Progressive enhancement. Islands architecture. But collectively we’ve gotten it wrong multiple times what the internet is *for* and how people *want* to use it. People want interactivity. Sure, static documents will always be a part of the web, but it’s not so bad having simple LLM interfaces that *actually understand you* and answer your question 100x faster than a gamified, ad-ridden website with horrible IA.
Alex Russell@drwpow Why do you imagine that the point of my advocacy isn't to make space for the truly valuable things, at the expense of the stuff that isn't pulling it's weight?
I'm never going to tell you "don't make a rich experience", I'll only ever challenge if the juice is worth the squeeze.
@slightlyoff ha sorry—too few characters to express nuance. Was more written to people who take some of your words out of context and flatten it into a DELETE ALL THE JAVASCRIPT!!!!1! over-simplification (and I myself have swung too far in the “you don’t need JS” direction to where I actually think I degraded the experience for people in a negative way)
@drwpow Well, if there's an argument about which instinct is *directionally* correct in the context of 2024 webdev dogma and practice, I know which oversimplified version I'd pick.
But with you to the extent that what you're actually preaching is "moderation in everything". That's also my message.
@drwpow Like, you literally can't square me leading Project Fugu or the design of Service Workers or a decade on TC39 with "never JS", unless the argument is that I've had an undiagnosed aneurysm 😅
There's a budget. It's closer in than folks realize, and that means we need to spend it better. That's not "delete all the JS", not by a long shot.