I've come to understand what's happening in frontend's decade-long failure to deliver decent user experiences as a sort of epistemic closure. I'm calling it "frameworkism", and the epicenter is now React.
Here's a lot of words on why we should all reject it, and what the post-React world should look like:
@slightlyoff This prompted me to think a bit more of how bundlers play a role in the bad perf outcomes of frontend projects, and my conclusion is that they currently are like power tools without appropriate safety features:
https://hachyderm.io/@fvsch/113583490410827935
(also cross-posted on bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fvsch.com/post/3lcd7taxvh22i)
Spicy opinion: JS bundler authors have messed up big time by growing the ability to add JS code to websites without providing similarly powerful tools to control how, why and by how much you add code (let alone to help you drive numbers down). Great power with no responsibility.
Alex Russell
Florens Verschelde