this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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118
JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress) - Jono Alderson (www.jonoalderson.com)
submitted 1 day ago by handnutaschnitte@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 53 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Oh yeah, it's totally JavaScript that's the reason that news and magazine websites suck. It's totally not the financial incentives of advertising that cause them to only care about the user experience so far as they get clicks. This totally wouldn't have been the exact same result if new media did everything on the backend and underfunded their backend dev teams. /S

Jesus Christ, why do these inane articles keep coming up? The authors have the reasoning skills of "when I look into the sun my eyes hurt, therefor the sun is bad".

[–] dbtng@eviltoast.org 3 points 8 hours ago

To be fair, there are a lot of inane articles saying this exact same thing about javascript. If its true, its ancient history, and I'm tired of it. I learned javascript when it was a babe, and watched many other platforms fall by the wayside. I'm not defending anything about it, but javascript works. Still.

[–] teolan@lemmy.world 23 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)
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Wonders why the web is shit

[–] chromodynamic@piefed.social 51 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Client-side scripting is a hack. HTML didn't have all the tags people wanted or needed, so instead of carefully updating it to include new features, they demanded that browsers just execute arbitrary code on the user's computer, and with that comes security vulnerabilities, excessive bandwidth use and a barrier-to-entry that makes it difficult to develop new browsers, giving one company a near-monopoly.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

Wanted, maybe, but needed? It even had marquee, what else could anyone need?

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 day ago

Developers wanted to build and deploy apps to end user machines. The round trip for page loads was lousy for usability.

Java applets were too shitty. Flash was too janky and hard to work with. So Mozilla started adding JavaScript as a hack. It filled a need.

a barrier-to-entry that makes it difficult to develop new browsers,

It definitely adds a barrier to entry, but JavaScript was really perfected in chromium, which is a different codebase from the folks who proposed and built js to begin with.

I'm not saying JavaScript is good, but it fills a need.

[–] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

makes it difficult to develop new browsers, giving one company a near-monopoly.

Totally an accident by the way! They weren't trying to become a monopoly, promise!

[–] miguel@fedia.io 11 points 1 day ago

Netscape? I don't think it worked out for them, if that was the case :D

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I've read it wasn't a hack, but my memory is mixed and I'm as old as JavaScript.

It was somewhat of a consensus that scriptability is needed. Java applets, Flash, Sun plans to add support for scripting webpages with Java, alternative plans for the same with TCL, Netscape plans for the same with some Lisp, and then they decided upon what became JS.

A lot of things are scriptable and it is convenient. I'm not sure anyone expected this to be just used as a base for more and more complexity in an application platform. Probably the idea was that scripted hypertext pages will remain such, and in future there will be other dedicated technologies for other purposes.

I'm fascinated with Java, just can't concentrate on learning it. My idea of a wonder language would run on something like JVM (or like Forth machine, LOL) and be as terse and simple as TCL.

[–] xangadix@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Hey, I've read exactly the same article 15 years ago, but back then it was Flash that "broke the web".

[–] capuccino@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

and we got rid of it.

[–] xangadix@lemmy.world -1 points 19 hours ago

And the web has gotten shittier everyday Since

[–] Oisteink 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Flash never got in the way the same like js. My main take from the whole piece is how it has changed the way websites are developed, to match that of traditional software development. Like the need to deploy to change some text in the footer of our website

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I disagree. flash popup ads were fucking horrendous.

that said, flash was poisonous. js is venomous.

[–] Oisteink 2 points 3 hours ago

I was referring to how it affected website development, not UX.

From my understanding of the article the author has noting against js, just how it affects the development process and architecture choices.

[–] xangadix@lemmy.world 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Ow my dear, you never used flash did you? We didn't even have 'deploys' back then, we needed to re-upload the entire container file, to change some text in the footer

[–] Oisteink 0 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

No - I never coded complete websites in flash. But if I did my «upload of the whole container» would have been my deployment

[–] xangadix@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

You are correct, but missing the point.

[–] Oisteink 0 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Nah. im right on target, but thanks for the great insights

[–] xangadix@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Why did you think I put 'deploy' in quote then?

[–] hisao@ani.social 13 points 1 day ago

I wonder if author were following JS-sphere for the past five years. There's SSR everywhere, stuff like NextJS is very popular. Some might say it's overused even. Like, "please consider not using SSR if you do admin panel because it's all cool and everyone does it nowadays but we can do SPA faster and it's internal-only product so we don't really benefit from SSR that much".