> So the lamentation is really, “other people are doing things in a way I don’t like and that upsets my experience.”

Well put. Personally I have zero issues with SPAs and the amount of Javascript we are facing in the web industry right now. And if you try to build some kind of business that wants to present itself successfully to potential customers, on the web, there is no way to write a appealing website without Javascript.

Most target demographics at this point and in the future have grown up with beautiful websites and the internet being really interactive. I highly doubt they'd be interested in what you have to say if you wrote your page in a way the web was supposed to be used.

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recursive 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The whole idea of target demographics seems kind of antithetical to the premise here.

Here's some information. Take it or leave it.

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zwnow 4 days ago | parent [-]

This approach doesn't work nowadays. We have 3 apps for everything. If your app sucks people will go to one of the other 2.

	▲	recursive 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		It works as well as it ever did for its purposes. There's an implicit framing that we need to drive engagement and increase user base. Your comment is doing it too. In the old web, hobby sites existed on their own terms, and didn't have a prime directive of increasing metrics. If someone likes another site better, there's no problem for them to just use that instead.

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Waterluvian 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it could even be perceived in simpler terms: All website authors have a goal. They can choose whatever approach they want in trying to achieve that goal.

Inside that idea are all the nuances of what's your goal? Who is your audience? What do they care about? What do they want? What do they tolerate? Etc. If you achieve your goal and reach your audience, but a different audience hates that you're using JavaScript or React or whatever, do you really care?

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jillesvangurp 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Agreed. There are a lot of people complaining about how things used to be better. But not a lot of them succeeding in building better stuff that others actually want to use out of the handful that actually lift a finger to do anything at all (most don't). And in the end that's the only thing that makes a difference.

There is no "way the web was supposed to be used". It was all just improvised and messy and open ended. Just some browser developers going "Sure, let's add a blink tag. Why the fuck not. Enjoy!". The only intention for that was to make stuff blink obnoxiously. Javascript was just a thing that they bolted on around the same time.

The default state of the web in the nineties was unstyled, fugly, and obnoxious. Just as it is today. You give people any kind of tools and they'll abuse them. Nothing has actually changed that much. The web people pine for, never really existed. It's just their lost youth that they are pining for.

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at-fates-hands 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>> there is no way to write a appealing website without Javascript.

This has always made me wonder if anybody really builds anything from scratch any more. With so many frameworks, even for basic static sites, I wonder who's out there writing HTML, CSS and JS from scratch.

Or is something that has been regulated to the dustbin of history?

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Waterluvian 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm sure some do.

I've seen someone build furniture from literal trees and wooden tools. I guess they didn't smelt their own metal, but they're not using power tools. Is that a viable business? probably for a very small bespoke traditional furniture audience. Most furniture these days is built using layers upon layers of technology. (and just like with the Web, people, including myself, have strong opinions on furniture quality and source)

	▲	at-fates-hands 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		When I was in college studying to be an anthropologist, of one my professors told about his TA who just happened to be studying one of the local Mennonite groups and they were complaining when the wheels on their buggies and other stuff would break or go bad, they really didn't have any local carpenters who could or would help them. It was kind of a big issue in their communities. He ended up doing a two year apprenticeship to learn how to hand make wheels and other instruments they needed. Before he graduated, he already had a very lucrative niche company and woodworking business selling his wares and delivering them to the families. There is still a strong demand for well built wood furniture but most people never realize there are economies that rely on this stuff for their livelihood.

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rikroots 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All of my canvas library's demo pages are hand-coded HTML, CSS and JS. Including the site navigation. Is it worth the effort? Probably not; I just do it this way because I'm too lazy to pull together a sensible tool chain.

https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/demo/index.html

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lelanthran 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> With so many frameworks, even for basic static sites, I wonder who's out there writing HTML, CSS and JS from scratch.

I do it, for my blog at least.

However, I use a proprietary framework of my own for commercial software development with the only f/end dependency being materialcss (although, I won't be using that soon, either). Backend dependency is PostgreSQL.

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recursive 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would if I was building something for my own purposes. And I wouldn't claim it to be the most efficient or beautiful. But if I did it for my own purposes, I wouldn't need to justify it. I just like the process.

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MrGilbert 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Shameless plug: My own website[1] is mostly handwritten, although I use PicoCSS as a CSS framework.

[1]: https://g5t.de

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jv22222 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m building a Google docs style platform from scratch. No js html css libs of any kind. (But also, not canvas, it does use contenteditable)

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8n4vidtmkvmk 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think I buy that. It's hard to build a nice web app without JS, but an informational website doesn't need JS to be beautiful.

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motorest 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I don't think I buy that. It's hard to build a nice web app without JS, but an informational website doesn't need JS to be beautiful.

It's not that I disagree with the premise, but you should understand that the "informational website" scenario tends to apply only to a subset of a website's requirements. As soon as you stumble upon any need that goes beyond what static HTML can provide, you are faced with the decision to either create tech sprawl and a patchwork of ad-hoc solutions, or you just bite the bullet and onboard a framework that handles all your needs.

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zwnow 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That's why I wrote business. Wikipedia works for ages now.

	▲	woodrowbarlow 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		craigslist too! that's a business. definitely an exception, though.

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bee_rider 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Scripting heavy sites do provide a good signal; you can be sure the people behind them are prone to bad designs and aesthetics over functionality. It is disheartening to see how popular that stuff is, but at least it draws attention to itself.

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zwnow 4 days ago | parent [-]

Customers won't care about all that. You may be right from a engineering view but thats not where the money is.

	▲	wryoak 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think that’s where you’re misunderstanding the intention of this. It’s not about money or customers, or even engineering for that matter
	▲	bee_rider 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> It is disheartening to see how popular that stuff is […] > Customers won't care about all that. […] Looks like we’re on a similar page. I do think people are generally frustrated with how shit everything is nowadays, but have trouble spotting the root cause. A suspicion of mine (I have no data) is that part of the problem is that most of the folks who could handle complexity and who pay attention to detail (people who could be designing QA tests for devices) have instead been funneled into building and testing complex websites. Or building website building frameworks and then testing the frameworks, the websites themselves rarely seem to actually get tested. It is also hard to price the cost of all this nonsense, because the main way of paying for it is that companies buy ads on social media sites. The price of those ads has to be factored into the price of their products eventually, but it is all really diffuse. What can we do? Not buy stuff from companies that engage in all this. I don’t buy much, as a result.