The frustrating part is that the idea is incredible. Everyone has this piece of software on their computer that lets them run anything as long as there is a server to talk to. I love it. I don't want to have to download a thousand apps, especially not for shopping or banking. Just using a web interface is awesome.

Unfortunately we decided the correct way to provide the functionality was by layering bonkers ass abstractions on top of a system meant to largely display static text and images. In the year 2025 there is absolutely no reason we shouldn't have a unified coding language that allows you to render things in a web browser in a sane way.

At the very least we should have seen a substantial expansion of what HTML is capable of, closer to what HTMX is doing now, with a better way to style everything then fucking CSS. People complain about JavaScript but for my money CSS is the greatest sin.

Indeed, CSS especially is the root of all web evil. When you understand how it break all kinds of known good software design patterns, and you've seen the Frankenstein monstrosities people build with it enough times, you'll be tempted to do as I've done for a while: banish almost all use of external CSS from my projects.

I use inline styles mostly, with an external CSS file only used for a few very global styles. And I try to only use it very simply, avoiding all kinds of clever tricks that some dev think is the mark of good code.

I think you are missing one thing. HTML, CSS and ekhm EcmaScript are open standards not owned by any single corporation.

Every other toolkit was not gaining adoption because it was shut down by one or the other corporation owning one or the other system. GTK is mostly irrelevant as it doesn’t do mobile.

Web stuff is best we could get away with circumventing corporate greed and ownership.

Even if we nag technically it could have less complexity - in reality not because all it was required to work around corporate bullshit.