A large contingent of webdevs seem to think that fast means “best-case fast.”“Our web sites are fast on expensive hardware and from reliable fiber networks.”Worst-case fast is a much more meaningful, impressive, and inclusive claim to make! Fast on low...

Alex Russell

@mahryekuh @bobmonsour @zachleat @phae made shirts as a fundraiser for @owa:

Anti Javascript Javascript Club | Bonfire

Show the world how much you love Javascript by writing as little of it as possible.. All t-shirt sale proceeds will be donated to the Open Web Advocacy. Open Web Advocacy...

Bonfire (www.bonfire.com)

Eloy

@slightlyoff @mahryekuh @bobmonsour @zachleat @phae @owa Meh, JS is fine, just keep it to reasonable size and prefer CSS alternatives

groxx

@zachleat worst-case fast also gets you an *unbelievably amazing* experience on the best-case stuff.

I love using low end hardware to build things. You find out what hurts your end result FAR earlier, when you're more easily able to fix it. And then the final result absolutely screams on decent machines, and that's an amazing feeling.

Tushar Chauhan

@zachleat What about static sites that are built as apps? Stuff like gatsby or astro?

Maikel 🇪🇺

@zachleat WeWork <- is that still a thing?

julian

@[email protected] unfortunately I think that venn diagram consists of two distinct circles... but it doesn't have to!

I feel like a lot of developers reach for frameworks not because they don't care about performance, but because of tech zeitgeist inertia... what most don't realize is just how much performance is already lost from day 1.

You can use all the frameworks to build a to do list, and they'll be fast enough to justify moving forward, but if you try to build anything remotely substantial....

Marijke Luttekes

@julian It Depends️

In my early career days, when I still did front-end professionally, I already advocated for accessibility. Back then it was easier to shout against a wall than convince anyone (sales, devs) about quality.

One of the offending companies [that I personally know] recently turned around because they’ve sniffed money (with upcoming EU a11y law change), but I doubt they actually care about people.

Marijke Luttekes

@julian Salespeople didn’t care because quality and accessibility does not make direct money.

Many developers don’t care because we live in an era where craftsmanship isn’t being appreciated anyway.

(This is a big generalization, so take it with a grain of salt).

To quote myself from a recent article:

“[…] I quit front-end development years ago because of the industry's general disregard for quality and accessibility […]”

julian

@[email protected] I like to think craftsmanship still exists in web development today. I certainly try to embody the thinking that "code is a craft", and my output is a representation of the code I want to use, as opposed to merely a means to an end.

That said, I am fortunate that I am able to work on open source for a living. Many others have additional pressures that cause quality to be lower down in the priority list.

Marijke Luttekes

@julian Also, you raise good points, I’ve got to think about this and also finally write a blog post about this whole thing.

I’m just very salty about the state of the web that I used to love so much.

Marijke Luttekes

@julian Code is craft but not everyone can afford craft. It feels like we’ve been in the same transition as when couture clothes were succeeded in popularity by pret-a-porter.

And lets be real, not everyone needs craftsmanship, so the idea of frameworks is great (and IMO still preferable to AI).

However, those frameworks are currently not great, and some are being maintained by assholes; not the best advocates for humanity.

julian

@[email protected] industry keeps iterating on frameworks hoping that the next one will finally be the silver bullet. I think that's a great goal to work towards, but it's unfortunate that you have hoards of devs chasing the latest head-first while ignoring the foundations, only to be caught off guard when the lib/framework-du-jour suddenly isn't "it" anymore.

Suddenly your marketable skills aren't marketable anymore — been there, done that.

It doesn't stop people from asking @[email protected] to adopt React, though. Before that it was Angular. Before that it was the even older Angular v1. There might've been a couple in between I forgot about.

Some days I wonder how many contributions I've missed out on because we didn't meet devs where they were at, but the technical debt to pivot to a new framework likely would vastly outweigh them by several orders of magnitude...

Marijke Luttekes

@julian @nodebb This is why I like Django as a back-end framework: it might be old and not as flashy as something new, but it’s been stable for years. I can live with not having the Newest Awesomest Shit Ever️ immediately if that means I don’t have to switch frameworks every few years. (Django even has LTS versions).

The JS framework landscape and it’s constant flux is expensive in the long run, like you indicate above.

Zach Leatherman :11ty:

@groxx well said!

Zach Leatherman :11ty:

@tchauhan React has shown itself to be pretty slow! That said, there is a spectrum of React tooling. I’d rate Astro > Gatsby > Next.js for fast outputs of React stuff

Zach Leatherman :11ty:

@maikel They still exist, yeah

Ubergeek

@eloy @slightlyoff @mahryekuh @bobmonsour @zachleat @phae @owa Exactly. Use JS only for when CSS isn't able to do what you are trying to do.

Corollary: If CSS isn't doing something you're trying to do, you should think long and hard about why you're doing it, and if it's really a good idea...

Marijke Luttekes

@ubergeek @eloy @slightlyoff @bobmonsour @zachleat @phae @owa Progressive enhancement FTW.