Was trawling through the Superfund-worth trace from another super high profile Next.js site, and realised that the best way to describe contemporary frontend is inconsiderate.
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Alex Russellreplied to Alex Russell last edited by [email protected]
Why, you might ask, is there a reasonably complete subset of the IANA timezone database [1] being downloaded in the critical path of a food ordering website?
Inconsiderate development. Rudeness.
I've likened this to stores hiring anti-greeters; bouncers to tackle poor-looking users and prevent them from entering, rather than welcoming them. Might work selling Prada handbags, but Veblen goods [2] are a small fraction of the economy.
[1]: https://www.iana.org/time-zones
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good -
...which means that the level at which rudeness is commercially viable is inversely proportional to aspirations for scale.
Making a site with Next at any point in the last decade has been a terrible idea if you weren't actively working to turn certain buyers away.
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There's a lot more to say, but we can skip to the end: JS-first development is, in the main, classist and elitist.
There are pockets doing it better -- including some that are downright exceptional in their inclusion -- but they are the exception today.
We need to sit with that.
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Prem Kumar Aparanji 👶🤖🐘replied to Alex Russell last edited by
@slightlyoff any good examples that aren't js first but are still feature rich? To help differentiate via show and tell instead of me fumbling to convey the point adequately?
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@slightlyoff can you share examples of who is doing it better?
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@shiftingedges Try a site like squoosh.app on a low-end device. Still incredibly smooth, uses the absolute peak of what the platform can do (WASM, workers, etc.), but does it all *considerately*.
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Alex Russellreplied to Prem Kumar Aparanji 👶🤖🐘 last edited by
@prem_k Define "feature rich". I mean, all of gov.uk works without JS to a first approximation, including things like filing for tax disc renewal.
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@prem_k Or you can look at HTML-first tools like FixMyStreet, which even has progressively-enhanced maps:
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Prem Kumar Aparanji 👶🤖🐘replied to Alex Russell last edited by
@slightlyoff this is awesome! Thanks a ton!
UK gov websites aren't relatable to many developers not living there, though I do understand why gov websites need to be so in the first place.
Is there a way to evaluate how do Indian gov.in/nic.in websites fare?
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Simon Willisonreplied to Prem Kumar Aparanji 👶🤖🐘 last edited by
@prem_k @slightlyoff FixMyStreet isn't by the UK government directly, it's a mySociety project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySociety
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@slightlyoff I don't know man. I mean I've been posting on here about devs taking responsibility. What I'm told is that if their work sucks, it can only because they're being forced to do whatever some manager tells them to do.
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@polotek I am a rock! I am an iiiiiisland!
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@polotek Never have so many achieved so little with so much influence.
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Mx. Aria Stewartreplied to Marco Rogers last edited by
@polotek @slightlyoff It's almost like we built a sick system. https://issendai.com/psychology/sick-systems.html
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Jenniferplusplusreplied to Mx. Aria Stewart last edited by
@aredridel @polotek @slightlyoff that is going to be a really useful term
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@slightlyoff kind of off topic but what do you think of the new Copilot website/webapp? I don't even have access to a low end device to see if it's a good experience or not
https://copilot.microsoft.com/ -
Florens Verscheldereplied to Marco Rogers last edited by
@polotek @slightlyoff I've definitely had the experience of caring about perf while managers and clients didn't. But also other developers didn't either. No idea what influences what.
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Florens Verscheldereplied to Florens Verschelde last edited by
@[email protected] @slightlyoff In agency work, I was ignored, told off or reprimanded for caring about perf many times. I got a positive reaction only once (a client has just panicked about their mediocre CWV numbers, worrying about SEO impact).
In aggregate, the incentives were to not care (and avoid being reprimanded for "spending time on the wrong thing / low priority work").
So I get it when devs with similar experiences bristle at being called uncaring.
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Alex Russellreplied to Florens Verschelde last edited by
@fvsch Culture is diffuse but powerful. It can be the case that individual developers face the pressures you're outlining while it is *other* developers that popularised and spread the very patterns that make it so hard to do well and the shitty value (excuse?) systems that make standing up for the user "not part of the job".
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Alex Russellreplied to jasonreturns last edited by [email protected]
@jasonreturns Every single chatbot from every company I've traced are...disappointing. Architecturally, they all assume components for all message response types must be loaded up front, and when that inevitably ends in tears, it's a fire drill to split imports...which is usually unsatisfactory in terms of result.
None that I've seen in the wild do HTML streaming correctly.
Thinking about problems through the lens of `npm i -s` makes us all dumber.
