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.

jasonreturns

@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 Verschelde

@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.

Florens Verschelde

@[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.

Alex Russell

@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".

Alex Russell

@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.

Florens Verschelde

@slightlyoff True. And I’ve definitely seen sentiment like “everyone has high speed internet” and “everyone has a fast smartphone” from many coworkers.

Alex Russell

@fvsch It's demoralising! Or at least, it can start that way. We may not win each battle, but we can choose if we want to try to right the culture or let it rot.

I've made my choice, but I respect folks who feel overwhelmed by the scale of the task.

Marco Rogers

@slightlyoff @fvsch if people have to work at a company with horrible incentives, that’s unfortunate. But I think those people have to sit out this conversation. I don’t think it makes sense to feel attacked if your circumstances mean that you can’t make meaningful choices about your work. We’re not talking about you. But it also means caring in your heart doesn’t actually amount to much. You’re still causing damage. So maybe work on changing your circumstances.

Alex Russell

@polotek @fvsch And even in those cases, folks can use their own time (to the extent they want to spend any of that on computers) to educate themselves and explore/advocate better ways of working.

That sort of personal project stuff is heavily wrapped into frontend career development now, and folks have deep agency in those hours.

Ben Delarre

@polotek @slightlyoff @fvsch feels like the issue is as you say a lack of empathy and social awareness. The solution to which is almost always collective action.

No individual unless very very senior can change the environment in companies that aren't putting users first. Collective action from an entire engineering team can.

But collective action starts with empathy, and social awareness and openness, the lack of which in many engineering teams is why we're in this situation to start with!

Prem Kumar Aparanji 👶🤖🐘

@slightlyoff came across McMaster.com today.

H/T https://x.com/wesbos/status/1847294475615260796

Alex Russell

@prem_k Watching "influencers" discover HTML and CSS is cringe af.