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Speeding a site up is one thing. Speeding it up substantially is another and I doubt your example of one who only knows how to insert jQuery snippets knows enou

Speeding a site up is one thing. Speeding it up substantially is another and I doubt your example of one who only knows how to insert jQuery snippets knows enough to both understand and implement all the details from server to network to browser.

mort96 8y ago
You don't need to know enough to understand and implement all the details from server to network to browser, you just need to know enough to remove the <script> tags related to ad networks and tracking to see huge load time and ux improvements. It's not really the web developers who are the issue; they just implement what the people above them in the org chart wants. You could argue that the web developers should push back on it more than they do, but I don't buy that they're not knowledgeable enough to fix it. That's not to say that there aren't actual technical issues; the recent trend of throwing front-end frameworks on content-heavy pages, making the users' low-powered phones parse and run hundreds of megabytes of JS before the page can be interacted with, is an example.
- walshemj 8y ago
  From experience its not the tracking code that's the big slowdown, its poor page design, bloated implementation no you do not need custom fonts. The worst culprit is not knowing how to use photoshop to optimise images properly.
  - cpburns2009 8y ago
    Shouldn't you be using one of the command line image optimizers?
    - walshemj 8y ago
      Yes and I have done ;-) but. 1 A lot of the front end production staff wont be comfortable using a cli - its designers that should be providing the images not developers. 2 Photoshop in some ways produces better results and is already part of the work flow.
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  If one thinks all they need to do is remove javascript to speed things up substantially, then they fit into my category of people who only know jQuery snippets only think they know enough. There are a multitude of issues that can be tweaked to speed things up more so than javascript elimination. You can switch to HTTP/2, implement server push, image compression, header compression, compressing HTML/CSS/Javascript downloads, preloading, above-the-fold downloads, and much more. A jQuery plugin user might not know half those things and I only mentioned maybe half the things one should know.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    And none of the things you mention will amount to anything if the site is still pulling dozens of trackers and ad scripts. The average JS dev (like average anything dev) may not write performant code, but the functional parts of the website are not where the main problem lies.
    - sureaboutthis 8y ago
      That is a business and design problem not a programming problem. And if one thinks the functional part of a web site cannot be tuned to substantially increase the speed of a web site then one is part of that jQuery plugin crowd who does not know or understand the pipeline from browser to network to server and back.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        Website performance will be limited by the parts you're not allowed to improve, i.e. ad & tracking junk. It's basically Amdahl's law. I'd thought understanding that would be even more important.
mercer 8y ago
While you're right that properly understanding the full stack can help with many optimizations, my point was that there is usually plenty of low-hanging fruit that can be plucked by non-experts to significantly improve site speed. As such, sure, it's useful to know the details, but it's usually far from necessary. One example would be lazy-loading of images. I've worked at multiple agencies that definitely knew how to do this, but didn't, causing in the tens of megabytes of unnecessary data. Even just a small change to the templates + a jQuery plugin could have solved this one issue. Of course, there are lots of reasons why a lot of this low-hanging fruit is left to rot, but they're not primarily to do with the developer's ability to understand all those details that you describe as necessary.
- sureaboutthis 8y ago
  That one won't or doesn't do the things to speed up a site has nothing to do with my point. After the low-hanging fruit, give your site to me and let's just see how much faster things will run.

mort96 8y ago

You don't need to know enough to understand and implement all the details from server to network to browser, you just need to know enough to remove the <script> tags related to ad networks and tracking to see huge load time and ux improvements. It's not really the web developers who are the issue; they just implement what the people above them in the org chart wants. You could argue that the web developers should push back on it more than they do, but I don't buy that they're not knowledgeable enough to fix it. That's not to say that there aren't actual technical issues; the recent trend of throwing front-end frameworks on content-heavy pages, making the users' low-powered phones parse and run hundreds of megabytes of JS before the page can be interacted with, is an example.

walshemj 8y ago
From experience its not the tracking code that's the big slowdown, its poor page design, bloated implementation no you do not need custom fonts. The worst culprit is not knowing how to use photoshop to optimise images properly.
- cpburns2009 8y ago
  Shouldn't you be using one of the command line image optimizers?
  - walshemj 8y ago
    Yes and I have done ;-) but. 1 A lot of the front end production staff wont be comfortable using a cli - its designers that should be providing the images not developers. 2 Photoshop in some ways produces better results and is already part of the work flow.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
If one thinks all they need to do is remove javascript to speed things up substantially, then they fit into my category of people who only know jQuery snippets only think they know enough. There are a multitude of issues that can be tweaked to speed things up more so than javascript elimination. You can switch to HTTP/2, implement server push, image compression, header compression, compressing HTML/CSS/Javascript downloads, preloading, above-the-fold downloads, and much more. A jQuery plugin user might not know half those things and I only mentioned maybe half the things one should know.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  And none of the things you mention will amount to anything if the site is still pulling dozens of trackers and ad scripts. The average JS dev (like average anything dev) may not write performant code, but the functional parts of the website are not where the main problem lies.
  - sureaboutthis 8y ago
    That is a business and design problem not a programming problem. And if one thinks the functional part of a web site cannot be tuned to substantially increase the speed of a web site then one is part of that jQuery plugin crowd who does not know or understand the pipeline from browser to network to server and back.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Website performance will be limited by the parts you're not allowed to improve, i.e. ad & tracking junk. It's basically Amdahl's law. I'd thought understanding that would be even more important.

mercer 8y ago

While you're right that properly understanding the full stack can help with many optimizations, my point was that there is usually plenty of low-hanging fruit that can be plucked by non-experts to significantly improve site speed. As such, sure, it's useful to know the details, but it's usually far from necessary. One example would be lazy-loading of images. I've worked at multiple agencies that definitely knew how to do this, but didn't, causing in the tens of megabytes of unnecessary data. Even just a small change to the templates + a jQuery plugin could have solved this one issue. Of course, there are lots of reasons why a lot of this low-hanging fruit is left to rot, but they're not primarily to do with the developer's ability to understand all those details that you describe as necessary.

sureaboutthis 8y ago
That one won't or doesn't do the things to speed up a site has nothing to do with my point. After the low-hanging fruit, give your site to me and let's just see how much faster things will run.