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Your correlation between iteration cost to net positive for users is completely false. It might be a net positive for developers but certainly not users. You so

Your correlation between iteration cost to net positive for users is completely false. It might be a net positive for developers but certainly not users. You sound like the kind of developer who has only ever worked with an electric screwdriver. Loading 2 megs of javascript so you don't have to redirect and open a dropdown is NOT a benefit to the user. Relevant: http://suckless.org/philosophy/ http://suckless.org/philosophy/

d357r0y3r 8y ago
The fact that I spent time working with the manual screwdriver is how I understand the iterative difference. The turnaround time for features is not even remotely close. One of my first jobs was maintaining and extending an ASP.NET Web Forms application. A dashboard style application has to do way more than open a dropdown. People keep the page loaded all day long - the fact that it takes 2 seconds to load the first time is irrelevant.
- forrestbaer 8y ago
  You understand the difference it makes to YOU as a developer, not the user! We don't need more features, we need lightweight software that everyone can use, that was the point of the article.
  - d357r0y3r 8y ago
    This is a whimsical belief. No - users actually do want more features. They want more features than you can ever hope to deliver. Figuring out which features they will actually appreciate is the tough part. Your competitors are working very hard to build those features before you can. Your competitor's sales team is already cold calling your users. Lightweight software is easy. As an engineer, I appreciate it, but it's not what the average user wants.
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      The user wants the site to actually work. The features don't matter if the site won't load because it's trying to shove multiple megabytes of JavaScript through a congested DSL or dial-up or 2G Internet connection (and especially not if that mass of JS is in turn trying to pull multiple megabytes of graphics before deciding to finally even add the actual content to the DOM). A prospective customer who can't use your website is a customer who's jumping ship to a competitor (as the article described with rather realistic examples). And for the vast majority of websites, the users don't actually want (let alone need) that degree of interactivity. A blog shouldn't depend on JS to be usable. A storefront shouldn't depend on JS to be usable. A restaurant page (even one with a reservation system!) shouldn't depend on JS to be usable. Even something like Twitter shouldn't depend on JS to be usable. Unless you're building something like Trello that's heavily dependent on drag-and-drop as a basic workflow, there is no good reason to make JavaScript a hard dependency on using your site. If users are forced to allow arbitrary Turing-complete code to run on their machines because your site is inexplicably incapable of running without it, then you have utterly failed. That's harsh, but that's reality. Your users want oodles of JavaScript only in the sense that a penguin wants to swim through an oil slick.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      > No - users actually do want more features. They want more features than you can ever hope to deliver. Figuring out which features they will actually appreciate is the tough part. Your competitors are working very hard to build those features before you can. Your competitor's sales team is already cold calling your users. I'll believe it when I see it. With notable exception of collaborative editing, most software on the web is essentially a subpar reimplementation of desktop software from 10 years ago, missing half of the features, but consuming 10x the resources.
  - eunoia 8y ago
    Super anecdotal but in my experience I hear developers complaining about bloated websites an order of magnitude more than ordinary users. It's almost like for some the argument is more about some abstract concept of artisanal purity than true care for user experience. HN basically has a front page post decrying the state of the modern web every day... Before anyone jumps down my throat about this I should add that browsing the web with JS disabled is a truly wonderful experience on sites that support it. It would be great if everything did. I don't see that happening though.
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
      > some abstract concept of artisanal purity As opposed to what, some abstract concept of ordinary users? What the sales department wants? The idea of craftsmanship isn't that abstract to me. Performance and cacheability aren't abstract at all, that a website can get reloaded many times even for just one reader, and usually shares memory and CPU and HD cache with many other tabs, is also a really obvious observation. Stuff that makes a noticeable difference even in isolation makes a giant difference multiplied with a triple trillion, I've done the math. > HN basically has a front page post decrying the state of the modern web every day... That doesn't mean there isn't a problem. There's also articles decrying environmental destruction every day, not on HN but in general - should that make one care less? Would you say that biologists and climatologists are more concerned than the "ordinary person" means the ordinary should be heeded? I'd be surprised to see scientists in a science forum talk like that. Web development is an "art", maybe like architecture is art, and we are the artisans. If having any sort of ideals to strive towards is "abstract" to us, that says more about the people involved in web development and how much genuine excitement and care for detail was destroyed by money and marketing, but not much about web development as an art form as such. Does a flood of crappy action movies say anything about the state of the art in movie making, at all? And yes, the "average audience" maybe likes them, but who cares? If they got something else instead, there's nothing they could do about it, and it would be better for them. I don't care if that's arrogant, but don't call it abstract :P > I don't see that happening though. That is like talking about sports or the weather, even if its true, it's pointless. The question is rather, what do we think should happen, and how can we make it happen.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  "The turnaround time for features is not even remotely close." True, but turnaround time is something that is primarily beneficial to developers, as it's all about reducing development costs.

d357r0y3r 8y ago

The fact that I spent time working with the manual screwdriver is how I understand the iterative difference. The turnaround time for features is not even remotely close. One of my first jobs was maintaining and extending an ASP.NET Web Forms application. A dashboard style application has to do way more than open a dropdown. People keep the page loaded all day long - the fact that it takes 2 seconds to load the first time is irrelevant.

forrestbaer 8y ago
You understand the difference it makes to YOU as a developer, not the user! We don't need more features, we need lightweight software that everyone can use, that was the point of the article.
- d357r0y3r 8y ago
  This is a whimsical belief. No - users actually do want more features. They want more features than you can ever hope to deliver. Figuring out which features they will actually appreciate is the tough part. Your competitors are working very hard to build those features before you can. Your competitor's sales team is already cold calling your users. Lightweight software is easy. As an engineer, I appreciate it, but it's not what the average user wants.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    The user wants the site to actually work. The features don't matter if the site won't load because it's trying to shove multiple megabytes of JavaScript through a congested DSL or dial-up or 2G Internet connection (and especially not if that mass of JS is in turn trying to pull multiple megabytes of graphics before deciding to finally even add the actual content to the DOM). A prospective customer who can't use your website is a customer who's jumping ship to a competitor (as the article described with rather realistic examples). And for the vast majority of websites, the users don't actually want (let alone need) that degree of interactivity. A blog shouldn't depend on JS to be usable. A storefront shouldn't depend on JS to be usable. A restaurant page (even one with a reservation system!) shouldn't depend on JS to be usable. Even something like Twitter shouldn't depend on JS to be usable. Unless you're building something like Trello that's heavily dependent on drag-and-drop as a basic workflow, there is no good reason to make JavaScript a hard dependency on using your site. If users are forced to allow arbitrary Turing-complete code to run on their machines because your site is inexplicably incapable of running without it, then you have utterly failed. That's harsh, but that's reality. Your users want oodles of JavaScript only in the sense that a penguin wants to swim through an oil slick.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > No - users actually do want more features. They want more features than you can ever hope to deliver. Figuring out which features they will actually appreciate is the tough part. Your competitors are working very hard to build those features before you can. Your competitor's sales team is already cold calling your users. I'll believe it when I see it. With notable exception of collaborative editing, most software on the web is essentially a subpar reimplementation of desktop software from 10 years ago, missing half of the features, but consuming 10x the resources.
- eunoia 8y ago
  Super anecdotal but in my experience I hear developers complaining about bloated websites an order of magnitude more than ordinary users. It's almost like for some the argument is more about some abstract concept of artisanal purity than true care for user experience. HN basically has a front page post decrying the state of the modern web every day... Before anyone jumps down my throat about this I should add that browsing the web with JS disabled is a truly wonderful experience on sites that support it. It would be great if everything did. I don't see that happening though.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    > some abstract concept of artisanal purity As opposed to what, some abstract concept of ordinary users? What the sales department wants? The idea of craftsmanship isn't that abstract to me. Performance and cacheability aren't abstract at all, that a website can get reloaded many times even for just one reader, and usually shares memory and CPU and HD cache with many other tabs, is also a really obvious observation. Stuff that makes a noticeable difference even in isolation makes a giant difference multiplied with a triple trillion, I've done the math. > HN basically has a front page post decrying the state of the modern web every day... That doesn't mean there isn't a problem. There's also articles decrying environmental destruction every day, not on HN but in general - should that make one care less? Would you say that biologists and climatologists are more concerned than the "ordinary person" means the ordinary should be heeded? I'd be surprised to see scientists in a science forum talk like that. Web development is an "art", maybe like architecture is art, and we are the artisans. If having any sort of ideals to strive towards is "abstract" to us, that says more about the people involved in web development and how much genuine excitement and care for detail was destroyed by money and marketing, but not much about web development as an art form as such. Does a flood of crappy action movies say anything about the state of the art in movie making, at all? And yes, the "average audience" maybe likes them, but who cares? If they got something else instead, there's nothing they could do about it, and it would be better for them. I don't care if that's arrogant, but don't call it abstract :P > I don't see that happening though. That is like talking about sports or the weather, even if its true, it's pointless. The question is rather, what do we think should happen, and how can we make it happen.
JohnFen 8y ago
"The turnaround time for features is not even remotely close." True, but turnaround time is something that is primarily beneficial to developers, as it's all about reducing development costs.