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Years ago the web was fast on a 1 GHz single-core with 512MB of RAM. What changed, other than ads and ad networks like Google becoming far more invasive by wast

Years ago the web was fast on a 1 GHz single-core with 512MB of RAM. What changed, other than ads and ad networks like Google becoming far more invasive by wasting more and more memory and CPU?

greenyoda 7y ago
In the days since 1 GHz CPUs, web pages have also grown from simple HTML/CSS to huge JavaScript frameworks, in which displaying the simplest static content requires a ton of JavaScript. But if you install a browser add-on such as uMatrix, you can see that surprisingly many web sites will still work just fine if you disable JavaScript (even first-party JavaScript). One example is nytimes.com.
- user5994461 7y ago
  Should mention that megabytes of javascripts are slow to download, compile and execute. While a few seconds may go unnoticed on the developer desktops, it will be a lot more on a mobile or laptop.
tomlagier 7y ago
We covered it, floor to ceiling, in images and video. Yesteryear's web had a few grainy avatar images and GIFs in footers, todays has nonstop, wall-to-wall, high-definition media.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Not an excuse, those can be loaded on demand. Also, gifs have basically no compression.
dbtx 7y ago
I advised a friend to ditch the JS-powered pop-out social media icons which were hovering almost out of sight over on the right. They said quite flatly, "nope, that's staying". That was probably ten years ago. There is a school of public opinion that everyone seems to be attending. The things they learn there are not always logical or justifiable but I get the impression that they all want to secure their piece of the pie and that means meeting everyone's expectations, so they are all doing it to each other, together. Google is "merely" running classes in that school, it seems... and of course helping the school keep running by supplying tons of tech. I was mildly disgusted when required reading for freshman orientation at Akron U included a book called Nickel and Dimed. The gist was something like "get your education or you're screwed". But people made it that way in the first place! Everyone supposedly needing formal higher education in order to have any decent future isn't something that just happens, it's something the human race is doing to itself. Leave it to a higher education institution to push the idea that "this is just the way it is, do the right thing if you know what's good for you". edit: obvs I didn't read the book, it's not exactly like I said. I think I bought the book but dropped that "class" anyway In a similar way, stupid "trends" like social media buttons and Like buttons are just examples of how everyone is ruining the web together. These days it's the aforementioned massive JS frameworks and SPAs and of course the obsession with "analytics." In a way it's nice for me and my workstation because it helps drive up the current average affordable densities of RAM and storage, but ...it's slavery. And Google seems to be less and less bashful about it. "you are slaves of whatever you submit to by obeying" --that guy
- zonidjan 7y ago
  > because it helps drive up the current average affordable densities of RAM and storage It does, but it also means that RAM and storage isn't available to be used for other things. Think about what you could if you had current hardware back in the XP days...
zonidjan 7y ago
JavaScript, SPAs, animations, pages filled with "pretty" instead of content.

Years ago the web was fast on a 1 GHz single-core with 512MB of RAM. What changed, other than ads and ad networks like Google becoming far more invasive by wasting more and more memory and CPU?

greenyoda 7y ago

In the days since 1 GHz CPUs, web pages have also grown from simple HTML/CSS to huge JavaScript frameworks, in which displaying the simplest static content requires a ton of JavaScript. But if you install a browser add-on such as uMatrix, you can see that surprisingly many web sites will still work just fine if you disable JavaScript (even first-party JavaScript). One example is nytimes.com.

user5994461 7y ago
Should mention that megabytes of javascripts are slow to download, compile and execute. While a few seconds may go unnoticed on the developer desktops, it will be a lot more on a mobile or laptop.

tomlagier 7y ago

We covered it, floor to ceiling, in images and video. Yesteryear's web had a few grainy avatar images and GIFs in footers, todays has nonstop, wall-to-wall, high-definition media.

BlueTemplar 7y ago
Not an excuse, those can be loaded on demand. Also, gifs have basically no compression.

dbtx 7y ago

I advised a friend to ditch the JS-powered pop-out social media icons which were hovering almost out of sight over on the right. They said quite flatly, "nope, that's staying". That was probably ten years ago. There is a school of public opinion that everyone seems to be attending. The things they learn there are not always logical or justifiable but I get the impression that they all want to secure their piece of the pie and that means meeting everyone's expectations, so they are all doing it to each other, together. Google is "merely" running classes in that school, it seems... and of course helping the school keep running by supplying tons of tech. I was mildly disgusted when required reading for freshman orientation at Akron U included a book called Nickel and Dimed. The gist was something like "get your education or you're screwed". But people made it that way in the first place! Everyone supposedly needing formal higher education in order to have any decent future isn't something that just happens, it's something the human race is doing to itself. Leave it to a higher education institution to push the idea that "this is just the way it is, do the right thing if you know what's good for you". edit: obvs I didn't read the book, it's not exactly like I said. I think I bought the book but dropped that "class" anyway In a similar way, stupid "trends" like social media buttons and Like buttons are just examples of how everyone is ruining the web together. These days it's the aforementioned massive JS frameworks and SPAs and of course the obsession with "analytics." In a way it's nice for me and my workstation because it helps drive up the current average affordable densities of RAM and storage, but ...it's slavery. And Google seems to be less and less bashful about it. "you are slaves of whatever you submit to by obeying" --that guy

zonidjan 7y ago
> because it helps drive up the current average affordable densities of RAM and storage It does, but it also means that RAM and storage isn't available to be used for other things. Think about what you could if you had current hardware back in the XP days...

zonidjan 7y ago

JavaScript, SPAs, animations, pages filled with "pretty" instead of content.