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Utter failure? Seriously? Why is it that whenever someone shares something cool someone else inevitably wants to tear it down? This is far from an "utter failur

Utter failure? Seriously? Why is it that whenever someone shares something cool someone else inevitably wants to tear it down? This is far from an "utter failure". In 2013 you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has disabled JavaScript or is using a browser that doesn't support it. Furthermore, its safe to assume that a user who has purposely disabled JavaScript is sufficiently technical enough to know why they did it and re-enable it if they really want to use the site. Calling this an utter failure is total hyperbole. Okay, so the site doesn't gracefully degrade. That's a failure for best practices. But best practice isn't always so black and white and a site that doesn't degrade gracefully isn't always absolutely an utter failure. Consider the target audience of this. It'll be more technically inclined people. It's again safe to assume these people will mostly have JS enabled and most people won't have a problem. Even beyond that, we're not talking about a website that's trying to capture the hearts and minds of the entire Internet using population who'd ever want to use a Pastebin. It's some guy or girl who put together a beautiful side project and open sources it at that. But in the end whether you're right or wrong, have a good point or not, just doesn't matter. It's this pervasive culture of seeking out and focusing only on what's wrong with a project around here that seriously needs to stop. There was a project on the font page last night that wasn't the most impressive piece of code but served a cool purpose and the overwhelming majority of comments just wanted to tear it down and call it useless. It was pretty disgusting really because the project wasn't useless at all. It was just that the commenters didn't personally have a use for it and for some reason couldn't see anything beyond their own personal preferences as if they thought the entire world did (or should) have their same tastes or something. This needs to stop. If it doesn't we'll either no longer get anyone submitting their cool projects or all of HN will be overrun with over zealous critics or both.

niggler 14y ago
"In 2013 you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has disabled JavaScript or is using a browser that doesn't support it" I and many other people still use lynx/elinks. Which is not to say that I expect every service to work on a text browser, but to dismiss text browsers for a service catering to developers is a bit presumptive
mfincham 14y ago
You're right, "utter failure" might be taking things too far. "Consider the target audience of this. It'll be more technically inclined people. It's again safe to assume these people will mostly have JS enabled." I disagree with that sentiment completely. The target audience for this is people who're most likely to be (sensibly, imo) running with NoScript or with JS completely off. Given that, and given the site is implementing a function that doesn't require JS /at all/, to not even have the page throw an error message is pretty lousy in my books.
- jayflux 14y ago
  "The target audience for this is people who're most likely to be (sensibly, imo) running with NoScript or with JS completely off." Absolute rubbish I work in a huge place that holds almost 2000 developers ranging in many different languages, skillsets and areas. I've yet to meet 1 who surfs with JS switched off. Maybe this was the case in the early 2000s, but certainly not now. Get with the times.

niggler 14y ago

"In 2013 you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has disabled JavaScript or is using a browser that doesn't support it" I and many other people still use lynx/elinks. Which is not to say that I expect every service to work on a text browser, but to dismiss text browsers for a service catering to developers is a bit presumptive

mfincham 14y ago

You're right, "utter failure" might be taking things too far. "Consider the target audience of this. It'll be more technically inclined people. It's again safe to assume these people will mostly have JS enabled." I disagree with that sentiment completely. The target audience for this is people who're most likely to be (sensibly, imo) running with NoScript or with JS completely off. Given that, and given the site is implementing a function that doesn't require JS /at all/, to not even have the page throw an error message is pretty lousy in my books.

jayflux 14y ago
"The target audience for this is people who're most likely to be (sensibly, imo) running with NoScript or with JS completely off." Absolute rubbish I work in a huge place that holds almost 2000 developers ranging in many different languages, skillsets and areas. I've yet to meet 1 who surfs with JS switched off. Maybe this was the case in the early 2000s, but certainly not now. Get with the times.