Comment by eska

Making a website is what made me interested in programming as a 10 year old during the dot com bubble. Even back then I realized very quickly that webdev is a cargo cult and I switched to C and assembly to learn how to program “real” programs. Even now, almost 30 years later, I can make high quality software based on technology from back then (compared to the constant dependency drift nowadays in webdev). It’s just a constant assault by young programmers who don’t know better in webdev.

Some years ago I made a website again. Screw best practices, I used my systems engineering skills and the browser’s debugger. I had written game engines with soft realtime physics simulations and global illumination over the network. I knew what computers could do. This website would render within 1 frame at 60 FPS without any layout recalculation, garbage collection events, web requests that can’t be parallelized without dependencies etc.

I showed it to friends. They complained it doesn’t work. They didn’t realize that once they clicked, the site displayed the next content instantly (without any weird js tricks). This was a site with a fully responsive and complex looking design. The fact that users are SO used to terrible UX made me realize that I was right about this industry all along as a child.