Comment by asa400
3 days ago
To a first approximation HN is a group of people who have convinced themselves that it's a high quality user experience to spend 11 seconds shipping 3.8 megabytes of Javascript to a user that's connected via a poor mobile connection on a cheap dual-core phone so that user can have a 12 second session where they read 150 words and view 1 image before closing the tab.
Fast is _absolutely not_ the only thing we care about. Not even top 5. We are addicted to _convenience_.
The fact that this article and similar ones get upvoted very frequently on this platform is strong evidence against this claim.
Considering the current state of the Web and user application development, I tend to agree with regard to its developers, but HN seems to still abide by other principles.
It's not that they convinced themselves, but that they don't know how to do any better. It is as fast as it can be to the extent of their knowledge, skill, and ability.
You see some legendary developers show up on HN from time to time, sure, but it is quite obvious that the typical developer isn't very good. HN is not some kind of exclusive club for the most prestigious among us. It is quite representative of a general population where you expect that most aren't very good.
This kind of slop is often imposed on developers by execs demanding things.
I imagine a large chunk of us would gladly throw all that out the window and only write super fast efficient code structures, if only we could all get well paid jobs doing it.