Comment by SL61

> I don't care that when I click "delete", the item may not disappear from the screen immediately.

The disconnect here between tech people and non-tech people is that most users do care about stuff like this.

I run a popular website as a solo project so all the feedback/complaints are routed to me, and one thing I've learned is that users really don't want websites to "feel old". Sure, they want it to be fast, but they also want all the bells and whistles like loading indicators and animations.

If you show Hacker News to someone who's not a developer, especially if they're under 30-35, their reaction to the layout and functionality will be visceral disgust. I really can't stress enough how much modern users hate the traditional plain HTML look. If you're trying to convince users to use your site and it looks or functions anything like HN, they'll get angry and close the tab within seconds to look for an alternative. Even if you've made a SPA with plenty of bells and whistles, users will still get upset if anything feels "clunky", which is often user-speak for "this component needs animations and a transition state". They don't know or care that all the fancy stuff increases the complexity of the codebase.

Every software project hits a point where the super clean abstractions the developers came up with start to clash with the messy way it's used in the real world. This is the frontend version of that. We have no choice but to give users the UX they want.