|
If javascript did not exist HTML/CSS/SVG would have evolved... Perhaps it would. Perhaps if JavaScript did not exist then we would have developed better tools for building what we now call web apps instead. Perhaps if JavaScript did not exist, those apps would be using something separate to the Web, and the Web would have remained a mostly non-interactive, read-only medium. I'm quite sure that with the wisdom of hindsight that we enjoy today we could have designed much, much better ways to do what web apps are doing. But the thing is, JavaScript does exist, and it's being used to provide sites/apps that many people find useful, arguably much more useful by now than the original purpose of the Web. Meanwhile, those hypothetical alternatives do not exist, and so obviously they aren't providing any of that desirable functionality to users. This being the case, I think reverting to the Web being a very limited medium that doesn't offer those benefits is no longer plausible. It would set the development of useful and/or enjoyable technologies used by billions of people back 10-15 years, and there's no guarantee that whatever would actually evolve to replace it would be any better. I'm been developing for the Web professionally for many years, and a programmer for many years more. I'd be the first to agree that what we have today has problems, some of them serious, and that we should try to do something about them. But no-one's going to stop the train or turn back time, so any realistic solutions have to start from where we actually are and provide better practical alternatives, not start from where some of us might have preferred to be and provide wishful thinking. |
You're overestimating the importance of JavaScript here. phpBB didn't start using JavaScript until phpBB2 was released, and I believe that UBB, the forum software phpBB was based on, didn't use JavaScript either at the time. (Of course, this was partially because JavaScript was so limited back then.)