[mikeash]

Yes! All the replies here are missing the point completely. It’s not that JavaScript is somehow uniquely bad among programming languages. It’s that the entire idea of putting a general purpose programming language into the system was a bad idea.

99% of my web browsing shouldn’t need it. Every site I visit uses it, but almost all of them could be built just fine without it.

[manigandham]

The web has long-ago graduated beyond just serving up documents, and having a capable language and platform was key in enabling it.

There are downsides to everything, but we cant dismiss that positives that came from it.

[mikeash]

The problem is that document delivery is still the main function, but the platform wants to be a fully capable app platform.

Yes, it’s great that the web is capable of stuff like Google Docs. But all those capabilities are actually liabilities when it’s a news site.

[manigandham]

It is a fully capable platform. How it's used isn't a fault of the platform though. It seems user-agents and adblockers are applying the proper protections, just like how antivirus works on your desktop.

[Kaiyou]

But nobody whines about antivirus and begs you (and the government) to disable it, so they can sell you.

[manigandham]

Well the difference is ads and malware are not the same thing, but they use the same vectors. The comparison would be more like removing DRM protections vs using antivirus.