[afloatboat]

I see people comment this on HN on a daily basis and it always boggles my mind. For me this reads as: 'This thing that was initially conceived years ago when computers were incapable of much more than display text should never evolve/change to take advantage of current capabilities'.

Yes, initially the web could only display hyperlinked text. The same can be said for many technologies/inventions, should we therefore never expand the capabilities of our tools? What is the difference between the web and your operating system in that regard? Why are OS APIs so different?

We can also look at the positive effect this evolution has had where what used to be platform specific tooling is now often simply available via a URL. I much prefer that over random executables that are not sandboxed and by default have full access to all your data. Yes, this can be mitigated, but the average user won't.

No it's not all sunshine and roses, we've made trade-offs with regards to performance and UX among others, but this is still an ongoing process as the modern web is still relatively young and changing.

[ori_b]

> take advantage of current capabilities'.

The problem is that, usually, turning off "current capabilities" leads to a faster loading, lower distraction, less ad-contaminated, less janky, and all around better experience. In an effort to squeeze every ad dollar out of the eyeballs crossing the page, sites are using modern capabilities as weapons against their users.

If sites continue to work js-free, there's a simple switch to enable to improve my browsing experience.

And it even defeats the anti-adblock crap reasonably often.

[zelphirkalt]

We have HTML and CSS, which evolved quite a lot and already allow for what 90% (estimate) of the websites do.

Usually it is people using JS, where they should not and tracking from FAANG and others, which are the reason to block JS. You are painting a wrong picture there.

If 95% of the web devs used JS in appropriate ways and it was not used so much for spying on people, well, then it would be a different story.

[handrous]

JavaScript's a massive security threat. It's really weird to me that people seem to just assume it's fine, and isn't the most dangerous damn thing in common use on computers. Every time someone (usually Google) pushes another way for it to touch hardware, I'm surprised that most developers are like "oh good, so glad, can't wait 'till Safari catches up in 5 years". Um... no? It's a terrible idea? Please don't ever?

We ought to be reigning in what JS can do and removing access, not adding more. For one thing, it shouldn't be able to send data without our say-so. It's insecure and spying-enabling by design—why does clicking a link mean the page that loads gets to send my mouse movements and keystrokes to its master? That's crazy, and has been a major contributor to the new norm that all kinds of privacy-invasion is fine. "It's just 'telemetry', what's the big deal?" Ugh.

"That's alarmist, JS is super secure" right, and most folks weren't worried about their CPUs betraying them until Meltdown and Spectre—smart money says there is a vulnerability we'll find shocking in one or more JavaScript implementations, right now, waiting to screw us.

[acuozzo]

> smart money says there is a vulnerability we'll find shocking in one or more JavaScript implementations, right now, waiting to screw us.

https://www.vusec.net/projects/smash/

[grifball]

We spend a ton of time locking down OS API/ABIs to prevent sandbox violations and I wouldn't trust a shared server with sensitive data unless I had an IT team working on it. JS seems to be a lot better with sandboxing though. You still have to really worry about CSRF though. I use multiple profiles to ensure sketchy sites can't get at my data.

I think JS gets a bad name when people use it to make crazy modal popups or inline video ads or change the way the page scrolls. Beyond that it's cool that devs can get really creative with a website and I love coding in JS. But also you're adding a lot of complexity for that. HTML/css are fine for creating a website that communicates information and maybe even looks nice. And they aren't actually a programming language, they're just data. JS is a full programming language and gives you enough rope you hang yourself and I think developers kinda go off the rails messing with their sites and ruin the user experience.

It is cool that I can have whoever execute code on my machine without worrying if it will get privileged access to it. That is a pretty amazing feature of JS/browsers.

[kitsune_]

It is a weird hang up because JavaScript/scripting was already ubiquitous in the 90s! I programmed "Dynamic HTML" pages as a summer job in '98 or so when I was in high school.

[acuozzo]

> we've made trade-offs with regards to performance and UX among others

Security too! https://www.vusec.net/projects/smash/

[t-3]

There was never a technical limitation to running software over a network, unless you go back to before computer networking was invented, far far before the internet. Putting all the capability into the browser is what people have a problem with.

The modern web is anxiety-inducing and incredibly scary to people that pay attention. I don't want to spend an hour checking the js on sites before I use them to make sure they aren't malicious/mining bitcoin/whatever, so disabling JS is an easy out that preserves my sanity, and gives me a better experience. No cookies, no popups, no paywalls, no ads, no lag.

[dreamcompiler]

There's nothing wrong with using a school bus to carry 30 children to a school, just like there's nothing wrong with using JS to render a highly-interactive SPA.

But the vast majority of websites that use React are the moral equivalent of driving an empty school bus to the store to buy a loaf of bread: It's massively wasteful and frankly stupid.

[adventured]

> should we therefore never expand the capabilities of our tools?

Yes that's exactly what the luddites are arguing in favor of, rolling back progress, and dramatically stripping away capabilities. They don't consider any of it to be a net positive, they don't think of it as being progress.

It's not specific to JavaScript, it's far broader than that. It's an ethos.

In my observation they also typically want to go back to not having graphical user interfaces. They like a nice command line interface as a way of life. It seems silly to stop there though. The computer should be gotten rid of just the same to be philosophically consistent.

[bonestormii_]

I think you are right in many respects. I would not consider myself one of the accused luddites, but in their defense, this ethos isn't baseless.

First and foremost, the luddites you speak of are programmers or sys admins. They have been using terminals and are still using terminals daily, and they see the benefits that those tools have to offer. Namely, they see composable, interoperable programs that abide by the philosophy that programs "should do one thing well" as the bench mark for real progress. I would say I agree with the merits of this perspective. But I still use VSCode in addition to vim, because I'm not a zealot and there are times when I want to edit something in a very flexible way that VS Code better facilitates.

Both ways of doing things have their merits I suppose. It just hurts a bit to see something simple and powerful be wrapped and rewrapped in progressively less helpful proprietary systems and given a JS front end that lacks all of the focus and freedom that charmed us with the systems to begin with.