[stakhanov]

> By what metric?

On the user's side: Just pick any set of well-established best practices such as Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules or Nielsen & Molich's 10 Usability Heuristics, an then pick a typical 2024 electron app that has an equivalent from the 2003-2013 era and is written with a typical UI technology of the time (such as Windows Forms), and compare the two UIs with respect to those best practices. -- I'm pretty sure you will find usability blunders in today's software that you simply couldn't commit back then, even if you tried. -- Essential UI elements being hidden away (with no indication that such hiding is taking place) based on viewport size, leaving the user unable to perform their task is one thing that immediately comes to mind. Another example I happened to experience just yesterday: UI elements disappearing from underneath my mouse cursor when my mouse cursor starts to hover over them.

Also: Just look at the widget gallery in Windows Forms, providing intuitive metaphors for even quite subtle patterns of user interaction and check how many of those widgets you find implemented in modern web-based design languages and web component systems. ...usually you don't get much beyond input fields, buttons, and maybe tabbed-views if you're lucky. So today's software is relegated to using just those few things, where, 10 years ago, you had so many more widgets to pick and choose from to get it just right.

On the developer's side: Was JavaScript ever actually designed to do the things it's being used for today? Is dependency hell, especially in the web ecosystem, worse today than it was 10 years ago?

[scott_w]

> Just pick any set of well-established best practices such as Shneiderman's Eight Golden Rules

Excellent, we have something objective to look at. Now, where's the studies, reports, etc. that this has declined in the past decade? I'm not asking for a double-blind, peer reviewed study, just something a bit more concrete than "stop the world, I want to get off."

> Was JavaScript ever actually designed to do the things it's being used for today?

Was anything?

[stakhanov]

> > Just pick any set of [...]

> [...] Now, where's the studies, reports, etc. [...] "stop the world, I want to get off."

This argument is getting a bit tediuos. It started with you offering an opinion. I offered a counter-opinion, while clearly marking my opinion as such using language such as "I think ...", "I would say ...", "If I were to speculate ..."

I'm clearly not alone with my opinion (see original post), and you're trying to undermine your opponents' credibility by getting ad-hominem and pointing out that their position lacks the kind of research which you yourself did not provide either.

> > Was JavaScript ever actually designed to do the things it's being used for today?

> Was anything?

Hyperbole. Many things were designed to do the things they now do. Lua was designed as a language for embedding. SQL was designed as a language for querying databases.

[scott_w]

> I'm clearly not alone with my opinion (see original post),

I recall seeing the same thing being said in the 2000s on Slashdot, so "software is shit now" is an opinion that's not new.

> and you're trying to undermine your opponents' credibility by getting ad-hominem and pointing out that their position lacks the kind of research

All I'm saying is that this popular position of "software used to be so much better" has strong "kids today" vibes.

> which you yourself did not provide either.

I'm not the one saying an entire industry has forgotten how to do our jobs.

[stakhanov]

...because I happened to come across it in my bookmarks just now, there's an article by Don Norman [1] that made the HN frontpage somewhat recently [2] sharing my pessimistic view about usability today. Admittedly, he has a conflict of interest, making money by telling people how bad their UIs are and how to make them better. But he definitely is very respected, and, in my opinion, deservedly so.

> [...] strong "kids today" vibes. [...] entire industry has forgotten how to do our jobs.

The OP seemed to be pessimistic, your initial point was "It was pretty bad in the mid-90s, and it's no worse today" which is really not very optimistic either, and my point was "Well, it was bad in the mid-90s, then got better, then got worse again". So, FWIW, I think that my point was actually somewhat more nuanced than the pessimistic context. I was also expressing optimism towards certain technologies while expressing pessimism towards others.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90338379/i-wrote-the-book-on-use...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37902412

[scott_w]

> your initial point was "It was pretty bad in the mid-90s, and it's no worse today" which is really not very optimistic either,

Partially but I suspect things are better than everyone keeps saying. The whole "it used to be better" is a meme I see in all walks of life and I want to see something to prove it beyond a bunch of opinions.

Do I think some things are worse? Yeah, probably, such is the way of life. Do I think the entire industry went to shit? That's something that even the most respected people will need to provide evidence for. It seems a bit strange that I somehow joined the industry in 2010 and spent my entire career getting shitter and shitter.