[eadmund]

From my point of view, there are several of reasons:

• It’s just not necessary. The Web is, at its heart, about resources and actions on them. Those resources are mostly documents. There is just no need to execute a Turing-complete programming language in order to display a list of links to files (which is what GitHub is).

• It hinders use of lightweight browsers. There is no good reason that I should be forced to fire up a VM like Firefox or Chrome when I could use eww, w3m or elinks.

• It is insecure. Javascript enables insecure exploits. Large browsers such as Firefox and Chrome have a much larger surface area than small HTML viewers such as eww, w3m or elinks.

• It hinders privacy. Javascript and large browsers enable much more persistent user tracking than lightweight browsers such as eww, w3m or elinks.

For me, the first reason is the strongest: I think that those who push Javascript fundamentally misunderstand the Web. I am grudgingly fine with using it to provide functionality which would be impossible without it, but I also think that experiments such as htmx show a way forward to put more behaviour into the browser itself. Browser apps are certainly neat! But the Web is ultimately about linked documents. It is built on the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and the Hyper Text Markup Language, not the Network App Protocol and the Network App Programming Paradigm for Inexperienced Engineering Students (although I do sometimes think Javascript proponents just need a nap and to have their nappies changed grin).