> Modern website developers should learn a thing or two about optimization from this.
I'm just as anti-bloat as the next HN'er, but optimizing websites is almost certainly not a business interest, therefore not an imperative, and therefore not going to happen. Instead of just wishing web developers were better, it would be more productive to find a way to align website optimization with business interests.
After all, how many people, really, would stop using websites or apps because they're slow? They can be frustrating, but most of the non-tech people I know just deal with it. That's hardly a recipe for changing the way websites are built. Basically, I posit to you that website, webapp, and mobile app optimization is a revealed preference [0], where the preference is that it's not actually important.
If you were running a company, how would you justify spending developer time on such an optimization versus, say, implementing features that actually make money?
Depending on your market, your target users might not be using the latest and fastest devices on latest 5G network or optic. If user goes through checkout flow as fast as possible, company makes money faster.
Yes, but as you said, this is very market dependent. I'm all for optimization where it's needed, but often times optimization hasn't been done because it isn't needed, e.g. in the case of electron apps.
I'm just as anti-bloat as the next HN'er, but optimizing websites is almost certainly not a business interest, therefore not an imperative, and therefore not going to happen. Instead of just wishing web developers were better, it would be more productive to find a way to align website optimization with business interests.
After all, how many people, really, would stop using websites or apps because they're slow? They can be frustrating, but most of the non-tech people I know just deal with it. That's hardly a recipe for changing the way websites are built. Basically, I posit to you that website, webapp, and mobile app optimization is a revealed preference [0], where the preference is that it's not actually important.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference