[ivan_gammel]

They are not designed for modern use cases and certainly not well-designed according to modern understanding of this word. In fact they did not stood the test of time as something worthy of preservation, they only survived and mutated, because it is extremely hard to replace them.

And of course we should blame the technology: the sole purpose of a standard is to be used by people. If people struggle with it the standard is unfit for its purpose.

[fasa99]

You are 100% right but it's no reason to pick on web in particular! When you hit a site, you may have a virtual HTML environment running a JIT virtual machine from a server that's running a virtual python environment on a virtual python environment on a virtual machine on a virtual machine, and all that runs on a virtual x86 processor which in reality is a series of microcode processors. Yes, yes, it would be so much simpler to have your web go straight to the source, microcode, and yes, things would be simple and fast... .. but ... but ABSTRACTION!!!! LETS ABSTRACT EVERYTHING EVER AS MANY TIMES AS POSSIBLE WITH AS MANY ABSTRACTION LAYERS AS POSSIBLE IT GENERALIZES TO THE GENERAL CASE ABSTRACTION GENERALIZES ALL CASES WOOOOWWWW THE COMPUTER SCIENCE OF IT ALL

That is the state of things.

[1attice]

> And of course we should blame the technology: the sole purpose of a standard is to be used by people. If people struggle with it the standard is unfit for its purpose.

'People' is equivocal here. While complex, and (as you point out, in so many words) an evolved standard, the HTML/CSS/JS stack is arguably one of humanity's greatest achievements, up there with the invention of paper, or perhaps cuneiform.

It's imperfect, like all living standards, but it manages to be ubiquitous, expressive, and _useful_. And for those of us who grew up with these standards, they are second nature.

Like piano, mastering these standards gives you the ability to express complex UI concepts with grace and alacrity.

Don't smash up your parents' piano simply because practicing scales is a chore :)

[ivan_gammel]

> Don't smash up your parents' piano simply because practicing scales is a chore :)

I witnessed evolution of UIs from Turbo Vision to modern web and mobile frameworks. My first commercial website went live in 1999. No, UI is not hard and doesn’t require any mastery. As a matter of fact, building decent UI for a client-server application is a simple task with the right tools and processes. Modern Web is not parents‘ piano - you can call it elegant only if you have seen nothing else. It’s a fridge with mostly expired cheap food, from which you have to cook a decent meal for a party. It is possible, no doubt. Without food we will die, so we have to cook it. Instead we could just go shopping.

[surgical_fire]

> HTML/CSS/JS stack is arguably one of humanity's greatest achievements

We deserve to go extinct.