Also the assumption that my userbase uses low latency satellite connections, and are somehow unable to put up with my website, when every other website in current existence is multiple megabytes.
There was no such assumption, that was just the first example after which he mentions normal roundtrip latencies are usually in the 100-300ms range.
Just because everything else is bad, doesn't invalidate the idea that you should do better. Today's internet can feel painfully slow even on a 1Gbps connection because of this; websites were actually faster in the early 2000s, during the transition to ADSL, as they still had to cater to dial-up users and were very light as a result.
> Just because everything else is bad, doesn't invalidate the idea that you should do better.
I get this all the time at my job, when I recommend a team do something differently in their schema or queries: “do we have any examples of teams currently doing this?” No, because no one has ever cared to try. I understand not wanting to be guinea pigs, but you have a domain expert asking you to do something, and telling you that they’ll back you up on the decision, and help you implement it. What more do you want?!
Just because everything else is bad, doesn't invalidate the idea that you should do better. Today's internet can feel painfully slow even on a 1Gbps connection because of this; websites were actually faster in the early 2000s, during the transition to ADSL, as they still had to cater to dial-up users and were very light as a result.