[epistasis]

I agree 100%, and see other problems for users as well. The worst web pages I encounter are the javascript-constructed DOM pages. And by far the worst offender is the odious Google Web Toolkit.

It may be that I encounter some of these "modern" pages without knowing it because some dev has put in the time to make it work well, it seems that the vast majority are absolutely terrible. It's a small decrease in developer effort for a huge decrease in user satisfaction. I remember the terrible terrible #! days of Twitter with sadness.

Some developers have a tendency to go for the internally sophisticated/beautiful in preference to the best experience for the user. I hope that blog posts like this one don't let loose these developers' worst tendencies.