just about once every week, I have to go on a bit of a rant about how awful the modern web is. I figured I would be preaching to the chior a bit on here but that is okay.

I recently saw a post by someone on youtube that I am subscribed to talking about progressive web apps and how awful it is that Mozilla is gutting the feature from the Firefox browser. They later posted a poll asking people weather or not the agree with Mozilla's decision to do this, but the vote I had for the poll was not an option, "good riddance."

Personally, I don't think that the web should be used to serve up web apps. To me, this is like a backwards version of the client-server model that the web is built apon. To illustrate, lets say that you and a few friends decide to peruse a local eating venue. Once you arrive at this restaurant, you are told to seat yourself. Seems pretty normal right? The server then comes up and asks you what you would like to eat, so you order something which sounds quite delightful. The server records the details of your order on a piece of paper and goes back to the kitchen.

What happens next, however, is truly perplexing. The server comes back with a bag of ingredients and shows you the general direction of the kitchen. The server also hands you a list of instructions for how to prepare the food yourself. How insane would it be for you to go to a restaurant and pay for the privilege of cooking your own food? Well in my opinion, that is what is happening with the modern web. We pay with our data for our web browsers to generate the content that should be generated by the server before it ever even touches the web browser.

This is why I am glad that gopher still exists, as the documents have to be ready for the gopherspace browser before they even get sent.

If you have ever tried running a web app on a low-end chromebook, you will probably understand the implications of building an entire website out of a client-side scripting language.

What do you all think? Am I just crazy for not accepting the current industry trend? Or is there more to consider?

I look forward to reading your comments.

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Ian Sutter - A Slackware Linux user

You're far from crazy for not liking this trend -- it is a complete breaking of the key principles which made the internet and the web in general work so well initially - servers serve up content, content is displayed on the users end, that's it. Remember back when the web was the LEAST intense thing you can do on a computer? Now everything seems to need the horsepower of your system just to show some text.. it's nuts, at least to me.

Bah, I'm already starting to ramble. Seriously though, programs should stay local to the system, remote applications should run remotely and the internet be used as the communications path for them. That's all. I shouldn't be using my web browser to type up Word documents!

While yes, for things like my blog, or this very post I'm making (doing on the BBS website for simplicity's sake) simple interactive forms are a far cry different from running an ENTIRE APPLICATION IN A WEB BROWSER'S PROGRAM SPACE! Some people can't see that difference, though, or think there isn't one... yeah, right.

...bah, things like this just angry up the blood. You aren't wrong in the least, I just can't articulate how I feel, as I really really do hate this trend, among so many others, with the modern internet.
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www.xadara.com

Re: Problems with the modern web
By: Kurisu to Stormy on Fri Feb 05 2021 02:53 pm

You're far from crazy for not liking this trend -- it is a complete breaking of the key principles which made the internet and the web in general work so well initially - servers serve up content, content is displayed on the users end, that's it. Remember back when the web was the LEAST intense thing you can do on a computer?

Exactly, I remember browsing the internet back when dial-up was a mainstream techology in the earlier 2000s. It was one of the lightest things until client-side scripting became a thing. Dont'get me wrong, client-side scripting can be useful, but as you said, the web was never meant do be used as a platform for software development. I don't mind writing a client-side script or two, I just hate when developers build their whole website out of JavaScript with a skeleton HTML file.

Now everything seems to need the horsepower of your
system just to show some text.. it's nuts, at least to me.

I know it's insane. I can load webapps on my raspberry pi 4 but many of them have horrible performance problems, especially during the time when the page is loading. This makes me even more sad now because I am probably going to have to write a web app for one of my college classes using something like angular or react. I tried to ask the instructor if I could create my own web framework and he shot the idea down and expressly forbade it. Now I will, in all likelyhood, have to develop some bloated web app using a massively bloated JavaScript framework.

...Programs should stay local to the system, remote applications should run > remotely and the internet be used as the communications path for them.
That's all. I shouldn't be using my web browser to type up Word documents! While yes, for things like my blog, or this very post I'm making (doing on the BBS website for simplicity's sake) simple interactive forms are a far cry different from running an ENTIRE APPLICATION IN A WEB BROWSER'S PROGRAM SPACE!

I agree wholeheartedly. The problem is, when I was thinking about developing a native desktop application for a project I was working on for one of my uncle's clients a while back, I was told that it would be the wrong direction for the project to go from a poorly optimized webapp to a native, fast, fully featured desktop client.

The industry trend is a strange one in deed... might be worth making a video or two about the major pitfalls of webapp development. Probably with some actual statistics and developers comments as well as end-users comments about how awful web development actually is. Now weather or not such a video would convince web developers to adopt another programming language for native software development is an entirely different story.

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Ian Sutter - A Slackware Linux user