
The web sucks–you just don't know it (2004) - carussell
http://nothings.org/writing/websucks.html
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carussell
Aside from the many great soundbites in it, the thing I like most about this
article is that its author is Sean Barrett, whose background is in game
development and as a traditional, pre-Web client programmer. (See [1].)

Usually, the same way that ecosystems stratify around languages, opinions in
questions of tech advocacy tends to stratify based on developer background.
Most of the progression in web standards that the author is against has been
bolstered by the attitude from people that hail from his background. (Roughly,
that camp's attitude tends to resemble something like, _just give the
developer the ability he or she needs in order to do what he or she wants_.)
It's the exact attitude that gave rise to developer-first QOL improvements
like WebAssembly and many other things that have popped up in the nearly 1.5
decades after this was written.

This is notable because that camp's overriding perspective is the exact
_opposite_ of the author's own grumble about "your experience interacting with
the web could be vastly better, but browser authors are instead caught up in
enhancing the abilities of content creators". I.e., the author prioritizes a
user-first perspective, recognizing that the developer-first mindset has
almost always been in conflict with his ideal vision for the Web, despite his
own background.

There's also the really great breakdown of Web content as type #1 vs #2 vs #3,
which predates similar descriptions that I'd only seen start to become
independently written about in the last several years—probably after 2011 or
so.

In my opinion, this essay is as on-the-nose, as brutal, and as important as
Maciej Ceglowski's similar and often referenced takes ("Legends of the Ancient
Web", and "The Website Obesity Crisis").

1\.
[http://nothings.org/gamedev/how_i_found_myself_in_the_game_i...](http://nothings.org/gamedev/how_i_found_myself_in_the_game_industry.html)

