

Tools don’t solve the web’s problems, they are the problem - tosh
http://quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2015/05/tools_dont_solv.html

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freshyill
I agree, _in theory_. Apps are faster.

No disrespect to PPK, but he needs to cite some examples.

If he's talking about jQuery, then I disagree. It's gotten faster, and it's a
tiny download when you compare it to videos, images, or webfonts.

If he's talking about front-end MVC-ish frameworks, they're not completely
blameless, but generally speaking, the sites that use them _feel_ fast once
you get past the initial load.

I think his premise is off. He's talking about front-end performance. Tools
aren't the problem. Content is the problem.

Images are huge. Videos are huge. What we need are tools to help us get around
this. And we're getting them. Talk to any serious front-end developer, and
they'll tell you all about what they're doing to improve performance. Critical
CSS, asynchronous CSS and JS, the picture element, Web Page Test, PageSpeed,
better Inspector tools, etc. Even Google Fonts warns you very clearly about
the impact your choices will have on download times. There's no shortage of
tools, but tools aren't the problem.

There's no denying that the web can be faster, but we've been doing an
admirable job of keeping up with rich content.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I downloaded a themeforest website template the other day. It was a pretty
simple admin site, whole bunch of HTML pages which was cool.

the assets folder had this:

    
    
      css: 460Kb
    
      fonts: 1016Kb
    
      images: 4004Kb
    
      js: 1948Kb
    

So yes, images and video is the largest section of content, but it's not
helping that nearly half as much again is executable code that needs to be not
only downloaded, but then executed (and it doesn't help that this code
produced ~20 errors depending on which browser it ran on).

I agree with the OP that we have a problem here.

~~~
freshyill
I don't know what you expected.

If you go downloading random themes built by anonymous people of questionable
skill, you're unlikely to get a performant web site.

~~~
marcus_holmes
fair point, but still

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tosh
I'm not sure what kind of 'tools' the author is referring to though.

~~~
spronkey
No.. I didn't quite get it either. People blindly including every js lib under
the sun and not optimising at all, sure. Using "tools" ? What. Surely he
wasn't suggestin people reinvent the wheel?

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vortico
I feel the need to link this rant, as I have a number of times as a response
to overdesigning until you've half-solved the problems you've created by
overdesigning.
[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

