I miss the old days of video games and internet. There are far too many things competing for our attention these days. I've actually been making a new habit of getting my work done offline, or even AFK. I spent a day without turning on the PC or even looking at my phone, and already felt much better by the evening.
Unfortunately, this has been a chronic trend with computers. As soon as new capabilities become available, those capabilities are exploited... but not in a good way. Programming is a particularly bad offender here - people write their code in interpreted languages using bloated abstraction layers and class libraries. The constant refrain: "Computers are powerful enough now that the user can handle it." Yes, they can.
Until everyone is doing it and you've got dozens of programs running, all designed with the idea that efficiency is not necessary due to the advances in computer capabilities. And all the sudden... your fancy new computer is running slower than an older computer, because it has to deal with this crap.
This is the web site version of that. Unfortunately I have no idea of what could be done to stop it, because the mentality seems to be pervasive. I know that in some ways this is more efficient for the companies, as burning off a lot of CPU cycles may be an acceptable tradeoff for rapid deployment of changes and more efficient use of developer time. Still, I can't help but think that somehow, sometime, this is all going to bite everyone in the ass hard somehow. And in the case of websites, it's even worse, because those extra megabytes can be crammed full of obnoxious ads that the host is paid for and your computer has to choke down and process, which does very little to help with swelling bandwidth and memory requirements (which does not even touch on the security problems of many of these ads).
Fascinating article, he put into words what we've all been feeling, and did it well.
It makes me want to build a fucking website.
I did one in the late 90's by viewing page source, and a web design magazine my mom got me from a news stand on a whim one time. I was 12. It sucked and looked much like the high schooler MySpace pages of years later but I was proud of it.
7 comments
5 u/weezkitty 01 Jan 2016 22:01
Just like in humans, the bloat spreads like a disease. I hate modern web design with passion
2 u/svipbo 02 Jan 2016 17:40
Use an AdBlock software and turn off JavaScript for all but a few chosen websites and you'll have a better experience.
1 u/MMKH 02 Jan 2016 04:01
I miss the old days of video games and internet. There are far too many things competing for our attention these days. I've actually been making a new habit of getting my work done offline, or even AFK. I spent a day without turning on the PC or even looking at my phone, and already felt much better by the evening.
1 u/tribblepuncher 03 Jan 2016 10:03
Unfortunately, this has been a chronic trend with computers. As soon as new capabilities become available, those capabilities are exploited... but not in a good way. Programming is a particularly bad offender here - people write their code in interpreted languages using bloated abstraction layers and class libraries. The constant refrain: "Computers are powerful enough now that the user can handle it." Yes, they can.
Until everyone is doing it and you've got dozens of programs running, all designed with the idea that efficiency is not necessary due to the advances in computer capabilities. And all the sudden... your fancy new computer is running slower than an older computer, because it has to deal with this crap.
This is the web site version of that. Unfortunately I have no idea of what could be done to stop it, because the mentality seems to be pervasive. I know that in some ways this is more efficient for the companies, as burning off a lot of CPU cycles may be an acceptable tradeoff for rapid deployment of changes and more efficient use of developer time. Still, I can't help but think that somehow, sometime, this is all going to bite everyone in the ass hard somehow. And in the case of websites, it's even worse, because those extra megabytes can be crammed full of obnoxious ads that the host is paid for and your computer has to choke down and process, which does very little to help with swelling bandwidth and memory requirements (which does not even touch on the security problems of many of these ads).
0 u/stradian 02 Jan 2016 10:18
"Bottoms up!" --Steve Jobs, on 'the cloud'
"All you can eat!" --Bill Gates, on 'internet explorer'
"Part of a complete web experience!" --Brendan Eich, on 'javascript'
"Finish off this 32 MB file, and its free!" --Adobe, on 'flash-player'
0 u/Silver_Tube 02 Jan 2016 23:26
Fascinating article, he put into words what we've all been feeling, and did it well.
It makes me want to build a fucking website.
I did one in the late 90's by viewing page source, and a web design magazine my mom got me from a news stand on a whim one time. I was 12. It sucked and looked much like the high schooler MySpace pages of years later but I was proud of it.
0 u/djdevin 04 Jan 2016 17:49
this is the only website where ublock blocks 0%