Ask HN: Did we over-engineer the web, should we relearn jQuery?
Dropped React for a small project and used jQuery. Shipped faster, less mental overhead. Did we trade simplicity for ceremony, or is this just nostalgia? Curious what others think.
4 comments
Most web apps would be just as good, if not better, if run on my machine like a native app. I use several different browsers for several different purposes and they are almost always near the top of the list in terms of memory use. I constantly clear my cache but doing that a lot is a chore and sometimes I lose useful webapp state.
With AI agents, I do think these apps that manipulate the DOM so much that they obscure access to useful data will hinder AI agent discovery of their useful data. If an agent is looking at your website, it cannot see what you do not show it. This makes your site less visible to them and therefore reduces its likelihood of referencing it in its responses. Pure HTML sites are very kind to agents and allow them to generate better answers with attribution. Think of this as AI optimization for your website. Some regression to pure HTML will be the norm in the near future. Bottom line, build apps that run on machines, and use APIs to feed them, but build pages for the web with the intent of having AI agents discover them and have a good shot at using the data.
With AI agents, I do think these apps that manipulate the DOM so much that they obscure access to useful data will hinder AI agent discovery of their useful data. If an agent is looking at your website, it cannot see what you do not show it. This makes your site less visible to them and therefore reduces its likelihood of referencing it in its responses. Pure HTML sites are very kind to agents and allow them to generate better answers with attribution. Think of this as AI optimization for your website. Some regression to pure HTML will be the norm in the near future. Bottom line, build apps that run on machines, and use APIs to feed them, but build pages for the web with the intent of having AI agents discover them and have a good shot at using the data.
I think that a lot of web developers and users have gotten too comfortable with large amounts of memory usage. On one hand of the spectrum, web browsers are essentially remaking the idea of the operating system, but on the other hand, is the "HTML is good enough" crowd. Quite frankly, there SHOULD be a balance between these factions; and personally, I lean towards the "HTML is good enough" crowd. I've never been a fan of web apps, and I think systems programming is not beloved enough. A web page should be just that; a web page, like paper. Anything fancier shouldn't be stuck in the browser, IMHO.
I agree fully, up until the end of the sentence - my take is: everything else should be Webassembly/wasm.
If it's not a page, it's an app and that has to be wasm, because you are not allowed to treat the DOM of the browser so badly and unnecessarily bad, that it chokes under the pressure to render 1 view.
Example: https://www.egui.rs/#demo
If it's not a page, it's an app and that has to be wasm, because you are not allowed to treat the DOM of the browser so badly and unnecessarily bad, that it chokes under the pressure to render 1 view.
Example: https://www.egui.rs/#demo
Really depends on the project…