The web sucks–you just don't know it (2004)

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...