Given an equal feature set (and similar performance), a larger lib is worse, yes.

If your problem space requires a lot of code, then off course not.

The irony is you are the extremist for thinking HN is full of extremists! :)

Also, library size !== mediocrity at all. No one builds an unreasonably large framework on purpose either.

A large library is perfectly fine if it provides enough functionality to pull its own weight. But these days just about every site on the web has dozens if not hundreds of bloated libraries for the stupidest things and large bundle sizes due to that have become a pretty good indication of wrong priorities from the developer's part.

And I, as a user, am left waiting several seconds waiting for pages larger than the original Doom executable to load. It's gotten so bad that my wife had to be selective of when to use her phone because browsing normally without wifi from starbucks etc would get her over the plan limit by mid-month. I mean, how much browsing are you really supposed to be able to do when every page is several MBs of JS alone, and you have a 300MB/mo plan to work with? Not every country has cheap/good mobile plans.

Article has 300kb+ of javascript on mobile, loads pretty fast on 3G. I don't know what you're talking about.

Loading time doesn't always result in complaints (that depends on the user's expectations) but has a significant effect on likelihood of repeat visits, length of visits, and amount of interaction.