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Comment by matthoiland | Hacker News Reader

I've spent most of my career as a front end developer. We have three tools in our toolbox: HTML, CSS, and Javascript. We need them all and will push each to the extreme to create better experiences for our users and reimagine what the web can become.

I also work in the healthcare space with heavy HIPAA security requirements. Like any language/framework/platform there are best practices to follow for solid security and performance, and a good secops team should set meaningful requirements.

In short, I will show a "This site requires Javascript enabled" message 100% of the time if my site requires Javascript.

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> and will push each to the extreme to create better experiences for our users and reimagine what the web can become.

OMG. For this 'better experience' and 'reimagining what the web can become' did you bother to ask the users you pretend to cater for? No?

Listen carefully: the only experience I want from any website is to get to it, get the info I want, then I fuck off sharpish. I do not want 'experience' or any bloody 'reimagining' thank you. I have work to do.

Thank You! I could not have said that better myself.

It's also their site... to make how they want.

The web is more than static websites.

Sure - see my comment elsewhere where I acknowledge that. But all I'm asking for is static sites where static sites are appropriate.

Seconded. 99% of the crap on websites is not the information I need and it's wasting my limited resources:

- battery - monthly bandwidth cap - RAM - attention (pop ups, things that blink, things that scroll) - patience for privacy breaches

Pure text is the "better experience" most people want.

The obnoxious thing about this comment is that we often do ask users. Every company I've worked at does user testing and surveys, etc, and no one has ever complained about this stuff. Users do get excited for more interactivity and intuitive functionality, which is easiest to build in Javascript. You're assuming we haven't asked, when actually we have, and everyone else disagrees with you.

The people who share your sentiment are a tiny minority, like IE users.

> I've spent most of my career as a front end developer. We have three tools in our toolbox: HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

While it may be common, this seems a somewhat problematic framing of things. You're first responsibility ought to be to an analysis of the problem space, determining the appropriate tool to use based on the needs of the project. If you've already chosen the solution before you've even considered the problem, then of course you would have trouble conceiving of the options outside that narrow set.

"In short, I will show a "This site requires Javascript enabled" message 100% of the time if my site requires Javascript."

That's why we users need replacement/plugin alternative JavaScript engines that will allow users to tweak settings and to send feedback/info back to the website that the user thinks that the site should receive. You or the site can then remain blissfully unaware that what you are receiving from the user's machine is cleverly-framed (disguised) garbage.

Sooner or later we'll have a plethora of such engines and then the tide will have turned.

> to create better experiences for our users

I do not fucking want an "experience", I want hypertext with some images.

Touché! Precisely!

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