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Comment by dwheeler | Hacker News Reader

Another issue: not everyone has JavaScript enabled, and it's good to back off to something useful without JavaScript where that is sensible.

Many security-minded folks think that "auto run arbitrary code from random websites" is more dangerous than the alternative. Indeed, this isanifestly true. Many sites should be able to provide a useful service without JavaScript. Sure, that's unreasonable for some sites (like Google docs), but for others it is perfectly reasonable.

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> not everyone has JavaScript enabled

What are the stats? I assume it's > 99% have JavaScript enabled. Any significant percentage could be down to corporate policies.

Stupid question, but given that most analytics are gathered via JS, I wonder if that might fall into the same sampling bias as "we called 100 random people and everyone has a phone!"

It's a good point. I'm not sure how it would be tracked. I just can't think of anyone I know that even might browse with JS off. It's on as a default setting and I think it is fair to say that most of the world don't know what JS is.

> I just can't think of anyone I know that even might browse with JS off.

Hi new internet friend.

I have it whitelisted for some (perhaps many) sites. But even if it was on, things like google analytics are still blocked (at least I hope they are! Tracking is a never-ending battle)

Most people leave JS on, but several browsers (e.g., Tor browser) and browser extensions make it easy to turn ir off (e.g. for improved security). Many tools, e.g. Lynx, curl, wget, do not implement JavaScript.

With some magic image inside noscript tag.

In the last 20 years doing web development, I haven't ever had one single colleague, friend or customer complaining of any site not working because they had disabled JavaScript. Literally didn't heard about anyone around me with this problem not even a single time.

The only place I randomly see mentions this problem is in HN.

That has to count for something.

Some of it, too, is that if it were more practical, more people would disable it.

Even if building MPAS with js sprinkles, nobody is going to put the effort to build and test a non-js versions for the 0.01% of weirdos turning off JavaScript in 2022. Just don't use my service

I do. It's easy to test. If it's a simple CRUD application, just test to ensure that simple read, edit, delete are supported, typically using REST. Done.

In fact, it's much easier to test than seriously testing a system with client-side JavaScript.

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