>I’m a firm believer that the web should be usable with JavaScript disabled, JavaScript is there to add a layer of interactivity to your web page, not core function. All those people that keep coming up to me quoting ‘but everyone has JavaScript enabled’ miss the point - the web needs to be accessible and JavaScript isn't the answer.
Accessible to who? Because most real life screen readers and such perform quite well in actual tests with JS pages.
>JavaScript is there to add a layer of interactivity to your web page, not core function.
Again, says who? Why should I have to write my web code with twice as much effort, once with all the nice things I can do with JS and another for the 1% of users without Javascript?
> It is not Javascript per se, but the so-called "modern" browser that creates problems for so many users.
I think that it's both-and, not either-or. JavaScript itself is a terrible, horrible, no-good language; the modern browser environment is also a terrible, horrible, no-good invasion of privacy and destruction of security.
I do not believe that there is any purpose for which JavaScript is a suitable language (absent considerations of popularity, e.g. as on the web browser), although I could be wrong and am open to counterexamples.
> Above all, what’s dangerous about JavaScript is that it is executed without the user’s knowledge or consent.
Ummm ... is this not how all software works? Is the average person 'aware' of the code that is executing as he/she clicks around in any piece of software? How is a web browser any different?
> That's a pretty hostile and condescending way to talk about someone else's work.
When a JavaScript framework has the job of improving user input and it actually massively downgrades it so far that USER INPUT IS IMPOSSIBLE if I press backspace / or use tab / or highlight some text / or paste ... then this feedback is justified.
And yet most site designers which require javascript turn out to be thoughtful enough to make a note of it rather than leave a completely empty page.
And public sites which absolutely require javascript to do anything turn out to be quite rare.
So there’s no reason to be used to it. “Some buttons don’t work”, yes I do expect i need to allow some JS. “Nothing shows up at all” is usually a network issue.
> Modern web applications, for better or worse are written in JavaScript.
As a non-JS user, I have no expectation that I can use web applications, so I don't disagree here.
However, most of the web does not consist of web applications. What about those sites? I don't see any compelling reasons (other than spite, maybe) for those sites to fail to work without JS.
> Entire industries have been built on top of JavaScript, from rags to the most valuable companies in the world reinvesting back into it. It’s getting mature, too.
This is a fallacy argument. Because other users it, doens't mean its good.
Is it though? The fact that there are thousands of tools like this and whole web-assembly movement just might mean that Javascript really sucks at what it supposed to do.
How? I don't think that users even agree what consists of "good" and "bad" JavaScript.
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