Here's a breakdown of the key themes from the Hacker News discussion, supported by direct quotes:
Website Bloat and Inefficiency
This is a central theme, with many commenters lamenting the increasing size and complexity of modern websites, often without a corresponding improvement in user experience.
- andsoitis kicks it off: "”Yet here we are - the average website now weighs around 2.5MB according to HTTP Archive. That's heavier than the original Doom game.”"
- This resonates with ehnto, who adds: "And so little is delivered with the 2.5mb. Worrying more that so much traffic is bot traffic, and bloating sites becomes significantly wasted resources."
- mediumsmart provides a concrete example of how a static site rewrite dramatically reduced page weight: "complete website now weighs 15.9 MB - 14.5 MB is images... The index page now has a total of 558KB while the same content in the old WP site clocks 21MB..."
- neepi, describes a frustrating experience where a simple static page request resulted in a bloated React frontend delivered by a web team, highlighting the issue of over-engineering for simple tasks: "So I needed a nice looking static page kicked up on a CloudFront endpoint...I left it to our web team with that explicit requirement and they came back with a bloody react front end...it turns out they actually can't do static html any more. No joke. I nearly died inside."
The Role of Web Frameworks and Tools
The discussion touches on how modern web development tools and frameworks, while offering advantages, can contribute to website bloat when misused or applied inappropriately.
- palmfacehn jokingly suggests extreme measures to combat the bloat: "I'm starting to think that lightweight framework for web apps might be a wasm-dos-win3.11 or wasm-wince target."
- shoeb00m defends React's use with Astro, noting the convenience: "Eh, depending on the amount of content on the page astro + react is fine. Astro lets you output everything as static html so it doesn’t hurt your page scores. I find that there is a context switching cost going from react to vanilla html/js/css. So i just default to react on everything." However, this perspective is countered by neepi's experience.
- jiggawatts encapsulates the issue concisely, "You see, I have this hammer." "I need a screw driven." "Hammer! I have a hammer. Just one. This one."
The Problem with "Impressing Other Designers" (CV-Driven Development)
Several commenters criticize the tendency to prioritize aesthetics and trendy design patterns over usability and performance, suggesting that some designs are aimed at impressing peers or building a portfolio rather than serving users.
- locallost states bluntly:"Let's be honest: you're designing to impress other designers, not users. And that's the problem." They continue, "I've referred to this as 'CV driven development'. Although to be fair that developer that designs a microservice architecture for 50 users is not better either."
- chrismorgan criticizes the article for focusing on Awwwards, saying "Starting with Awwwards is a mistake. Awwwards is not representative of the web at large—it is an art gallery of interesting, atypical and normally impractical and/or bad designs." And then reiterates, "Awwwards is not at all representative of the web at large. The set of problems of most websites are almost entirely disjoint from the set of problems on Awwwards sites."
Shifting Priorities: Performance vs. Usability vs. "Bling"
The thread explores the tension between different design goals, such as performance, usability, and visual appeal, and who ultimately makes the decisions regarding these tradeoffs.
- Arainach argues that design teams often drive the push for visually complex layouts: "My experience is that CTOs don't care about animations, rounded corners, or what not - they care about metrics... These artsy bullshit layouts are suggested by design teams... but if you blindly trust design you can end up with garbage like what this article talks about."
- cyberax shares a conflicting perspective, "This CTO is bugging designers to not do anything moving and insisted on adding a 'no animation' mode to our apps. Yet, our designers still insist on adding 'bling' to webpages."
- bravesoul2 quips "Oi designers? You mean oi enshittifing CTOs?" showing the debate about who is responsible.
- lelanthran points out that the argument hinges on the definition of 'complicated', noting that a site can be simple from a user perspective but over-engineered from a developer perspective through wasteful dependencies.
- croes succinctly states: "Performance is also an irrelevant metric. Usability is."
- jameslk responds, "Performance is not a metric. I mentioned web perf metrics that focus on UX, such as usability: [link to web.dev article]" This clarifies that performance, especially as it impacts usability, is a crucial consideration.
Nostalgia for the Simpler Web
A segment of commenters express a yearning for the simpler, less intrusive web of the past.
- neya says "I think the perfect era for webpages were the late 1990s to early 2000s. No popups, good old marquee, buttons were clear and explicit, you could confidently click a hyperlink knowing full well it's going to take you to the page it said it would. Today, we've lost the original meaning and intent of the hyperlink..."
- andirk voices a preference for simple, text-heavy layouts: "Any time I land on a webpage that has text that goes full width left-to-right with a white background and black text I feel there's a good chance it will be very useful content. I miss that."
Critique of the Original Article
Several commenters challenge the methodology and conclusions of the original article, suggesting that it relies on flawed metrics and cherry-picked examples.
- jameslk calls the article "Kind of a low effort article?" criticizing the use of "irrelevant metrics such as page weight" and arguing that "actually web performance isn’t getting worse, it’s been getting better."
- chrismorgan believes the "numbers do lie". Claims "The studies it alludes to are somewhere between old and ancient, and being taken significantly out of context and applied far beyond their actual studied scope."
These themes highlight the complex and often conflicting perspectives on modern web design and development, showcasing the ongoing debate about how to balance aesthetics, performance, and usability.