DO NOT USE JAVASCRIPT FOR PUBLIC WEBSITES IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE IT!!!

Almost every fucking day, I click a fucking button and NOTHING HAPPENS. I open the console and find tens of JavaScript errors, that *I* have to debug and fix in order to proceed.

FUR FUCK SAKE, JavaScript is not strictly needed, those fucking React and Vue are also not needed. Just now I wanted to download a form: IT'S A FUCKING PDF FILE, why the fuck are you putting your broken JavaScript function to let me download it!? PUT A FUCKING DOWNLOAD LINK YOU FUCKING MORON!

Nobody is forcing anybody to use JavaScript or those fucking fancy frameworks, SO WHY THE FUCK PEOPLE OVERCOMPLICATE THINGS THAT USED TO WORK SO WELL!

Things that should require a written authorization for use on the web:

- JavaScript
- 'maxlength' and 'pattern' on input fields
- catching the 'paste' event
- single page websites
- infinite scrolling

I'm sure I missed something, but that can be a good start

Well everything can be done without JS,things were done that way but JS helps with two things mainly:

- easing server side computations
- application navigation flow

Sometimes you don't need to or want to compute everything server side, let's say your server serves your financial transaction history so your browser calculates the mean spending among other things, moving that to the server means more CPU time, more response time, more requests and more bandwidth.

Regarding navigation flow, it helps a lot if let's say you build a web form with 10 fields and wanna make sure the first field is valid, if not you can't proceed, that can easily be done with JS and could give real time feedback on the validity of the fields without wasting time on sending said form.

Well built and designed sites with JS improve usability and reduce server side strain, note well built and designed sites not bloated ones.

As @JKyll said, there are definitely reasons to use JS. In many cases it greatly enhances UX and general user engagement.

@irene true. I'm currently writing a website on Django and it uses plain ol' http requests and responses but I had to implement a small VueJs snippet to dynamically load and display comments because doing it server side would cost me a lot of CPU time which translates to money I don't have and I'll probably add it to a form that suggests previously added registries to avoid duplicate info. But that's pretty much it.

I'll slowly migrate it to a full API, time will tell.

@JKyll I know there are uses for JavaScript. I'm a full stack developer myself :)

What I'm complaining about is broken code, which is (in my opinion) caused by too many people approaching the problem in the wrong way just because "it's cool".

Another problem that I had 5 minutes ago: an "home address" field with maxlength="50". This is a fucking joke: my address does not fit in and there's absolutely no reason why the length should be limited. Whenever someone writes something like maxlength="50", they're actually writing "I don't have a fucking clue what I'm doing and I want the world to know how ignorant I am".

The world is big, diverse, technology constantly evolves, and if developers cannot understand it, then they should stick to the easiest case and avoid making assumptions. There's no shame in that. You can identify expert developers not by the "cool" things they do, but by the amount of shit they try to avoid.

@stacked funny you mention it I had to make an intel student account yesterday and it limits the password to 15 characters!😟

Basic navigation has to work without Javascript, period. Main reasons are better SEO, accessibility and also robustness. If the download is an important action, it deserves a CTA element, but you can use CSS to style the download link in any way you want.

Also, if some functionality really requires JavaScript, then use fucking noscript-tags so that users without JavaScript at least know what feature doesn't work.

Why is everybody on devrant hating SPAs?

@host127001 because most single page applications are broken, counter intuitive, and don't change the url

Normal conversation about normal website:
Hey, check this: https://...

Conversation about crappy single page website:
Hey, go to https://..., click that icon, then click there, then insert this number, then do this, then do that, ... (Hoping no JS errors between each step)

This doesn't apply to *all* single page websites, but fuck, most of them are like that.

Once I was ordering food online on a single page website.

Click "checkout", nothing happens.
Check console: network error.
I think: okay, I'll just reload the page and resubmit.
I hit reload.
Had to start from scratch 😑

You want to implement a single page website? Fine, but change the fucking url!
You don't want server-side storage? Fine, but use local storage at least!
You want to submit forms using JavaScript? Fine, but handle exceptions!

@JKyll most of form validation can be done with CSS purely.

@Codex404 regular validation yes, there are cases where it can be done better than just css.

I feel your pain. Currently I'm able to write vanilla, that control feels awesome. I already fear the time I have to apply in another company sometime in the future, when I maybe can't write vanilla Js anymore and have to commit to those frameworks...

@Astatos the point is that for basic navigation and download links, you shouldn't be using ANY JavaScript, not even Vanilla. The HTML <a> tag with proper href is perfectly fine.