alt Hacker NewsMaybe it's time we make a simple web page 100KB again? Is there some kind of CDN minification, adblocking and compression service? Maybe even server side rendering of websites?
Then a smartphone would work fine with 1GB of RAM and everyone could be happy.
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And if someone could make a chat program not use 1 GB of RAM that would be great.
Most people have phones that can handle webpages with 1-5MB JS bundles. Why artificially limit what you can do on the web? Why limit ourselves to 1GB RAM when more resources means tech becomes more useful?
Returning to simple webpages is popular idea on HN but it’s like wanting a car with no backup camera and crank windows. If your goal is to have your car be as simple as possible, then sure, but that’s not the case for most people.
Most people want their cars to be safe and convenient, and their webpages useful and rich, more so than they want to return to some idealized simplicity.
A simple webpage or blog with minimal styling that runs as an ARM binary on a TV remote is cool and fun but it’s not economically useful. It’s the equivalent of a manual scooter. We can build better apps (in the same way that car manufacturers can build less crappy infotainment systems) but optimizing for scarcity isn’t the answer in a world where abundance tends to grow.
(Edit: your downvotes mean nothing to me, I’ve seen what gets upvoted!)
Simple web pages can be made small with modern tooling, e.g. AstroJS.
The problem is that most web pages these days fundamentally are not simple.
Rather than trying to make web pages small, the real effort would be in designing web pages to be simple.
The large majority of software devs, PMs and the like don't really know how to do anything else than a Node + React webapp.