Setting Fire to All the Ladders Laura González’s post “The Web Without the Web” captures the spirit of what we’re losing with the React-ified internet. Passages like this feel bang on to me:
In elevating frontend to the land of Serious Code we have not just made things incredibly over-engineered but we have also set fire to all the ladders that we used to get up here in the first place.
And she continues:
I love React because it lets me do my best work faster and more easily. I hate React because the culture around it more than the library itself actively prevents other people from doing their best work.
An accessible learning path was key to the rise of the early web. Its foundation, HTML, became the most successful document format in history because it was open and intelligible.
But those document-based roots are being gnawed at by a growing app-centric mindset, one that prizes technical sophistication over plainspoken clarity. That’s building barriers to entry for new developers, especially those from non-technical backgrounds. Left unchecked, the result will be a less diverse, less vibrant web for us all.