Dear Developer, the Web Isn't About You
> But the cultural focus is on developer happiness, on developer fun and ramping up of code-related skillsets. "How does this benefit users?" has suddenly gone missing from our vocabulary.<p>No, it hasn't. It's still 100% about how to benefit users for most teams. That is quite literally the only thing that matters and everything else is a means to an end.<p>I'm not going to deny the fact that there are some shoddy websites out there. There are some sites that are using the latest and greatest JS stuff when really, they should just be using HTML and CSS. Fine.<p>The majority of the work that gets talked about here, by software and tech startups, <i>will not be effectively built using HTML/CSS or server-side rendering</i>. Since we're on the topic of users, users have come to expect a certain level of interactivity. They expect that if you right click on a row, you get a drop-down menu and you can delete it. They expect that you can do inline editing of an item without being redirected elsewhere. They expect that you can create a new thing on the page without reloading and redirecting.<p>Let's forget about that part, though. Most software features are, at the end of the day, experimental. We don't know exactly what is going to be a hit and what isn't. If new tools allow us to iterate at 2x or 5x or 10x the rate of old tools, this is a net positive for users.<p>No one would denigrate a carpenter for using an electric screwdriver over a manual one. No one would complain that the carpenter only cares about their "carpenter experience". At the end of the day, the "user" wants their cabinets finished.