Putting devs before users: how frameworks destroyed web performance

In the last few years, it seems web performance has fallen by the wayside. Indeed, with many sites now using frameworks like React and Vue, SPAs becoming commonplace and requests going into the hundreds, the average webpage is now bigger than ever, with 2–3MB pages being more common than ever.

It’s a plague on the internet, and it’s got many people blaming frameworks as a whole. After all, many of these sites are built with JavaScript frameworks even when it’s not really necessary (like with many news sites). And a fair few likely use things like Bootstrap for the CSS too.

But I don’t think that’s the real issue here. A well built, performant website can be created with any framework or type of technology in existence. It may be harder with some than others, but it can be done.

The issue is the developer and designer mindset in many companies.

With said mindset being that web development and design should be ‘fun’. I fully believe a lot of developers and software enginers put their job satisfaction above their users or customers.

And that’s what led to all these questionable practices, as well as a lack of interest in what matters. Heavy build systems like Webpack and dozens upon dozens of pre made components from NPM are brought in to ‘save developer time/effort’, without much thought to the extra kilobytes (or even megabytes) of JavaScript this adds to the finished product. Third party components are brought in with heavy amounts of CSS and JavaScript, simply to save on having to actually build said components from scratch, page size be damned.

Plus in a lot of cases, the very language choice itself has been chosen because it’s ‘cool’ rather than because it’s the right one for the job. I mean, look at all those news sites rebuilt as SPAs with heavy duty JavaScript frameworks. They don’t need to be made like this, and they most probably shouldn’t be… but they are because the development team would rather pretend they’re working at Google or Facebook than the Colchester Enquirer.

Same goes with the design too. Many designers are bored stiff working on generic CRUD apps for some dull business making widgets for Walmart, and would rather work on the newest shiniest startup raising millions in Silicon Valley.

So like with the developers, they put flashiness above practicality. Effects are added…