The problem is that everybody wants something so flashy and pretty that they can't settle for the functional-but-ugly barebones interfaces app programmers used to make. The problem is that we've trained users that if a product isn't pretty it's useless, and in pursuit of that all these other things happen.
You need to have a single-page app, because UX. Well, that in turn requires all these other things, in turn requiring still more things. You need to have a pretty web page that also looks good on mobile, in turn requiring more clever responsive CSS, and so on and so forth.
I think you've nailed it here. Really, people should work on solving these smaller problems, e.g. make building a responsive website easier, make building single-page web apps easier, rather than "fixing" the web. And people are already making significant progress toward these things! (meteor, react, bootstrap, angular, etc)
... and a 18 year old copy of cgi-lib.pl can be equally as simple and powerful ... and a great many things can be built on these simple, no-frills platforms.
How many websites have non-standard HTML items, and entire frameworks embedded, just to give me a slightly fancier submit button or text-input box ?
How many websites have you visited today that had a 2000 character URL ?
Yes. But isn't HTML itself the flashy & pretty (and often non-value-added) alternative to plaintext, the functional & ugly interface? Why not just use plaintext, wrap everything in <pre></pre>, and call the Web a fad?
I'm all for simplicity, I just wonder what's considered taking it too far.
HTML allows for creating hypermedia documents, which plain text does not. In small, reasonable amounts, it provides functionality not easily reproducable with a plain-text interface while still being reasonable.
Stacking on lots and lots of other stuff, though, is when it becomes silly.
True, true. Hyperlinks are pretty big. Defining links with a new language is certainly one way to do it. But look here on HN, what do I do? I write plaintext. I certainly don't write <a href>. I write like this [1], and the hyperlink becomes an implementation detail. An HTML implementation detail, haha, sure, but nowadays it's not hard for hyperlinks to be emulated. Anyhow I honestly do think html5 is a great language. (but so is text! :)
Software that ran on the mainframe on a green screen was generally rock solid reliable, and still is. Systems built in the 60s and 70s, still doing real work and making real money. But we ate the apple (pun not intended) and threw ourselves out of Eden.
A simple web page is as simple as it ever was:
The problem is that everybody wants something so flashy and pretty that they can't settle for the functional-but-ugly barebones interfaces app programmers used to make. The problem is that we've trained users that if a product isn't pretty it's useless, and in pursuit of that all these other things happen.You need to have a single-page app, because UX. Well, that in turn requires all these other things, in turn requiring still more things. You need to have a pretty web page that also looks good on mobile, in turn requiring more clever responsive CSS, and so on and so forth.
That's the root of the issue.