However, it's important to realize that the way the web is moving is to not only benefit the working professionals being paid to write it, but also the consumers who experience it.
Why do we have minifiers and transpilers and modules and font icons? Why do we aim for one script tag instead of 50?
Because for a consumer, the web sucked (and still sucks to an extent, but less so with AMP and offline APIs.) For "prosumers" like Alice and Bob, it was a buffet, but for people browing their web pages it sucked. It was slow and unresponsive and that's even before the rise of the mobile web.
And whether the ecosystem leaves them behind or not, Alice and Bob can always create a new slideshow.js file on any given platform they want.
The web is moving towards being better for professionals and consumers, and I agree that those in the middle might lose out a little, but they are very small peanuts. I'd rather optimize for the next billion users in Africa, India and beyond, most of whom are on sub-2G speeds, than for the script kiddies making an easy living pilfering jQuery widgets without learning the platform.
There are embedded YouTube videos, MP3s, and code samples to illustrate what he's writing about. He's implemented their ideas using the Web Audio API and you can run the code from within the page and listen to the music being generated in real-time. It's a real testament to how great the web can be.
I think being able to do things like that is worth all the annoying parts of the modern web, in the end. For the developer and the end user. I wouldn't want to go back to the old way. I think it's easy to focus on the annoying parts and take the good parts for granted.
Doing something in a browser that we could do 30 years ago on a desktop isn't that great a testament.
Is this that much more efficient than "apt-get install foo"?
Not every platform/OS even has a (good) package manager. So I think this alone is what makes the web great.
Furthermore, free isn't free when my privacy is sold and/or my eye balls are subjected to even more ads. This is progress? No fucking way.
I don't know what you are on about as there weren't any app stores controlled by Apple or MS. Anyone was able to release crap software on floppy disks or BBS, and they did.
Mediocre solutions are fixed with an endless array of tools. Learning tools takes time. And that's just to break even. And around we go again.
Can we really say the average web experience is better than the average of 10 or just 5 years ago? (Hint: Nope.) Find someone who is less frustrated with technology and you'll find someone who has given up on technology.
I'm not sure it's completely comparable though, file sizes would have increased even without minification.
But I object to the argument that people can just continue to do their thing, because people in that position are overwhelmingly dependent on the ecosystem. Guidance, libraries, tools. And that ecosystem has left them behind, or is at least very far along that road.
Of course reasonable people might disagree, but to me, that people might write unoptimized (or just plain horrible) code is a very, very small price to pay for the empowerment the web delivers to them. And as to "insecure" - Jane and Joe want to show a slideshow of their hand-baked Macarons, not write banking auth systems. If they manage to open up a security risk, the attack surface is usually rather small, and the fault lies with the platform.
No, I stand by this: Javascript was our generations Hypercard, on steroids, and we've almost completely squandered its potential.