I also prefer boring and love how HN works. That said though, modern consumers expect much more. We tech people like command lines, the ultimate in simple and boring. Modern consumers often want animation and things[1].

Source: UI/UX researchers tell me this when I push back and say "let's keep the tech simple and forgo some of the animations, etc in the name of using simple OOTB stuff without hacking thousands of lines of JS together." Also family members will tell me the same things.

Consumers want electronic starters on their chainsaws – but they're less reliable, prone to error, more expensive, etc... in the end, us engineers gotta make products that people will buy.

Do people really want that stuff out do they just think they want it?

Do people think they want it, or do developers and designers think the people want it?!

I'm a developer and I definitely want that stuff some of the time. On platforms that can handle it, absolutely. I love all the animations in macOS and I always have. GNOME and Windows are nice but they don't feel like home in the same way, they don't have sophisticated and fluid animations.

They need to be performant and they need to improve the usability of the system, not reduce it. That's the criteria. It's often not achievable with the web, though people try.

I also love the animations in macOS, but fwiw each version of iOS feels like a step backwards for usability to me.

If you have trouble selling a product without that stuff, does it make a difference?

Not sure since when undiscoverable command line interfaces are simple. Simple to make, yes, but not easy to use compared to the most basic visual solution where its creator put a lot of thought.

>UI/UX researchers

Is that with respect to Web Page / Tech?

Because people expect different things for Apps and WebPages.

Great question, largely yes web page / tech but I used to work on a Qt desktop app and it was the same story there. Luckily Qt made animations fairly easy and performant.

Although it would be great if HN notified you of replies and had a dedicated place to see them besides "threads", which also show comments no one replied to.

Thanks for the link. I'm new to JS, but it seems funny to me how the first block of one-liner functions reads like it's just making up for how awful the JS standard library is.

Hackernews, Crigslist, the old redddit (which is still VERY actively used). The list goes on.