[deleted]
> This idea that we need to burn it down to build a new technology stack for the web seems kind of laughable. Why would we do that when we could just replace the piece that is bothering us - JavaScript?
Neither I nor the article said never said we need to burn the web down. Bloated, designed-by-committee, document platform technologies like Javascript, CSS, and DOm are preventing the web from competing with native apps. The only way to fix this is to replace them with modern technology designed for applications.
> "Web is rapidly losing users as it fails to adapt to disruption from mobile apps and continues to perform poorly – despite incredible optimization efforts – due to a bloated software architecture built of hacks on top of hacks."
Summed up my experience of PDF.js vs native code perfectly. When trying to do real work with it, I could handle additional 10 second load times, but the 2-5 second delays ever time I scrolled would drive me crazy. When today's machines can't render a simple text document smoothly, something is seriously wrong with the underlying technology.