Patrick Brosset

A browser developer reflects on the web ecosystem's over-reliance on frameworks, arguing that developers prioritize developer experience (DX) over user experience (UX). Drawing on HTTP Archive data showing massive page weight growth, the author contends that frameworks bloat pages and discourage learning the underlying web platform. The post advocates for understanding vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and highlights underused native platform features like the Dialog element, Web Components, and JavaScript modules as evidence that the web platform itself offers solid DX without heavy abstractions.

Is the developer experience on the Web so terrible?