javascript is a liability

2025-06-16

why most of the web breaks without it, and why mine doesn’t

open devtools. disable javascript. reload the page.

you just broke half the internet.

buttons vanish. nav menus disappear. login pages go dark. and all you wanted was some text.

most devs don’t even test their site without js. they assume it’ll “just work.” it doesn’t. i’ve seen contact forms that can’t submit, homepages that load blank, and entire articles that never render because some script threw a 500.

meanwhile, my site works fine. every word is there. every link is real. no spinner, no loading state, no skeleton that hopes you’ll wait around.

javascript is powerful. too powerful. it’s the comfort blanket devs reach for when they don’t want to think about markup or native behavior. why use <details> when you can ship 40kb of toggle logic? why use a <form> when you can invent one from divs and onClick handlers?

js lets you do anything. that’s the problem.

i’m not anti-js. i write plenty of it. but i know what it costs. bundles grow. dependencies rot. ux breaks under latency or bad connections. the web was designed to be resilient. js often makes it fragile.

my blog doesn’t need it. it’s text. you read it. maybe you click something. that’s it. the browser knows how to handle that just fine.

i don’t need animations. i don’t need a client-side router. i don’t need to reinvent links. i need the content to show up instantly and never break.

so that’s what i built.

if your site breaks without javascript, ask yourself: does it have to?

if not—fix it.

if yes—maybe you’re building the wrong thing.

either way: know the cost.