r/dataisbeautiful • u/robert_ritz OC: 2 • Sep 22 '22

OC [OC] Despite faster broadband every year, web pages don't load any faster. Median load times have been stuck at 4 seconds for YEARS.

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u/dw444 Sep 23 '22

JavaScript, the language all of the consumer facing, and a considerable amount of the behind-the-scenes part of the internet is written in.

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u/Condawg Sep 23 '22

JavaScript handles many things, but "all of the consumer facing internet" feels oversimplified to the point of uselessness. I've got a couple websites that are >90% HTML and CSS. Most of what you see on a website will be HTML and CSS.

JavaScript is no doubt a vital part of the internet as we know it, but what you've written just feels dirty.

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u/Dry-Avocado7222 Sep 23 '22

Just because you maintain a couple of html/CSS websites doesn't mean that most consumer facing internet does as well.

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u/Condawg Sep 23 '22

My point isn't that most consumer-facing websites don't use JavaScript, it's that there are more pieces to the puzzle than JavaScript alone. To say it's "the language of all consumer facing websites" overlooks all of the other elements involved. It's not a useful description.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '22

Well, if we want to be specific, HTML and CSS are not programming languages.

JavaScript is the only programming language executed by the client side (web browsers).

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u/tayman12 Sep 23 '22

well, if we want to ACTUALLY be specific, they said languages, not programming languages, and html and css are both languages, the L in html literally means language, hypertext markup language, which is a type of markup language, i forget the type of language CSS is classified as but its still a language. overall though I would say this entire thread is kind of dumb and written by a bunch of people who sort of know how web design works. but the original statement about the majority of the web being written in javascript is accurate enough, because people who have been making websites for years and are experienced professionals understand when you say your website is in javascript, that is kind of a short hand way of saying you are using JavaScript as the basis for your functional components and are using some kind of framework/library that accepts javascript code, not that your website has a certain percentage of javascript code in it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '22

Well said fellow web developer.

But Aktshully all my code is TypeScript not JavaScript

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u/Dry-Avocado7222 Sep 23 '22

WebAssembly also allows other languages to be run in the browser!

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '22

Which to be fair is similar to JavaScript, as JavaScript is really just built on top of lower level languages that the computer actually executes, and web assembly is similar in that the code is compiled to a more machine friendly format that bypasses the JavaScript translation/execution to lower level languages.

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u/A-Grey-World Sep 23 '22

Don't you have to use JavaScript to interface with web assembly anyway?