Dead Web

As I sit here writing this very website in vanilla.js, I realized I don't actually know HTML and JS, or at least not in the true sense - the way it was designed to be used. I forgot it a long time ago when I was persuaded into the daringly unquestionable land of frameworks.

Now, don't get me wrong: These frameworks are great! They do everything for you! And perhaps that's the problem. You need a link changed? PIECE OF CAKE! - just change a router path or something like it and your component “Page” will now be served on a new link. Do you see the problem?

As it turns out, when writing a pure HTML website you have to be explicit about every path. HTML Pages live inside directories, so it is intrinsically harder to change a link, and thus to break a link.

A quarter of the web pages that existed between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, according to new research from Pew Research Center — Fast Company

What will be of today's knowledge a thousand years from now?

2025-05-05
by Zed Kaido