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I love how the new Reddit gets frequently used as a straw man in arguments of front end developers are bad, the state of front end is a mess, etc. If you care t
by unleashit 5y ago
I love how the new Reddit gets frequently used as a straw man in arguments of front end developers are bad, the state of front end is a mess, etc. If you care to look at the actual reasons that Reddit and so many modern websites really are terrible, you'll see that it comes from the top and in many cases is on purpose.
Reddit (and many others) don't want you to use their website. Especially on a mobile browser. They want you using their app where they have access to more of your data and generally keep you longer. And also where the initial payload of advertising and analytics cruft feels faster to you because you probably are more inclined to be patient with the mobile install/update lifecycle than you'd be with a browser. The GUI changes too were much more likely to come from product management than your lowly front end bootcamp graduate.
- josephg 5y agoWe might have to agree to disagree on this. I bet a huge percentage of Reddit’s traffic comes from their website. And if they didn’t want people using the website, they wouldn’t have bothered putting so much effort and attention into the redesign. Why bother redesigning something you want nobody to use anyway? And if your argument is that they made it bad on purpose, they may as well have just made their old site worse. Also, if their business model is analytics and ads, why do they allow 3rd party reddit clients like Apollo? I hear what you’re saying, but I stand by my perception of what’s going on.