# Platform Strategy, JavaScript-First Development, and the Web's Mobile Constraints

DevFeed: [Platform Strategy, JavaScript-First Development, and the Web's Mobile Constraints](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/platform-strategy-and-its-discontents-26548.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://infrequently.org/2024/10/platforms-are-competitions/>)

Author: Alex Russell

Published: 2024-10-27T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Alex Russell](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/alex-russell.md>)

Topics: [JavaScript](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/javascript.md>), [Front end](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/frontend.md>), [Web Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web-development.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [Mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mobile.md>), [Web](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web.md>), [React](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/react.md>)

Tags: [browsers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/browsers.md>), [competition](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/competition.md>), [cost](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cost.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [ecosystems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ecosystems.md>), [frontend](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/frontend.md>), [javascript](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/javascript.md>), [legacy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/legacy.md>), [mobile](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mobile.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [speed](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/speed.md>), [strategy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/strategy.md>), [web](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web.md>), [web-developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web-developers.md>), [webdev](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/webdev.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that JavaScript-first frontend practices and desktop-oriented tools have contributed to increasingly costly failures to deliver usable web experiences on phones. It frames platform strategy around making the web easier, faster, and more secure for everyday tasks.

## Source excerpt

This post is an edited and expanded version of a now-mangled Mastodon thread. Contents Platforms Are Competitions ...and We're Losing Win Condition You Do It To Yourself, And That's What Really Hurts Groundhog Day Reboot Some in the JavaScript community imagine that I harbour an irrational dislike of their tools when, in fact, I want nothing more than to stop thinking about them. Live-and-let-live is excellent guidance, and if it weren't for React et. al.'s predictably ruinous outcomes, the public side of my work wouldn't involve educating about the problems JS-first development has caused. But that's not what strategy demands, and strategy is my job.1 I've been holding my fire (and the confidences of consulting counterparties) for most of the last decade. Until this year, I only occasionally posted traces documenting the worsening rot. I fear this has only served to make things look better than they are. Over the past decade, my work helping teams deliver competitive PWAs gave me a front-row seat to a disturbing trend. The rate of failure to deliver usable experiences on phones was increasing over time, despite the eye-watering cost of JS-based stacks teams were reaching for. Worse and costlier is a bad combo, and the opposite of what competing ecosystems did. Native developers reset hard when moving from desktop to mobile, getting deeply in touch with the new constraints. Sure, developing a codebase multiple times is more expensive than the web's write-once-test-everywhere approach, but at least you got speed for the extra cost. That's not what web developers did. Contemporary frontend practice pretended that legacy-oriented, desktop-focused tools would perform fine in this new context, without ever checking if they did. When that didn't work, the toxic-positivity crowd blamed the messenger.2 Frontend's tragically timed turn towards JavaScript means the damage isn't limited to the public sector or "bad" developers. Some of the strongest engineers I know find thems