As someone who recently had to return to the world of frontend web design for the first time in ~10 years, my experience was not particularly great.

Here’s Frank Chimero:

That breaks my heart, because so much of my start on the web came from being able to see and easily make sense of any site I’d visit. I had view source, but each year that goes by, it becomes less and less helpful as a way to investigate other people’s work. Markup balloons in size and becomes illegible because computers are generating it without an eye for context. Styles become overly verbose and redundant to the point of confusion. Functionality gets obfuscated behind compressed Javascript.

This is one of the best things I’ve read about the current state of web design. It’s not really an old-man-yells-at-cloud nor a wistful reminiscence. It’s a manifesto for diligence.