Faced with the dawning realisation that this tech mostly made things worse, not better, the JS-industrial-complex pulled an Exxon. They could have copped to an honest error, admitted that these technologies require vast infrastructure and investment to operate, and that they are unscalable in the hands of all but the most sophisticated teams. They did the opposite, doubling down, breathlessly announcing vapourware year after year to defer critical thinking about the fundamental errors in the design. They also worked behind the scenes to marginalise those who pointed out the disturbing results and extraordinary costs.

Ha! This article just put me in a strong XKCD 386 vibe, only with a "right" in there.

The famous illustration meme with 'are you coming to bed? - I cant, this is important - what? - somebody is wrong on the internet' edited to 'somebody is right on the internet'

Like Chalmers, many teams and managers eventually acquiesce to the logical contriditions embedded in the stacked of rationalisations upon which any new investment in these failing stacks depends. There are dozens of reasons to look the other way, real and imaginary. But even as the genuinely well-intentioned victims of the complexity merchants whimper another recapitulation of how trickle-down UX will work this time — if only we try it hard enough! — the evidence mounts that "modern" web development is, in the main, an expensive failure.