i absolutely hate how the modern web just fails to load if one has javascript turned off. i, as a user, should be able to switch off javascript and have the site work exactly as it does with javascript turned on. it’s not a hard concept, people.
but you ask candidates to explain “graceful degradation” and they’ll sit and look at you with a blank stare.
It’s also pleasant for the brain, to think of a website in terms of resources/locations and variables. Only what a GET request needs.
All those complaints - they are in essence about herds of web developers who get paid to do roughly the same work again and again, and use frameworks upon frameworks to not get depressed from that. And complain that if they’d do that stupid work thoroughly, they’d kill themselves.
Gemini protocol taken as it is probably isn’t enough for commercial purposes, but the part about simple markdown-like pages and only determining semantics of style by the page creator, not how it will be displayed, - it’s correct IMHO. Let the user pick the theme or the CSS stylesheet they prefer to display text, like with e-books. Let the service present structure.
(Except I think gemtext not allowing tables is a mistake.)
That also means that all kinds of validation and blinking buttons and such won’t have to be implemented by web developers.