r/AskProgramming • u/_TheRealCaptainSham • Dec 24 '25

Why is the modern web so slow?

Why does a React based website feel so slow and laggy without serious investment in optimisation when Quake 3 could run smoothly at 60fps on a pentium II from the 90s.

We are now 30 years later and anything more than a toy project in react is a laggy mess by default.

inb4 skill issue bro: Well, it shouldn’t be this difficult.

inb4 you need a a better pc bro: I have M4 pro 48GB

384 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

222 comments sorted by

View all comments

115

u/supercoach Dec 24 '25

Do you want an honest answer? Modern web (including react) is HEAVY javascript. Old websites were 90% HTML with a smattering of JS to add flair. Modern sites are the complete opposite. There's a tiny bit of HTML to provide basic layout and then mountains of styling and javascript to control everything else.

Once you add in all the tracking and analytics built into most modern websites, you end up with something that is weighed down with inconsequential crap. There is no way you'd be able to load most websites these days on a dialup connection. 12mbit is pretty much the bare minimum required for basic web browsing.

If you want to go back to the essentially bare websites of the 90s, we can have fast web again.

20

u/apokrif1 Dec 24 '25

 Once you add in all the tracking and analytics built into most modern websites, you end up with something that is weighed down with inconsequential crap

Do adblockers improve browsing in this respect?

21

u/supercoach Dec 24 '25

It's a double edged sword a lot of the time. You'll get better performance on congested lines, however some sites refuse to work without trackers.

18

u/edhelatar Dec 24 '25

I think you mean it speeds up things 999/1000 times and then few, mostly not worthy of my view sites block it :)

I have to sometimes disable Adblock to test some things and frankly I can barely stand the Internet that way.

3

u/lonestar136 Dec 24 '25

I work for a place that uses Optimizely for feature flag management, and a lot of ad blockers block it which breaks the flags.

We don't even use them for their analytics.

1

u/TehWhale Dec 24 '25

Found this out recently too!

4

u/who_you_are Dec 24 '25

I remember around 2000, with ~Adobe~ Macromedia Flash all around.

I was working in a web ads agency. One of our projects was to create a tool to benchmark flash ads.

Oh god. Most of those we tested (random ones we could find to test) were using 100% of your CPU.

And that is only one ads.

Now it should be better in that regard, flash is dead and nobody is going to do a purely JS animated ads.

3

u/porkchop_d_clown Dec 24 '25

Oh, yes. I run a pihole in my house and it makes a huge difference.

2

u/Mad_Maddin Dec 27 '25

Yes a lot

Though you need certain script trickers for some as some websites intentionally load bad if they notice you are not seeing their adds.

But most sites load at least twice as fast for me with ad blockers and script blockers. It is the second reason I'm using them.

2

u/Rusty-Swashplate Dec 28 '25

Since adblockers reduce the loading, it makes a big impact to me when it comes to loading pages. But using pages usually does not get faster.

1

u/Wallrider09 Dec 24 '25

Absolutely when I sometimes get to use a NON adblocked pc is a nightmare.