I think it is useful because our field is woefully inept at anything resembling backtracking, and it's having concrete detrimental effects all over the field by, for example, increasing mountains of bloat eating up hardware improvements.

> SPA's have really nice performance characteristics. [..] A good SPA should offer the same capabilities too

The problem is that not even large teams without any obvious lack of resources are also unable to prevent sluggishness from creeping in to SPAs. So I guess there's a theoretical SPA and a de facto one.

> But it wouldn't be anywhere near as capable, as interesting, and as loved.

Capable sure, if you're creating Google Earth style apps. But when you start using vague and extremely subjective adjectives like "interesting" and "loved" it should be a signal that something's off here.

Yup, exactly.

> I'd use unrealistic to describe Handmade, proud is also accurate and works too

In certain settings definitely. But even in those corporate settings where it's unrealistic I'd rather work with one than not. If not applied dogmatically, that corner of the corp has a good chance of being an oasis. But a fleeting one perhaps.

Caring is certainly a wide spectrum. I see the Handmade stuff being proudly on far end of it.

There's also a short-termism aspect of AI generated code that's seemingly not addressed as much. Don't pee your pants in the winter to keep warm.

"We've always been at war with Eastasia"

Well put. Chasing "How simple can we make this?" is a large part of what makes this job enjoyable to me. But it's perhaps not a good career advice.

This was a fun dig actually. You doubling down made it even more so. Anyway, best of luck!