Explaining Front-End Humor
Tags: vanilla, javascript, humor, webdev
Published: 2019-10-28 12:39:38

---
title: Explaining Front-End Humor
published: true
description: There's not enough "humor" in this world and way too much "hate." Let's enjoy and reinforce what humor is out there ... reducing the hate in some small way.
tags: Vanilla, JavaScript, Humor, WebDev
series: Not Code
cover_image: https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/lynuwcdmhj48pnf3fpia.png
---

This post was prompted by a rather angry thread that started here for me ...

{% twitter 1167242726284365826 %}

... the conversation was based on a comment I made, referencing this site [](http://www.vanilla-js.com).

This article will be an attempt to define what I saw in the conversation, why I think the website is hilarious, and what can be done in the face of the conversation that occurred.

There's not enough "humor" in this world and way too much "hate." Let's enjoy and reinforce what humor is out there ... reducing the hate in some small way.

## The Path

Basically, in the twitter thread someone responded with, "God I hate that website." Being a seasoned developer with what I believe is a bit of an odd and dry sense of humor, I wanted to see if there was something here I was missing.

What I got was a whole lot more than I expected ...

> It’s not obvious it’s a joke unless you already know what vanilla JS is. It confuses the s__t out of beginners. The guy who runs it makes no attempt to clarify when people tweet at him with confused questions. It does harm.

He continued with ...

> Also, “meant to be funny” is a meaningless bar. Sexist and racist jokes are meant to be funny, too. Doesn’t mean they’re good. 

Basically, I stopped my portion of the conversation, realizing that his "hate" was deeply entrenched and I was not going to change it.

What I did realize later was that I could post something to mitigate some of what he was seeing. This article will be an attempt to define the humor I saw on this site and give others a means to reduce confusion about the site ... when you see they're confused, send them here.

## The Humor

Examining [](http://www.vanilla-js.com) ...

1. I love the chemical formula (which I assume is for vanilla).
2. There are references to who ***uses vanilla-js***, which is any individual or company that uses JavaScript.
3. It has to be used more than any other tool on the market because they are built using vanilla-js!
4. There's actually a form for selecting functionality and downloading the "code." I tried this; it downloads an empty file!
5. Testimonials ... read them; they're actually funny, realizing this is plain old JavaScript we're talking about.
6. It is the ultimate in ***lightweight*** and is loaded the moment the browser is active ... even before the site begins loading.
7. There is a reference to how to load the vanilla.js code, but if you look, it recommends not loading anything for production.
8. Speed comparisons ... what can run faster than vanilla-js (JavaScript).
9. Code examples ... if it can be done in a framework, vanilla-js (JavaScript) has to be able to do the same thing.
10. Documentation ... tons of that out there for vanilla-js (JavaScript).

> That's right - no code at all. Vanilla JS is so popular that browsers have been automatically loading it for over a decade.

## Conclusion

There's not enough "humor" in this world and way too much "hate." Let's enjoy and reinforce what humor is out there ... reducing the hate in some small way.