> I hate that, because honestly Javascript and the web would benefit form removing a lot of the cruft.
This is the primary argument against worrying about N+1 standards. We know it's bad, if we simply do nothing at all, we know it will get worse. We can and should at least try.
As someone who's been part of the team who tried to do exactly this, I don't think it can work. Once you start subsetting things it quickly turns towards being "better" than the existing web, and soon all backwards compatibility is gone.
All those legacy features and existing pages are the back pressure that keeps the evolution of the web stable.
This is the primary argument against worrying about N+1 standards. We know it's bad, if we simply do nothing at all, we know it will get worse. We can and should at least try.