Like garbage collection, closing tabs isn't a job that should have to be performed by humans.
Browsers are basically designed wrong. Sort of like how after you learn about the write ahead log (WAL), you wonder how databases could have ever worked before. Or reducers, or Firebase, or anything like that.
Browsers should record everything, including a cache of all data received or sent, so that the user can rewind to any time in history, a bit like Apple's Time Machine. Then pruning history should be a task for heuristics.
I've given up hope that browsers will ever improve now. Although I've dreamed of taking something like WebKit and building a real browser where every tab is truly an isolated process, then attacking it like a video game and getting rendering performance up to multiple thousands of frames per second. With something like Russian doll caching or a hash tree to cache renderings for gigabyte per second throughput. So that page loads are measured in milliseconds and restoring 1000 tabs could happen in 1 second or be skipped entirely since they aren't visible.
I grew up in the 80s with 1 MHz computers, so consider computers today as running thousands of times slower than they should. The web runs millions of times slower. That collective waste puts the onus on the user to be self-sufficient. A bit like how capitalism can only reach low single digits of efficiency because it forces every consumer to own a copy of everything. Alternatives like socialism are little better, because the real problem is that artificial scarcity isn't being addressed through automation, so we can't see beyond economic systems and think they're fundamental.
"Can someone explain what normal people use so many tabs for?" is asking the wrong question. The question should be: what's wrong with browsers that causes people to have so many tabs open?
Browsers are basically designed wrong. Sort of like how after you learn about the write ahead log (WAL), you wonder how databases could have ever worked before. Or reducers, or Firebase, or anything like that.
Browsers should record everything, including a cache of all data received or sent, so that the user can rewind to any time in history, a bit like Apple's Time Machine. Then pruning history should be a task for heuristics.
I've given up hope that browsers will ever improve now. Although I've dreamed of taking something like WebKit and building a real browser where every tab is truly an isolated process, then attacking it like a video game and getting rendering performance up to multiple thousands of frames per second. With something like Russian doll caching or a hash tree to cache renderings for gigabyte per second throughput. So that page loads are measured in milliseconds and restoring 1000 tabs could happen in 1 second or be skipped entirely since they aren't visible.
I grew up in the 80s with 1 MHz computers, so consider computers today as running thousands of times slower than they should. The web runs millions of times slower. That collective waste puts the onus on the user to be self-sufficient. A bit like how capitalism can only reach low single digits of efficiency because it forces every consumer to own a copy of everything. Alternatives like socialism are little better, because the real problem is that artificial scarcity isn't being addressed through automation, so we can't see beyond economic systems and think they're fundamental.
"Can someone explain what normal people use so many tabs for?" is asking the wrong question. The question should be: what's wrong with browsers that causes people to have so many tabs open?