booking a covid test for Heathrow Terminal 2: errors from expresstest.co.uk

The top google result for "book test terminal 2 heathrow" gave something under expresstest.co.uk.  Following that link gave:

We heard you like errors, so we errored while processing your error.

Trying, out of curiosity, to get the HTTP response code out of firefox, I had to load the page again.  This time, a different error:

and the response code with that error was 200.  I'm guessing the original error-error was a 500, but, I was actually trying to do something here.

This is the normal quality of web sites.  Ask them to do anything, and you get errors, if you are lucky.  Mostly, they just fail to do anything.  Every step of life now depends on web sites, almost none of which work.

In this case, entering the UK depends on getting a test booked, and getting a test booked means using one out of N web sites, almost none of which work, until finally one works.

A friend of mine, who is sometimes not full of shit, claimed in 2018 that it must be because I was using an obscure browser.  I don't know if firefox is that obscure.  

Well, he said, it must be because I have a funny mail server configuration (many web sites were falling over because my email address was short, and my mail server, instead of having an MX record, simply used the A of the domain, as per RFCs 821 and successors).  Now I am using a gmail address for everything, and seeing just as many errors.

He then suggested that, because I'm "into Bitcoin", a TLA is in all my devices, sabotaging my shit.  I don't reckon that is happening, yet.  The simpler explanation is that almost everyone making web sites is totally incompetent.  This is the case.  And the whole framework within which web sites are created, encourages unreliability and extremely low quality.  The architecture of the web should firmly guide web developers, giving them almost no choice, and no opportunity to mess things up.  If they can mess it up, they will.  Instead, the web doesn't really have an architecture, it's just a load of hacks that barely work, and anyone who thinks they were involved in creating it did a very bad job.  To the nearest percent, 0% of web pages used for real-life activity even have valid html.  The architecture of the web should have, as a foundation, that it is impossible to produce invalid format, and invalid format at any stage is stop error.  

No basic building blocks of having an adequate web are in place.

And now, entering countries depends on web sites, almost none of which work.

When it comes to why web sites don't work "for me", as the friend would have it, they don't work for everyone.  Farting around on facebook works; doing things does not work.  It's interesting to consider how a difference in temperament can affect the perception.  Someone quick at trying workarounds could have tried 4 more non-working test-booking sites in the time it took me to write this article, and found a 5th that does work, and booked a test on there, and not really even noticed the non-working ones, any more than they notice minor steering corrections when driving.  It's just how you go along.  But the friend also claimed they hadn't seen a 500 error in years, and this is someone involved in making web sites, and who uses a lot of web sites.  I don't believe that.  I see 500s every day.

Many other people perceive that they are to blame for "not being able to operate web sites", because they're not techies, even though the issues they're encountering are almost all the fault of the web site, not of them.  I've had people come to me, many times, to help with something "they can't do", but when we go to do it, it can't be done, because the web site is falling over, at the other end.  This is not helped by tech support of businesses with bad fail web sites (all of them), who universally blame the client-end for whatever problems their web site has thrown up.  Oh, it must be your browser, you have to clear your cache / replace your browser / reboot your device / use a different browser.  It takes some knowledge of the field to have a feel for when it really is a client-side issue, but, to a first approximation, issues are always server-side.

update: expresstest.co.uk is now failing in a new way, by taking forever to load, and never loading.

update 2: having taken many minutes to not load, expresstest.co.uk is giving yet another type of error, this time claiming to be a 502 (I haven't checked whether it actually is):