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Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#21

Post by [deleted] »

pg wrote: post #17
jpdugan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP isn't talking about Ajax calls and Dom transformations. He's talking about using semantically correct markup (c'mon, it is literally an ordered list) and a style sheet. Things that would make the site faster, easier to maintain, and easier to parse. If this were anyone other than pg, you'd all be excoriating the developer for living in the 90s.

It wouldn't make the site easier to maintain. This stuff is all generated by software. All that would change is what the software generated as output. How much faster would HN pages render if they used "semantically correct markup?"

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#22

Post by beoba »

bradleyland wrote: post #15
teej wrote: post #5

Because it doesn't matter.

If someone writes C/Python/Lua/language-of-your-choice code that violates good principles, misuses constructs, and generally looks like crap, everyone calls them a lousy coder. Yet when it comes to HTML, using semantically incorrect markup is somehow ok. I understand why pg hasn't updated the display markup, and it's his website, so he can do what he likes with it, but to say "it doesn't matter" is to give anyone wri…

What's 'incorrect'? It's just following an older standard.

Will all existing C++ code be 'incorrect' once C++0x is finally released?

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#23

Post by prodigal_erik »

beoba wrote: post #22
bradleyland wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone writes C/Python/Lua/language-of-your-choice code that violates good principles, misuses constructs, and generally looks like crap, everyone calls them a lousy coder. Yet when it comes to HTML, using semantically incorrect markup is somehow ok. I understand why pg hasn't updated the display markup, and it's his website, so he can do what he likes with it, but to say "it doesn't matter" is to give anyone wri…

What's 'incorrect'? It's just following an older standard. Will all existing C++ code be 'incorrect' once C++0x is finally released?

has a meaning. It expresses recurring, orderly relationships between and elements. It has always been incorrect to cram in content that isn't semantically linked that way, purely to exploit a typical rendering of it. It was incorrect even when there existed no supported way to request a similar rendering, though that was a reasonable excuse if you only cared about appearance.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#24

Post by pg »

jpdugan wrote: post #20
pg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't make the site easier to maintain. This stuff is all generated by software. All that would change is what the software generated as output. How much faster would HN pages render if they used "semantically correct markup?"

Why are you generating styling at all? It's not dynamic information. It's a static asset that can be cached. Semantically correct markup uses fewer tags, so the output is smaller (also, there'd be no online styling, which would also make the page smaller). Even a small difference on a popular site could matter. But only you can answer that for HN. Look, do what you want. You want to write bullshit markup, be my guest…

Generating and caching are orthogonal questions. You can generate stuff, and then cache it. And in fact HN does do a lot of caching.

I wasn't asking how much faster "semantically correct markup" would make HN pages render as a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely curious. If you want to make claims that x is faster than y, you should be prepared to back them up with numbers, not merely with more heated language.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#25

Post by nostrademons »

pg wrote: post #17
jpdugan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP isn't talking about Ajax calls and Dom transformations. He's talking about using semantically correct markup (c'mon, it is literally an ordered list) and a style sheet. Things that would make the site faster, easier to maintain, and easier to parse. If this were anyone other than pg, you'd all be excoriating the developer for living in the 90s.

It wouldn't make the site easier to maintain. This stuff is all generated by software. All that would change is what the software generated as output. How much faster would HN pages render if they used "semantically correct markup?"

The big benefit is to accessibility through screenreaders or other alternate clients.

Google's HTML is also all generated. They switched to CSS-based markup in 2007. It is a bit easier to maintain, but only a little, and mostly because of obscure things like bold tags needing to be red and normal-weight in Chinese because bolded Chinese characters look like shit.

Size and rendering speed wise, it's basically a wash. The HTML is significantly smaller, but the CSS is significantly larger, and CSS is a massive pain to refactor and can easily lead to bugs.

It's much easier to manipulate with JavaScript, because the DOM structure of the page is much simpler. Tables also have weird implicit element insertion rules, eg. the first direct child of the on this page is a tag, not the tag that you outputted as source. That alone is a big reason why Google would never go back, though I don't know how much it applies to a mostly static site like this.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#26

Post by kls »

pg wrote: post #17
jpdugan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP isn't talking about Ajax calls and Dom transformations. He's talking about using semantically correct markup (c'mon, it is literally an ordered list) and a style sheet. Things that would make the site faster, easier to maintain, and easier to parse. If this were anyone other than pg, you'd all be excoriating the developer for living in the 90s.

It wouldn't make the site easier to maintain. This stuff is all generated by software. All that would change is what the software generated as output. How much faster would HN pages render if they used "semantically correct markup?"

I personally believe that it would, because you can then generate the site and allow what the site looks like to be external from that generation. Managing what the site looks like, independent from what the site says, is good clean separation of concerns and does in fact promote maintainability.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#27

Post by nostrademons »

bradleyland wrote: post #15
teej wrote: post #5

Because it doesn't matter.

If someone writes C/Python/Lua/language-of-your-choice code that violates good principles, misuses constructs, and generally looks like crap, everyone calls them a lousy coder. Yet when it comes to HTML, using semantically incorrect markup is somehow ok. I understand why pg hasn't updated the display markup, and it's his website, so he can do what he likes with it, but to say "it doesn't matter" is to give anyone wri…

Part of being a good engineer is understanding tradeoffs and figuring out when contextually-dependent knowledge doesn't apply.

IMHO, it doesn't matter - for Hacker News. That's independent of whether it matters for whatever website you're being paid to write at any given job.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#28

Post by kls »

pg wrote: post #24
jpdugan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you generating styling at all? It's not dynamic information. It's a static asset that can be cached. Semantically correct markup uses fewer tags, so the output is smaller (also, there'd be no online styling, which would also make the page smaller). Even a small difference on a popular site could matter. But only you can answer that for HN. Look, do what you want. You want to write bullshit markup, be my guest…

Generating and caching are orthogonal questions. You can generate stuff, and then cache it. And in fact HN does do a lot of caching. I wasn't asking how much faster "semantically correct markup" would make HN pages render as a rhetorical question. I'm genuinely curious. If you want to make claims that x is faster than y, you should be prepared to back them up with numbers, not merely with more heated language.

I am trying to dig up the old benchmarks that created the tables are slow mantra but like all things their is a grain of truth to it. Before IE 5 and the addition of the table-layout CSS property tables where considerably slower and more resource intensive on the browser to render. That being said, the point is mostly moot in modern browsers. While their are differences in performance metrics between CSS and table layout, the reality is, it is insignificant enough to not be cause for concern. Unless you are specifically targeting browsers before IE 5.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#29

Post by bradleyland »

nostrademons wrote: post #27
bradleyland wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone writes C/Python/Lua/language-of-your-choice code that violates good principles, misuses constructs, and generally looks like crap, everyone calls them a lousy coder. Yet when it comes to HTML, using semantically incorrect markup is somehow ok. I understand why pg hasn't updated the display markup, and it's his website, so he can do what he likes with it, but to say "it doesn't matter" is to give anyone wri…

Part of being a good engineer is understanding tradeoffs and figuring out when contextually-dependent knowledge doesn't apply. IMHO, it doesn't matter - for Hacker News . That's independent of whether it matters for whatever website you're being paid to write at any given job.

I agree 100% regarding tradeoffs. However, saying that something is a "tradeoff" infers value. I.e., how can one evaluate a trade for something with no relative value? Saying something "doesn't matter" means it is not considered. Saying it's a "tradeoff" means you considered it, but found it less important than other factors. Those are two different things.

This is just a semantic argument, but it's one I find important. At our startup, we came out of the gate with viable, working software in under six weeks. Believe me, there were tradeoffs. But at no point in that process did I say, "this doesn't matter". That's lying to myself. It matters, but I will accept for today that I cannot have both. This helps us avoid complacency and keeps our product sharp.

Re: Ask HN: Why is HN HTML laid out in tables?

#30

Post by wglb »

bradleyland wrote: post #15
teej wrote: post #5

Because it doesn't matter.

If someone writes C/Python/Lua/language-of-your-choice code that violates good principles, misuses constructs, and generally looks like crap, everyone calls them a lousy coder. Yet when it comes to HTML, using semantically incorrect markup is somehow ok. I understand why pg hasn't updated the display markup, and it's his website, so he can do what he likes with it, but to say "it doesn't matter" is to give anyone wri…

In a previous lifetime, I worked on the code generator for a compiler for an implementation language. We had a rule that said "A good compiler generates assembly code that an assembly programmer would be fired for writing." Early releases of that compiler would get bug reports from the OS implementation team that "this code is wrong". We would sit down and walk through the generated code, and there would be an "Oh" moment where the programmer would realize that it was simply different, and in all cases, faster.

Similarly, the code generated by good Python, to a CPU, looks like crap because it repeats stuff, allocates and releases memory, makes unnecessary calls, swaps stuff between stack and registers, and a whole host of other sins.

But we don't care, because what we care about is the end result: the Python or Lua or Ruby code generates lovely computational results. Perhaps 1% of spend time looking in detail at the actual machine code generated. The purpose of these languages is to 1) Let us write good, readable code and 2) generate a useful, sometimes beautiful result.

Similarly, the purpose of this particular Arc program is to generate a useful result, that is, a readable, useful set of html files that our browsers render readably.

So really, "it doesn't matter" if the assembly language is junk, or if the html is not something early versions of Patrick would turn out with notepad.

Think of the generated html as assembly language. It no more degrades our art form than the goofy stuff that modern languages make our CPUs eat.

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