Grand Unification of Web Technologies Proposal • Hacker News Board

Re: Grand Unification of Web Technologies Proposal

#81

Post by galoisgirl » Thu, Nov 26, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

drknow007 wrote: post #78

galoisgirl wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HTML and CSS are not clean, intuitive, or efficient beyond simple examples. They do have a steep learning curve. The web is polluted with tutorials and StackOverflow answers from people who haven't learned them yet, like this atrocious thread where most upvoted answers are plain wrong: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4814398/how-can-i-check-... > Masters of these tools sadly have their heads full of legacy hack…

>> They do have a steep learning curve. The web is polluted with tutorials and StackOverflow answers... Agreed. >> The trickery is not needed anymore... This isn't needed (as much) today because of browser consolidation. The point is that these Web technologies were too difficult for browsers to maintain. The tech didn't get better. Instead, we had to minimize the # of containers in order to control the havoc. >> ...…

> Rather I'm comparing how well each layer's tools serve the developer and project.

CSS and algorithms? Come on.

> Just not true. Historically, Web dev meant crazy amounts of code hacks in order to target different browsers. Again, it wasn't better tech - it was far worse and costly. Remember Flash, ActiveX, Silverlight, etc? Lots of successful sites and web apps used them to work around this problem.

I absolutely remember those, and they didn't work around the problem at all. You could not use Silverlight on Linux, you could use neither in text browsers nor on old machines, they weren't accessible,... The plug-in requirement itself scared many users away. I am so grateful to Steve Jobs for effectively killing those technologies.

> Yes, I mean getting rid of the hacks and plethora of libraries needed to accomplish simple, age old software goals.

Libraries are good, though JavaScript is in great need of a rich standard library, as problems with npm show. Hacks are arguable: how many were really necessary, and how many came from people who refused to learn the language well but pasted code samples from the web.

Re: Grand Unification of Web Technologies Proposal

#82

Post by drknow007 » Fri, Nov 27, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

galoisgirl wrote: post #81

drknow007 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> They do have a steep learning curve. The web is polluted with tutorials and StackOverflow answers... Agreed. >> The trickery is not needed anymore... This isn't needed (as much) today because of browser consolidation. The point is that these Web technologies were too difficult for browsers to maintain. The tech didn't get better. Instead, we had to minimize the # of containers in order to control the havoc. >> ...…

> Rather I'm comparing how well each layer's tools serve the developer and project. CSS and algorithms? Come on. > Just not true. Historically, Web dev meant crazy amounts of code hacks in order to target different browsers. Again, it wasn't better tech - it was far worse and costly. Remember Flash, ActiveX, Silverlight, etc? Lots of successful sites and web apps used them to work around this problem. I absolutely re…

>> CSS and algorithms? Come on.

I'm not sure what you are missing here - I'm not directly comparing CSS and algorithms. Rather, I'm pointing out that the lower layers have tools that better allow their devs to express their intentions. The front-end does not do this well.

>> I absolutely remember those, and they didn't work around the problem at all...

For who? You? They absolutely solved several problems that existed with the Web stack. Why do you think they were created and used? I agree, the download requirement sucked, but that was because the plugin model of the browser sucked.

Your perspective seems too narrow here. Imagine if someone told you that you could build sites with your vanilla Web stack (HTML/CSS/JS), but you were not allowed to use 3rd party packages? Trust me, if Steve Jobs could close your Web stack too, he would. He would also close your hardware stack if he could. They are the least open company of them all for devs. Again, thank goodness for port 80!

>> I am so grateful to Steve Jobs for effectively killing those technologies...

Wow. Who are you to make a blanket statement like that? Are you suggesting that all the devs and projects that used those plugins simply didn't have a strategy and rather were too lazy to just learn the HTML/CSS/JS stack properly? Btw, many of these devs have a background in native development, which is typically a much more rigorous CS training - HTML/CSS/JS is not beyond them.

>> Libraries are good, though JavaScript is in great need of a rich standard library...

Agreed. You're making my point further. The Web stack is far behind native development in so many ways. However, port 80 is such a big deal (for bypassing OS politics), that it remains crucial that we try to embrace and improve upon it.

>> Hacks are arguable: how many were really necessary, and how many came from people who refused to learn the language well but pasted code samples from the web.

You're still making my point. This is an issue largely unique to Web development. With proper libraries and a more organized dev stack, these issues haven't existed for decades in native development. However, it does mean the Web community has conducted some really great experiments, which the original poster discusses.

Look... If you want to argue that the Web is great for static web pages, I will give you that. But only because its largely not complicated. However, if you want to argue that the Web is great for Web apps and positioned well for future software projects, then I would suggest you spend more time in the native world to gain a better appreciation for how much worse Web dev can be.

Finally, I believe front end development is not great no matter where you look. It's clearly a difficult layer to get right. This is why I stand with the intentions of the original post. The Web can build some great user experiences. But they are difficult to build, lack a consistent dev experience, and too often are full of hacks to get them to work.

Re: Grand Unification of Web Technologies Proposal

#83

Post by timw4mail » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 2:19 PM UTC

ROARosen wrote: post #71

timw4mail wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a need for plain HTML. HTML is robust, can render incrementally, and can stand on its own. Javascript sucks. It's a subtle minefield of a language, takes more time to parse than HTML or CSS, and is by far the most brittle part of the website. Websites rendered only through Javascript are trash.

Whatever your dislike-level to JS is, we cannot dispute the fact that JS, or at least JSON can do pretty much everything HTML can do, but not the other way around. Of course our beloved HTML can still exist, just as PDF exists. But in my opinion it shouldn't be the required standard . Since I can markup just as easily in JSON And like it or not JS is one the the core web components today, we can make JS the standard…

The JSON standard as is can not replace HTML because it has no room for error correction. Regardless of capability, one of the primary strengths of HTML is that it is forgiving at a syntax level. JS and JSON are not.

Re: Grand Unification of Web Technologies Proposal

#84

Post by kortilla » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #64

kortilla wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but clearly a lot of effort has gone into it and I find it "gross and immoral" Wait until you find out how much effort goes into DRM schemes. It doesn’t make them any less anti-user which squarely lands in the immoral category for lots of people. Amount of effort and the engineering soundness of the design have no bearing on whether something is gross and/or immoral.

wtf, you're comparing the work of someone who's a bit overexcited about redesigning the web, to DRM do you even have an argument here?

I’m refuting the argument that someone spending a lot of time and engineering on something means it can’t be dismissed as “gross an immoral”.

Proposing a system that destroys the open web with a bunch of applications that break link following, screen readers, text only browsers, etc is gross and immoral - no matter how sound the implementation.

Re: Grand Unification of Web Technologies Proposal

#85

Post by pmarreck » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #11

Couldn't disagree more strongly. The web worked because of its unique network architecture (REST/HATEOAS) which handles a chaotic, loosely coupled and dynamically evolving network topology extremely well. The web suffered from the fact that HTML was a limited hypertext, which hurt usability and encouraged javascript-based work arounds. So we should fix that, rather than tossing the idea of a hypertext architecture. (…

100% agree that declarative-as-much-as-possible is waaaaay easier to maintain/grok than procedural-as-much-as-possible