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I'm betting on HTML

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Re: I'm betting on HTML

#231

Post by qwerty456127 »

Some social networks used to offer rich page customization with Wiki or markup or something like that. And that essentially was the HTML wheel reinvented. Some even offer in-app apps, some even lock whole life oof the whole population in them (e.g. China).

A social network with (or without) this essentially is reinventing the wheel of the whole Internet which is made of HTML pages (which are replaced by personal pages on a social network), RSS/ATOM (which is replaced with in-app notifications), e-mail (which is replaced with in-app direct messages), Usenet (which is replaced with in-app groups) etc. Everyone theoretically could just have a personal www page on their own domain instead of a social network account.

Oh, and HTML never needed CSS to be not ugly - that's the browser default settings which make unstyled (styled with default styles) HTML pages look this way. We always could just change the default fonts/colors or apply a userstyle for more complex things.

Once general population joined to the Internet (where in the past there were only nerds) the demand emerged for it to become much easier and prettier and the corporations responded offering the features pople want taking their freedom, privacy and independence in exchange (which an average person doesn't mind, all they ace about is that being "for free"). We could just build better apps (browsers with sensible defaults, intuitive e-mail and Usenet clients and web servers), but we still lack them because nobody wants do serious work for free and make great products which would suit everybody ather than themselves.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#232

Post by kaba0 »

mythhabit wrote: post #187
kaba0 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% sure that parent poster was being sarcastic at the hype around LLMs and how many think they can solve everything, even if said thing is impossible to do, e.g. the halting problem. Do note that the halting problem is fundamentally true, no AGI will realize some new way around, unless are mathematics are flawed to the core.

There is some nuances here. While the general halting problem for a general Turing machine is undecidable, and with a fairly easy to understand proof as well, the computers we run today are not a general Turing machine. They are of a weaker class called Linear Bounded Automatons and for the programs they can run, the halting problem is fact decidable, on a theoretical level due to their finite nature. So we will prob…

I have to admit my knowledge of complexity theory doesn’t extend too far, but isn’t the solution to LBAs just.. brute forcing? Also, is it even decidable a priori whether a program is LBA vs requiring a tape that is not only linear function of its input?

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#233

Post by vidarh »

mythhabit wrote: post #187
kaba0 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% sure that parent poster was being sarcastic at the hype around LLMs and how many think they can solve everything, even if said thing is impossible to do, e.g. the halting problem. Do note that the halting problem is fundamentally true, no AGI will realize some new way around, unless are mathematics are flawed to the core.

There is some nuances here. While the general halting problem for a general Turing machine is undecidable, and with a fairly easy to understand proof as well, the computers we run today are not a general Turing machine. They are of a weaker class called Linear Bounded Automatons and for the programs they can run, the halting problem is fact decidable, on a theoretical level due to their finite nature. So we will prob…

A machine we have to today in isolation with no form of IO are not general Turing machines, but almost all of them do have that and so if you consider them in isolation rather than the full system (which would include all sources of inputs) the halting problem applies. E.g. code to the effect of "while gets() {}" will either halt or not halt depending on the input, but which isn't decidable without knowing or constraining that input.

We can certainly look for AGI that can do better at deciding the halting of decidable programs, but even for current computers the general halting problem is undecidable without adding artificial constraints.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#234

Post by kaba0 »

treprinum wrote: post #199
kaba0 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% sure that parent poster was being sarcastic at the hype around LLMs and how many think they can solve everything, even if said thing is impossible to do, e.g. the halting problem. Do note that the halting problem is fundamentally true, no AGI will realize some new way around, unless are mathematics are flawed to the core.

Halting problem is one of the problems that arise from precise mathematical definition and its outskirts. LLMs are all about making sense from unstructured text, i.e. lying on the opposite end of the spectrum where math has no direct way to do anything. So while the poster was sarcastic, they also missed the mark.

The halting theory is analogous to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and these are fundamental truths to any system. That matrix multiplication that deep learning does is hardly immune to that.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#235

Post by berkes »

merdaverse wrote: post #222

The problem I see with sematic web is that no matter how easy it gets, developers refuse to use it properly. I have been looking closely at the tag since a browser extension of mine uses it, and although it is extremely clear what it should do in the MDN documentation (the documentation itself is a good example usage of , etc.), very little sites use it properly. Even the fancy professional sites wrap all the page co…

> simple element can't be used properly, I have no hope for all the others.

The first solution that comes to mind, is stricter validation. Where the browser would just refuse to render a properly unless it's structure is correct.

But we had that. Anything before HTML4 really. And it sucked even more.

So maybe browser dev-tooling that throws warning or errors when devs are Doing It Wrong?

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#237

Post by johnnyworker »

klardotsh wrote: post #86
Gigachad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general the issue with these built in components is that you can't theme them. And they stick out like a sore thumb when you get a windows 7 style component in the middle of a modern looking app. They also have basically no extensibility so when you inevitably need to do something half complex, you have to scrap it and start again with JS. So you may as well have just started with JS which just works, gives you fu…

Unfortunately this is a case where we'll have to agree to disagree. Half the time with Electron apps I wish I could disable CSS completely and just use my system theme because it sucks less than whatever the designer came up with for that app (the definition of "sucks less" falls into many axes that vary per application and context; no point in digressing far into that), so what you described would be a feature, not…

Some like Magic User Interface for the Amiga, but across Operating Systems, and which provides the resulting stylesheet to the browser (with no ability for sites to override it unless I allow it) would be my dream and a marketers nightmare. Just information and media, displayed how each person prefers them to be displayed (and obviously with a lot of user made themes for people to browse and try out). With sub-configs like super-compact, whimsical etc. that users can apply to individual apps and sites.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#238

Post by afavour »

berkes wrote: post #230
flagrant_taco wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I don't know what tools you use so this isn't a comment directed at you specifically) If web developers spent a fraction of the time required to learn react, tailwind, etc on learning HTML the web would be in a much better spot. There are definitely quirks and rough edges, but if every web devs knew how to get the most out of semantic HTML we'd likely have a lot less JS in the browser, fewer accessibility bugs, and…

> on learning HTML Anecdote. Was recently freelancing at a web-agency. They build complex web-apps. Lot's of senior and experienced web-devs there: react, mui, typescript, tailwind, and a large host of backend frameworks under the belt. But when I built a quick PoC using ` ` a few lines of JS and some of the elements used in the article (meter, dialog, details) they were flabbergasted. This was a whole team of experi…

Broadly, broadly broadly I agree with you and I’m endlessly frustrated with the state of React-based frontend dev.

But that said you really do get a lot more out of the box with these frameworks. Tailwind makes consistent styling far far easier. MUI helps with the same and also (often overlooked) has a lot of accessibility features built in.

Re: I'm betting on HTML

#239

Post by sourcecodeplz »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #231

Some social networks used to offer rich page customization with Wiki or markup or something like that. And that essentially was the HTML wheel reinvented. Some even offer in-app apps, some even lock whole life oof the whole population in them (e.g. China). A social network with (or without) this essentially is reinventing the wheel of the whole Internet which is made of HTML pages (which are replaced by personal page…

You don't use CSS just to make pages pretty. It is useful for accessibility and user experience as well. Not to mention personalization. Not every page needs to have a carbon copy style of others. CSS is so useful it is almost ridiculous to say HTML never needed it.
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