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Show HN: HTML for People

htmlforpeople.com

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Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#161

Post by ickelbawd »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #127
poulpy123 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree, someone who create a web site or learn to program needs to know the basic of the basic of using a computer

it's not about knowing the basics of using a computer, it's about eliminating the possibility of tiny mistakes like 1 typo in a file name causing everything to break, which can put someone off coding forever

If making one mistake is enough to put one off forever then they’re really not going to like programming which is just a sequence of writing bugs and fixing bugs. :)

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#162

Post by morpheuskafka »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #127
poulpy123 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree, someone who create a web site or learn to program needs to know the basic of the basic of using a computer

it's not about knowing the basics of using a computer, it's about eliminating the possibility of tiny mistakes like 1 typo in a file name causing everything to break, which can put someone off coding forever

> tiny mistakes like 1 typo in a file name causing everything to break, which can put someone off coding forever

One typo in your math or chemistry homework will quite likely give you the wrong final answer, but hopefully that wouldn't "put you off science" forever. Otherwise none of us would be here as I'm sure we have all made hundreds or more.

Are we not expecting students to be resilient and solve problems anymore? One of the Common Core standards that used to be on the classroom wall was "persevere in problem solving." I say it's great for students to make a few easy mistakes like forgetting a semicolon to get in the habit of reading error messages and troubleshooting while they are still straightforward to fix.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#163

Post by IIsi50MHz »

psnehanshu wrote: post #119
Suppafly wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets confusing when you use all google services though, because while google photos technically use your drive space, they aren't really exposed that way. Android generally gives you a warning that when you delete a photo that it's also being removed from your cloud storage too though. But google photos will also constantly prompt you to let it delete your local copies and only have the cloud copies, so you end up…

Come on! Google Photos is not confusing at all. It is very clear on what it does, but I may be biased.

Try enabling Google Photos to automatically upload images from multiple devices to the same account.

If Google Photos is low on space, try deleting from Google Photos without causing it to delete from all other devices. Seems to require manually copying all those files to an untracked folder, then deleting from Google Photos.

Try managing which folders Google Photos syncs:

When it asks to add a newly found folder, the app doesn't give any way to find out where that folder is or what's in it, unless the folder's name only occurs once on the device.

Try removing folders from the app ("Whups, didn't mean to backup all the graphic assets of a random app that foolishly doesn't use 'nomedia'!"), where the folder name is not unique. It again gives nothing more than folder names and no indication of where they are or what's in them.

Try getting Google Photos to list where every file first came from, so you know where the originals are (for various reasons).

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#164

Post by sova »

krapp wrote: post #88
sova wrote: post #79

HTML is not for people

I mean, HTML is a plain text format, it was literally made for people to write, and people wrote websites with it, by hand, for years. Literal children with almost no technical skills taught themselves to do it. There was a time when it was easy. Even Javascript was easy. All of this stuff was made for people, but we've abstracted it away so only machines ever touch it and what used to be easy is now a dark art.

You think something that starts with "less than exclamation point" is made for people? "less than exclamation point minus minus" ah yes it just rolls off the tongue. HTML was clearly designed to add "semantic web" to the existing text data of the internet, no matter the cost to human readability. If it's "made for people" it's only in the roundabout fashion that eventually it gets hidden away by the interface to change the font color, etc.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#165

Post by jabroni_salad »

divbzero wrote: post #36
BirdEBird wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good article, but the reason is obvious: When opening an app or a web app stopped opening a new document and started to present a list of recent documents, that was the beginning of the end. If someone wants a file, they open the app for that file and scroll down. They have never needed to make sense of a file existing independently of the app in which it was create and may be viewed. This process was cemented by iOS…

The Android Files app has always allowed access to local files, and the iOS Files app has allowed access to local files since 2019. https://www.cultofmac.com/news/files-app-makes-ipad-more-mac... However, neither of them are typically used in mobile UX patterns.

Android's filesystem is borderline incomprehensible. Outside of accessing external storage I have done by best to avoid browsing files.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#166

Post by krapp »

sova wrote: post #164
krapp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, HTML is a plain text format, it was literally made for people to write, and people wrote websites with it, by hand, for years. Literal children with almost no technical skills taught themselves to do it. There was a time when it was easy. Even Javascript was easy. All of this stuff was made for people, but we've abstracted it away so only machines ever touch it and what used to be easy is now a dark art.

You think something that starts with "less than exclamation point" is made for people? "less than exclamation point minus minus" ah yes it just rolls off the tongue. HTML was clearly designed to add "semantic web" to the existing text data of the internet, no matter the cost to human readability. If it's "made for people" it's only in the roundabout fashion that eventually it gets hidden away by the interface to chan…

Human beings are capable of dealing with abstract forms of expression other than natural language. Musicians deal with music notation. Stenographers write in shorthand. Mathematical notation. No programming language with its brackets and parentheses "rolls off the tongue" either but human beings nevertheless write code. HTML is just one such abstraction, concerned with adding markup and hyperlinks to a digital simulation of a paper document.

HTML is "made for people" because it's a text-based markup format intended to be edited by people when designing a web page, simple as. If it were made for machines it would be a binary bytecode format. It isn't because it's meant for human beings to read and write. And human beings are capable of reading it and writing it.

I don't know what to tell you. This is simple, straightforward fact, but you seem weirdly offended by the mere premise.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#167

Post by dschuessler »

globular-toast wrote: post #111
blakewatson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. Yeah, I was a bit worried about this, and even though I kind of mentioned it in the introduction, I think it deserves more attention. I'm not sure if I want to write something and host it myself, or maybe just point people to some kind of primer on creating files and folders.

If you're concerned about this I think the only solution is to get feedback from your audience somehow. Watching someone try to follow the instructions can be enlightening. I personally doubt it's that bad, I think people know how to create folders, but I might be wrong. If not, directing them to " for dummies" might be a good move.

These two videos were the best resources I could find to bring people up to speed on this topic:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-EID5_2D9U

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGd48PGbnBs

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#168

Post by vundercind »

dockd wrote: post #52
giobox wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try not to get overly-annoyed at this kind of thing too, but to me it just demonstrates an incredible lack of self-drive, or curiosity, especially in the CS domain. If the students are genuinely curious, there is nothing to stop them learning about pretty much any topic in CS - really. There are few university subjects where the entire syllabus is freely available online in almost every format imaginable the way CS…

To keep that line of reasoning going, what is the purpose of the university, if you're supposed to learn everything on your own?

CS has always been a lot more like the arts/music than most other majors, in this regard. If you don’t come in with way more knowledge about and skill with computers than the median college-bound high school graduate, you’re gonna have a bad time.

It’s kinda shitty, but for a long time PC gaming as a gateway drug for young kids let universities just assume a fat pipeline of already-computer-savvy applicants.

Re: Show HN: HTML for People

#170

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

lukan wrote: post #116
bo1024 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure they have a computer (i.e. something with a keyboard and a filesystem that it is possible to write and run programs on) at home?

It is way harder, as those devices seemed designed for consumption, but also with smartphones and tablets, one can get under the hood. (Hurrey for Termux)

You wouldn’t expect someone with no experience on a normal computer to manage to get under the hood of a modern smartphone os.
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