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Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
261–270 of 308 posts
Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
#262We need a Rich Text Standard akin to Unicode. It's truly absurd that we can universally read and write emojis with variable skin color across all platforms, but I can't send bold or italic text.
If can use emojis in my terminal text editor - even in a Markdown document itself - why the hell can't I bold or italicize?? We desperately need to fix this insanity.
Markdown by itself is: Headings, bold, italic, lists, blockquote, code, horizontal rule, link and image. That's it. Everything else is some sort of custom addition like tables.
Surely in 2026 we can figure out how to make this a universal standard.
I truly despise Markdown. I'd say about 25% of my posts on HN is me ranting about how much I hate it. This has mostly just lowered my karma, but that's OK. I'm not wrong, it sucks.
Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect this unintentionally satisfies my conclusion.
Only if you're willfully ignorant of the wider discussion.
Obviously. Me having technical knowledge you appear to not have on the discussion at hand makes me ignorant of the discussion at hand.
Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Templated though, not manually writing it out for every blog post say. I think GP means it just has more friction as a writing format than markdown for example.
No, literally manually typing out HTML tags and everything. Many of us did it so much things like Emmet ( https://emmet.io/ ) were invented and used so we could hammer out full HTML documents even faster. Even after React became popular, people are still manually typing out HTML elements, although they call it "JSX" instead, but in reality it's just HTML. My first blog on the internet literally was a bunch of .html f…
> PS: Really cool static site generators that shoot for simplicity don't require you to create extra template files written in a new, made-up template language. When you want to create a new post, you give it (a) the static files from your existing site and (b) the markdown for your new post. The "templating" engine inspects your existing posts (incl. e.g. class attributes) and then copies the same document structure into a new file, except with the right stuff (timestamp, title and heading, post content...) substituted in to the places where it's supposed to go.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30961588>
Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have been authoring HTML by hand for decades with ease. Text editors are very good at it, and many have commands to auto-wrap, auto-close etc. Reading and writing is simple.
You have been authoring HTML by hand for decades. Not every SWE is a FE dev.
HTML was invented for physicists to be able to write papers. It's not something that's beyond anyone without frontend dev experience.
CSS, on the other hand...
Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
#266My concern here is that by gravitating to HTML you lose the ability for a human (you!) to easily co-author the document with the LLM. If it’s just an explainer for your consumption, that’s not a concern - but if it’s a spec sheet for something more complex, I deeply value being able to dive in and edit what is produced for me. With a HTML doc it is much harder to do that than with MD. Now of course you could just rep…
I started using Thariq’s approach yesterday and it works very well. One thing I noticed is that I’m no longer wary of reading long and complex spec documents. Opus does a great job with web design and uses a combination of clean, modern styling and interactive elements that reduces my cognitive load and improves my ability to understand the details of what it is planning to build.
Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose that only applies if you constrain yourself to a raw teletypewriter emulator… in any proper coding environment, editing HTML should be absolutely simple - even an embedded WYSIWYG editor would be an option if rich model output is a way we head into.
A counter argument would be that all programming languages of the last decades have been plain text based. No other more structured format has ever gained traction even though modern editors could be argued to be able to support that easily. Turns out, it doesn't actually work that way.
There's a visual editor for Windows Forms apps that is well thought of.
Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
#268When exploring a new idea or tool, my go to prompt is ``` In a single index.html, no dependencies, sparse styling, create an app that ``` Even before AI, it's how I built small tools, and there's something lovely about being able to email my friends the tool, and tell them "If you want to make a change, toss it to your LLM!"
My manager does this and with a straight face comes to me after with it and goes “put this in production” and wonders why it takes more than 5 minutes. I absolutely hate the absolute rot these tools have caused to people’s brains.
I have to draw a very sharp line in generating these kinds of tools, I treat them as single use throwaway things and do my best to never have anyone besides myself even see the tools themselves (e.g. reviewing some calculation results).
Else I fully expect to get saddled with turning a temporary thing for a very narrow problem into something production ready.
Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
#269My concern here is that by gravitating to HTML you lose the ability for a human (you!) to easily co-author the document with the LLM. If it’s just an explainer for your consumption, that’s not a concern - but if it’s a spec sheet for something more complex, I deeply value being able to dive in and edit what is produced for me. With a HTML doc it is much harder to do that than with MD. Now of course you could just rep…
HTML is trivial to edit by hand in Notepad or nano.
Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML
#270My concern here is that by gravitating to HTML you lose the ability for a human (you!) to easily co-author the document with the LLM. If it’s just an explainer for your consumption, that’s not a concern - but if it’s a spec sheet for something more complex, I deeply value being able to dive in and edit what is produced for me. With a HTML doc it is much harder to do that than with MD. Now of course you could just rep…
I actually think there is a second level to this. Yes HTML will get you most anywhere, but I found that letting the LLM define its own language is also unreasonably effective. Currently working on a dumb little mobile game with isometric view and sound: - told codex to write a tool that lets its place blocks in a prepared three.js document and have chromium dev tools take a screenshot. It made up a little JSON struct…
LLMs do fantastic when you do the architecting for them. Don't let them make system decisions, and you'll have a great time.