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The web runs on tolerance

shkspr.mobi

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Re: The web runs on tolerance

#51

Post by charcircuit »

wredcoll wrote: post #45
charcircuit wrote: post #14

>But the web works because browsers are tolerant. This is more of an artifact of needing to be compatibile with other browsers and more of an arbitrary decision where once one browser starts allowing all sorts of input than everyone else may start needing to if content starts relying on it. >But the world is better for it. It makes compatibility between different browsers more complicated due to adding a ton of edge…

> >When you throw slurs and denigrate people's pronouns, your ignorance and hatred does a disservice to history and drives away the next generation of talent. > I disagree that this happens. At best it discourages a subset of the next generation, but it is not a subset I would like to work with. Tell me more about this subset you wouldn't like to work with.

I do not want to work with people who are obnoxious, mentally unstable, love stirring drama, self centered, controlling, etc.

These attributes can make it hard to work with others, or waste time that could have been spent actually building a good product for end users. Of course people are not robots, they have emotions and attitudes that are variable so some people will exhibit these qualities some of the time, but I believe it's important to build a culture that can withstand these rather than amplify them.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#52

Post by autoexec »

didgetmaster wrote: post #7

This guy lost me when he started talking about diversity issues instead of tech. I couldn't care less about the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the person(s) who created the hardware or software that I use. Does it work? Is it easy to understand and use? These are the things I am interested in. I am reminded of an early cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer saying 'On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!…

I'll gladly take the opportunity to avoid directly supporting a racist/bigot, or anyone who seeks to silence/oppress/murder entire groups of people for simply existing. I don't care if they're selling me an application, or a laptop, or a car, or a cheeseburger. The internet, and the world, are a lot more interesting and exciting when you get a lot of different people from different backgrounds participating. Genius and innovation can come from anywhere. Morally and practically I think we're better off being inclusive.

I may not know who on the internet is a dog, but I'm glad those dogs are out there and if somebody is a proud supporter of puppy genocide I'd rather not encourage/enable their misguided crusade so that does factor into my choices.

It isn't something that can always be avoided, or even something that needs to be avoided entirely 100% of the time (I still read Lovecraft for example) but I do think it's worth some consideration.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#53

Post by WhyOhWhyQ »

Well that took a surprising turn. (1) Friendly dunking on someone named todepond. (2) Interesting ideas about xhtml... looks like I'm going to learn something here. (3) Ideological conflict.

Is there a backstory here? Or is this just random venting?

Anyways, I reject the idea that loose programming is more "tolerant" in any sociological manner.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#54

Post by gldrk »

>You can make your HTML as malformed as you like and the web-browser will do its best to display the page for you. I love the todepond website, but the source-code makes me break out in a cold sweat. Yet it renders just fine.

It renders just fine because it is syntactically valid HTML. HTML is not and is not supposed to be XML. It is originally an SGML application described by its Document Type Definition and SGML Declaration (https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/HTML4.decl). HTML uses and has always used many SGML features not found in XML, such as tag inference ( becomes ,

becomes

). Some of these, like SHORTTAG, were never even implemented in browsers. These days HTML is defined by the WHATWG ‘living standard’, which largely just restates the SGML DTD rules in plain language.

(Okay, https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.todepond.... shows a few minor errors, bet you couldn’t spot them.)

This is independent of the fact that browsers do try their best to render objectively broken markup, usually by ignoring the broken parts. In principle they could do the same with XHTML, but someone decided it would be ‘helpful’ to show the parser’s diagnostic output instead, and the rest is history.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#55

Post by csallen »

Incipient wrote: post #47

This whole article has, to be ragebait - surely? It's such a inane piece of writing, the world needs to give less time to anyone that genuinely holds these views. They're entitled to hold them, but they're still wrong. >It had an intolerant ideology. Without going into the various reasons why its trash, conforming to a spec is not intolerance, it's success. Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiri…

> Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiring exactly 1 inch plate is intolerance!!

The Brooklyn bridge is a singular piece of infrastructure that millions depend on. I think it makes for a bad analogy.

A better analogy would be something more like websites, where people can tinker and create and contribute without much consequence. For example, the local community garden's board saying, "Requiring a precise and strictly uniform planting layout and soil composition is intolerance!" Well... that'd be quite reasonable?

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#57

Post by dang »

Incipient wrote: post #47

This whole article has, to be ragebait - surely? It's such a inane piece of writing, the world needs to give less time to anyone that genuinely holds these views. They're entitled to hold them, but they're still wrong. >It had an intolerant ideology. Without going into the various reasons why its trash, conforming to a spec is not intolerance, it's success. Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiri…

This comment breaks HN's guidelines in many ways. Can you please review them and stick to the rules? We're trying for something quite different here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. If you meant your comment as an amusing meta play on intolerance, then I'm sorry for misreading. That would of course be much better, but after a bit of wavering I concluded that you actually meant what you were saying here.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#58

Post by raincole »

gldrk wrote: post #54

>You can make your HTML as malformed as you like and the web-browser will do its best to display the page for you. I love the todepond website, but the source-code makes me break out in a cold sweat. Yet it renders just fine. It renders just fine because it is syntactically valid HTML. HTML is not and is not supposed to be XML. It is originally an SGML application described by its Document Type Definition and SGML De…

> that browsers do try their best to render objectively broken markup

And it's a cancerous engineering principle. People say NullPointerException is the one billion error, but (the misuse of) Postel's Law on web frontend is a multi-billion error. Once one mainstream browser decided to "tolerate" an error, websites would start relying on that behavior, making it a permanent feature of web.

If browsers were less tolerant the whole frontend development would be much smoother. The past decade of JavaScript framework farce would have probably never happened.

The proper way to deal with syntax is making better tools: linters, interpreters and compilers that spew clear error messages. Not trying to 'tolerant' errors.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#59

Post by nish__ »

csallen wrote: post #55
Incipient wrote: post #47

This whole article has, to be ragebait - surely? It's such a inane piece of writing, the world needs to give less time to anyone that genuinely holds these views. They're entitled to hold them, but they're still wrong. >It had an intolerant ideology. Without going into the various reasons why its trash, conforming to a spec is not intolerance, it's success. Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiri…

> Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiring exactly 1 inch plate is intolerance!! The Brooklyn bridge is a singular piece of infrastructure that millions depend on. I think it makes for a bad analogy. A better analogy would be something more like websites, where people can tinker and create and contribute without much consequence. For example, the local community garden's board saying, "Requiring…

It's bad because it makes it harder to implement a browser so the "spec" just becomes whatever the leading implementation supports.

When I clicked on the article, I thought it was going to be about how the web gives a space for all voices even the marginalized or minorities to be seen/heard. Not this nonsense.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#60

Post by wredcoll »

Nextgrid wrote: post #31

The right-wing extremism we now have in the US is the expected knee-jerk reaction to the left-wing extremism that came before it. In both cases there's a few true believers and a lot of opportunists who use the cause as a way to further their own agenda. It happened with the left (the master branch rename being the stupidest example), it's now happening in the right, with big words and performative actions such as IC…

Good point dude, a few super online people writing forum posts about changing the default name of the main git branch is exactly equivalent to launching gestapo style terror raids on the population at large while ignoring the consitution and due process.

Tomato - tomahto am I right?

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