Macaroni – a single HTML file messenger

Post by boomlinde » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 11:43 AM UTC

Hugsbox wrote: post #56

boomlinde wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea isn’t that transport magically disappears. The idea is that users don’t have to deploy, operate, pay for, or even think about transport. It's sharing this advantage with every other free, third party managed communication service I can choose to depend on. It's also sharing the weakness that it puts me at the mercy of whatever third party I am relying on. It introduces a new weakness in that the third part…

I don't think this was meant to be taken as seriously as you seem to be taking it

Post by calebm » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

torginus wrote: post #12

I wonder why this type of deployment is not more popular - pushing all resources inside a single HTML file, with a script tag, and inline resources as blobs.

Post by calebm » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

notpushkin wrote: post #46

hnlmorg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not advocating this development approach, but I also think some of your reasons aren't particularly robust when scrutinized. > can't reuse a stylesheet, script or image on a different page (each has to have their own copy) Isn't the point of a single HTML file that you don't have different pages that would need to reuse those assets? > can't cache commonly used files You can still cache the HTML. > can't make gra…

If you need a build script, your app is probably too big to be a single .html already. > You can still cache the HTML. But then any time you update any part of the app, the user has to re-download the whole thing. It is also a problem with many traditional frontend builds, but if you carefully split it into chunks, you can update parts of the app while most of it stays cached. See e.g. Linear’s approach to vendor dep…

Post by giancarlostoro » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #13

I'm a fan of the license. https://www.wtfpl.net/about/

Post by functionmouse » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

boomlinde wrote: post #25

"Sending a message to your mother should not require infrastructure comparable to a small bank." To that end, requiring the use of GitHub for your application to work is a dead end. "Macaroni Messenger is a distributed messaging system" No. "The backend does not exist." Unless by "backend" you mean the underlying infrastructure and server logic you've made the clients depend on for the exchange of messages to happen.