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> RSS died. Whether you blame Feedburner, or Google Reader, or Digg Reader last month, or any number of other product failures over the years, the humble protoc

by gkya 9y ago

> RSS died. Whether you blame Feedburner, or Google Reader, or Digg Reader last month, or any number of other product failures over the years, the humble protocol has managed to keep on trudging along despite all evidence that it is dead, dead, dead. What a stupid thing to say... All this indicates is that RSS users didn't like those apps. I use elfeed, which has upwards of 500 stars on Github, and it's an Emacs feed reader. Many other feedreaders exist that you can run on your computer. Furthermore, Feedly and NewsBlur, along with other services, seem to be quite lively. My rather unknown blog gets some requests referred from the Flipboard app regularly. But a fact is that lots of incompetent site makers do not add RSS feeds to the websites they build. My uni's RSS feeds are going offline one by one as they redesign the web pages, and I have to maintain a scraper script to follow the updates. Many institutions' feeds are badly curated, e.g. a museum I follow, I figured out today that I wasn't getting any news because their RSS feed had a <!doctype html> and some conditional comments before the actual feed. Some feeds include javascript and XML readers fail on them. And then there's the Wix or Squarespace or whatnot websites, and they are a total failure (especially because they can't do this RSS thing whereas even Tumblr does it easily). I really believe we should somehow certificate programmers and some certain specialisations. That means ensuring that a "web developer" does know about the base specifications on which the web is built, and the most common best practices. If a web dev fails at making an RSS feed, that's a big problem.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
I’m a tradesman with a passion for tools of all sorts but especially the ones I personally find useful. As a non-developer, as an observer, if people want to call themselves “software engineers”, and I think it’s a fair title: you are designing and building systems people rely on, then you need to take the first steps toward self-regulation before it’s imposed upon you. Yes, if you want to call yourself an engineer then you ought be able to prove under examination that you understand first principles. What those first principles are ought be determined by the industry itself in collaboration with a peak-body for oversight. What we have not is practically the Wild Wild West that is actively doing harm in some areas.
corobo 9y ago
Anecdata- When Google Reader was killed off I stopped using RSS feeds entirely with the exception of podcasts Since the recent post saying we should to back to using RSS I've given NewsBlur a go (I'd tried Feedly when GReader died, didn't like the way it scrolls). Honestly though I looked at a few articles on the day I signed up but I've not checked back once yet. I'm like the person that pays for the gym then never goes when it comes to RSS now apparently. I don't think I've ever had a problem with a site not having RSS feeds though, any site with regular articles that I want to follow has had one
- gkya 9y ago
  I have made checking my RSS my equivalent of reading a newspaper in the morning. And it's really easy for me: Emacs is always open anyways, so I type M-x elfeed RET G, and I have a list of updates. I have configured Elfeed such that it has some stored searches [1] which I navigate using j and k, and such that it scores articles in a crude but useful way [2]. So it takes me about 5-10 minutes to process the entire thing, make note of the links to read later, and check the important, immediate stuff. And once I transformed it to a rather joyful thing to do from a chore, it was incredibly easy and automatical to make it into a habit. [1] https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/gk.org#search-ring https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/... [2] https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/gk.org#scoring https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/...
thwarted 9y ago
But a fact is that lots of incompetent site makers do not add RSS feeds to the websites they build. ... Some feeds include javascript and XML readers fail on them. And then there's the Wix or Squarespace or whatnot websites, and they are a total failure (especially because they can't do this RSS thing whereas even Tumblr does it easily). ... I really believe we should somehow certificate programmers and some certain specialisations. That means ensuring that a "web developer" does know about the base specifications on which the web is built, and the most common best practices. If a web dev fails at making an RSS feed, that's a big problem. I bet most of those older sites ended up getting RSS feeds by default as part of whatever Content Management System they had. And since it wasn't a feature actually requested at the time of deployment, the users of the CMS didn't miss it during a redesign. And since no one has been asking for it, and well-known tools like Google Reader are defunct, services like SquareSpace and Wix don't have it, and their customers are not web-savvy, and so aren't asking for it. Hey, I wish just as much that more people were more competent at whatever it is they're doing, but saying that leaving out edge features that weren't requested is somehow the sign of a bad programmer or a bad engineer is plain wrong. Good engineers work to solve the problem posed, not their own fantasy work; they may try to convince that something is needed or a nice to have, or may refuse to work on a job they don't think is taking the right things into account. In the case of the former, stats most likely indicate that more traffic comes from AMP or twitter than it does from RSS feeds. And in the case of the latter it just means the customer gets someone else to do it. RSS wasn't a specification on which the web was built. It's a useful addition, but the fact that the WWW existed before it, and continues to exist after RSS's heyday, means it's not considered critical.
- gkya 9y ago
  I think you are right about the CMS. That's what's happening in my uni for example. I did send an email about the feeds, no response. Thing is, it's so easy to add one, there's no justification to screwing RSS users, even if it was only me. WRT Squarespace and Wix, well, you can't really read those w/o JS anyways, so that's a nice signal for me. RSS is as much of an edge feature as the silly animations and crappy one page app reditions of what essentially is a glorified blog is an edge feature. But the latter gets you paid more. On the flip side, e.g. at my uni which switched from wordpress sites to a home-grown CMS, departments have a hard time publishing updates now, and people are switching to Facebook or Whatsapp groups instead. I'm lucky that my department chose to use a google group instead, so that I don't have to convince someone to forward FB updates to me. Just like RSS, JS was nothing else than a useful addition, and WWW existed long before it and its heyday. The current culture of web development is directly user-hostile in many ways, and builds its confidence upon the perceived approval of users, whereas the reality is that that users' approval is just people putting up with what they have at hand with the varying degrees of knowledge they have. I can't keep mailing every website maintainer and ask for a proper website, I just make do. Luckily I can write a script and put it on cron to fetch most important updates for me, but lots of others don't have anything else than word of mouth or facebook, which is just the digital version of the former. The rapport between the web dev and the user is that of submissive bondage, not really a feedback loop and joy.

by gkya 9y ago

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago

I’m a tradesman with a passion for tools of all sorts but especially the ones I personally find useful. As a non-developer, as an observer, if people want to call themselves “software engineers”, and I think it’s a fair title: you are designing and building systems people rely on, then you need to take the first steps toward self-regulation before it’s imposed upon you. Yes, if you want to call yourself an engineer then you ought be able to prove under examination that you understand first principles. What those first principles are ought be determined by the industry itself in collaboration with a peak-body for oversight. What we have not is practically the Wild Wild West that is actively doing harm in some areas.

corobo 9y ago

Anecdata- When Google Reader was killed off I stopped using RSS feeds entirely with the exception of podcasts Since the recent post saying we should to back to using RSS I've given NewsBlur a go (I'd tried Feedly when GReader died, didn't like the way it scrolls). Honestly though I looked at a few articles on the day I signed up but I've not checked back once yet. I'm like the person that pays for the gym then never goes when it comes to RSS now apparently. I don't think I've ever had a problem with a site not having RSS feeds though, any site with regular articles that I want to follow has had one

gkya 9y ago
I have made checking my RSS my equivalent of reading a newspaper in the morning. And it's really easy for me: Emacs is always open anyways, so I type M-x elfeed RET G, and I have a list of updates. I have configured Elfeed such that it has some stored searches [1] which I navigate using j and k, and such that it scores articles in a crude but useful way [2]. So it takes me about 5-10 minutes to process the entire thing, make note of the links to read later, and check the important, immediate stuff. And once I transformed it to a rather joyful thing to do from a chore, it was incredibly easy and automatical to make it into a habit. [1] https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/gk.org#search-ring https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/... [2] https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/gk.org#scoring https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/...

thwarted 9y ago

But a fact is that lots of incompetent site makers do not add RSS feeds to the websites they build. ... Some feeds include javascript and XML readers fail on them. And then there's the Wix or Squarespace or whatnot websites, and they are a total failure (especially because they can't do this RSS thing whereas even Tumblr does it easily). ... I really believe we should somehow certificate programmers and some certain specialisations. That means ensuring that a "web developer" does know about the base specifications on which the web is built, and the most common best practices. If a web dev fails at making an RSS feed, that's a big problem. I bet most of those older sites ended up getting RSS feeds by default as part of whatever Content Management System they had. And since it wasn't a feature actually requested at the time of deployment, the users of the CMS didn't miss it during a redesign. And since no one has been asking for it, and well-known tools like Google Reader are defunct, services like SquareSpace and Wix don't have it, and their customers are not web-savvy, and so aren't asking for it. Hey, I wish just as much that more people were more competent at whatever it is they're doing, but saying that leaving out edge features that weren't requested is somehow the sign of a bad programmer or a bad engineer is plain wrong. Good engineers work to solve the problem posed, not their own fantasy work; they may try to convince that something is needed or a nice to have, or may refuse to work on a job they don't think is taking the right things into account. In the case of the former, stats most likely indicate that more traffic comes from AMP or twitter than it does from RSS feeds. And in the case of the latter it just means the customer gets someone else to do it. RSS wasn't a specification on which the web was built. It's a useful addition, but the fact that the WWW existed before it, and continues to exist after RSS's heyday, means it's not considered critical.

gkya 9y ago
I think you are right about the CMS. That's what's happening in my uni for example. I did send an email about the feeds, no response. Thing is, it's so easy to add one, there's no justification to screwing RSS users, even if it was only me. WRT Squarespace and Wix, well, you can't really read those w/o JS anyways, so that's a nice signal for me. RSS is as much of an edge feature as the silly animations and crappy one page app reditions of what essentially is a glorified blog is an edge feature. But the latter gets you paid more. On the flip side, e.g. at my uni which switched from wordpress sites to a home-grown CMS, departments have a hard time publishing updates now, and people are switching to Facebook or Whatsapp groups instead. I'm lucky that my department chose to use a google group instead, so that I don't have to convince someone to forward FB updates to me. Just like RSS, JS was nothing else than a useful addition, and WWW existed long before it and its heyday. The current culture of web development is directly user-hostile in many ways, and builds its confidence upon the perceived approval of users, whereas the reality is that that users' approval is just people putting up with what they have at hand with the varying degrees of knowledge they have. I can't keep mailing every website maintainer and ask for a proper website, I just make do. Luckily I can write a script and put it on cron to fetch most important updates for me, but lots of others don't have anything else than word of mouth or facebook, which is just the digital version of the former. The rapport between the web dev and the user is that of submissive bondage, not really a feedback loop and joy.