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At the risk of snark I don't have a clear way around, your definition of "good engineering" appears to be the same one that thinks a modern toilet is no better

At the risk of snark I don't have a clear way around, your definition of "good engineering" appears to be the same one that thinks a modern toilet is no better than a hole in the ground. Nobody that pays for developer time in 2018 is going to optimize their site for people that go out of their way to willfully turn off part of the stack. It's not gonna happen. Effort for no reward. The protocol you describe, just a bare tree of text links, already exists as Gopher. People mostly stopped using that.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
I turn off a part of the stack (or rather, run it on a whitelist), because people are using wrong parts of the stack for wrong things. If you use the right parts of the stack for the right things, the result is a lean, accessible and interoperable piece of software. That's what the Internet was designed for. Alas, few people care, and in particular, interoperability is actively being opposed. RE the toilet example, current webdev is more like refusing to build toilets in apartments and instead building them into car seats, because it's 2018, everyone has a car and a driver's license (or, rather, everyone in the population we want to monetize).
- eitland 9y ago
  > more like refusing to build toilets in apartments and instead building them into car seats, because it's 2018, everyone has a car and a driver's license Or maybe even making all kinds of interactive, surprising and unhygienic features on the toilet? Some things should be simple and just work. They should work in a predictable manner and in a way that minimises risk for the users.
reitanqild 9y ago
> Nobody that pays for developer time in 2018 is going to optimize their site for people that go out of their way to willfully turn off part of the stack. It's not gonna happen. FWIW it takes less developer time to make a decent website without Javascript. Javascript also introduces risks that are non existent in static pages. Now if theese JS sites were super snappy and worked well offline etc I'd say probably wort it. But I guess they are often worse that a plain old web page. - someone who has created static and dynamic webpages since late last millenium
nothis 9y ago
Good engineering is robust and efficient. Requiring Javascript to display simple, static text is not good engineering.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  Most websites are not just simple, static text.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    I disagree, most of them are simple static sites. Gmail, Google Docs, etc. are the outliers, not the norm. Reddit is a static text site with images. Hacker News is a static text site. Blogs are static text sites (with a few embedded images or non-text objects.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - marssaxman 9y ago
    Most websites should be just simple, static text.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

I turn off a part of the stack (or rather, run it on a whitelist), because people are using wrong parts of the stack for wrong things. If you use the right parts of the stack for the right things, the result is a lean, accessible and interoperable piece of software. That's what the Internet was designed for. Alas, few people care, and in particular, interoperability is actively being opposed. RE the toilet example, current webdev is more like refusing to build toilets in apartments and instead building them into car seats, because it's 2018, everyone has a car and a driver's license (or, rather, everyone in the population we want to monetize).

eitland 9y ago
> more like refusing to build toilets in apartments and instead building them into car seats, because it's 2018, everyone has a car and a driver's license Or maybe even making all kinds of interactive, surprising and unhygienic features on the toilet? Some things should be simple and just work. They should work in a predictable manner and in a way that minimises risk for the users.

reitanqild 9y ago

> Nobody that pays for developer time in 2018 is going to optimize their site for people that go out of their way to willfully turn off part of the stack. It's not gonna happen. FWIW it takes less developer time to make a decent website without Javascript. Javascript also introduces risks that are non existent in static pages. Now if theese JS sites were super snappy and worked well offline etc I'd say probably wort it. But I guess they are often worse that a plain old web page. - someone who has created static and dynamic webpages since late last millenium

nothis 9y ago

Good engineering is robust and efficient. Requiring Javascript to display simple, static text is not good engineering.

Karunamon 9y ago
Most websites are not just simple, static text.
- falcolas 9y ago
  I disagree, most of them are simple static sites. Gmail, Google Docs, etc. are the outliers, not the norm. Reddit is a static text site with images. Hacker News is a static text site. Blogs are static text sites (with a few embedded images or non-text objects.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- marssaxman 9y ago
  Most websites should be just simple, static text.