5 ms·

Serious question: in replace of what? A web that's just static content?

pmoriarty 8y ago
Why not? What exactly is the big deal with having just static content? I don't have JS enabled when I read HN. I just hit reload to load and read new comments. What exactly is the problem with doing that? When I read some article on some news site or web forum, I don't need JS to just read a bunch of text or look at an image. All of that can be and often is static. JS is totally superflouous here. The only legitimate uses of JS I can think of are for things like games, or data that you really need to be updated in real-time like stock market tickers. But those are a relatively minor subset of the web and can be made in to standalone apps anyway. I'd much rather have a standalone app than expose myself to all the malware, spyware, and tracking that comes with a JS web ecosystem.
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- krapp 8y ago
  >Why not? >What exactly is the big deal with having just static content? I don't read romance novels, so publishers shouldn't be allowed to print them. The problem is that your personal opinion on the legitimate utility of javascript doesn't have any value beyond your own browser, and the entire rest of the world has decided that a purely static web is not what it wants.
  - tannhaeuser 8y ago
    > ... entire rest of the world ... Speak for yourself! I certainly agree with the parent that the Web is for content. And I believe many here around do as well. You do realize you're commenting here on a site which is as non-PWA/SPA as it gets, don't you?
    - krapp 8y ago
      Content is still content when javascript is involved. Twitter serves content, so does facebook, so do wordpress blogs and medium and likely whatever other sites you think of when you think about how terrible javascript is, because "content" and "javascript" are not mutually opposed. I like Hacker News (obviously, since I spend far too much time here,) but I also like that I can run software in my browser and stream video and audio and play games. FFS, I'm running DOOM in a DosBox emulator in another browser tab as I type this. How is that not qualitatively better in terms of the breadth of content that the web allows than having it be limited to basic text styling and embedded images?
      - tannhaeuser 8y ago
        Audio/video yes, but what's the point of running DOS emulators in a browser? What a browser can and cannot do should be very carefully balanced, or you end up with a tangled mess of Chrome-only content and security/privacy catastrophes.
        krapp 8y ago
        >Audio/video yes, but what's the point of running DOS emulators in a browser? The point is that if I want to play DOS games I only need a URL and a modern browser, just the same as with text, images and other media. That "software" becomes just another content type the web can provide, in a way that's transparent and easy for the end user. If nothing else, the browser can act as a sandbox for software that operating systems otherwise don't seem to provide. A developer can't sneak "rm -rf /*" into their javascript and have it work the way they could natively. > What a browser can and cannot do should be very carefully balanced, or you end up with a tangled mess of Chrome-only content and security/privacy catastrophes. I would argue things have gotten more stable, not less, over time. Flash is more or less dead, as are web applets, and a lot of security issues in javascript WRT overriding object primitives, high frequency timing, cross origin requests, etc, have been dealt with. It's not entirely the wild west anymore.
      - jpttsn 8y ago
        It’s like, how is it not better if my fridge can play music? Obviously I’d rather have music and cold food than just cold food. I’m listening to Beethoven through my other fridge as I type this on my first fridge.
  - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
    I consider myself an open-minded person, but I'm just astounded that people think a web without either JS or some other imperative, behavior-providing language would be better than the current web.
    - krapp 8y ago
      I think it's mostly nostalgia. People miss the old, quirky, simple web of their childhood, that felt like it had a distinct culture and wasn't so mainstream, and want it back. And most of the rest of it is legitimate criticisms about the way javascript is used, but those are implementation and design decisions that are driven by culture, and can be changed by culture... and none of which really undermine the premise that computation in the browser has value.
      - pdkl95 8y ago
        > People miss the old, quirky, simple web of their childhood No, we understand that answering the question "Is this Javascript I received from a unknown remote party safe to run and free of any malicious side effects?" is undecidable. If you want to defend the idea of running potentially hostile Turing complete code, you need to tell us how to answer that question or you are advocating that everybody should regularly accept the risk of running malicious code. I suggest first addressing the simpler question, "Does this Javascript program ever halt?" > none of which really undermine the premise that computation in the browser has value. Obviously Javascript - and computation in general - has value. I have never seen anybody suggest otherwise. Lots of things have value. The problem is that running Turing complete code is always going to be a risk, because describing the behavior of any grammar more complex than deterministic context-free is provably undecidable.
        krapp 8y ago
        > If you want to defend the idea of running potentially hostile Turing complete code, you need to tell us how to answer that question or you are advocating that everybody should regularly accept the risk of running malicious code. I don't really have to. Javascript has been a part of the web for over twenty years. Almost everyone else already runs it, and has already accepted that risk. You, rather, have to defend the premise that all of those people are wrong for doing so, given that most malicious code on the web comes from email attachments, downloaded binaries, and Internet Explorer. I submit that blocking scripts will block ads (most of the time) and analytics and make sites (that work at all without it) run faster, but it won't really make you that much safer. You're already running millions or billions of lines of potentially hostile Turing complete code that can do things javascript couldn't even dream of, and I doubt you've compiled all of it from source, or read all of the source if you have. The risk presented by javascript relative to every other programming language and runtime in existence is minimal. >I suggest first addressing the simpler question, "Does this Javascript program ever halt?" Yes. Hit escape, F5 or when the browser tells you a script appears to be hanging, have it kill the script. I know you're referencing the halting problem there, but in practical terms it's not even an issue. You can, of course, just turn it off.
- tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
  I maintain a client dashboard for large ad vendors who need to visualize their data across multiple time spans. It's too much to sift through on mobile. Are you saying that in this brave new world you're envisioning, I'd have to build them a desktop app?
  - gaius 8y ago
    No, in the brave new world there would be no “large ad vendors” so your problem would not even exist
    - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
      The only way for that to be an effective response is to argue that the only people who need large-scale data visualization on the fly are ad vendors.

Why not? What exactly is the big deal with having just static content? I don't have JS enabled when I read HN. I just hit reload to load and read new comments. What exactly is the problem with doing that? When I read some article on some news site or web forum, I don't need JS to just read a bunch of text or look at an image. All of that can be and often is static. JS is totally superflouous here. The only legitimate uses of JS I can think of are for things like games, or data that you really need to be updated in real-time like stock market tickers. But those are a relatively minor subset of the web and can be made in to standalone apps anyway. I'd much rather have a standalone app than expose myself to all the malware, spyware, and tracking that comes with a JS web ecosystem.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
krapp 8y ago
>Why not? >What exactly is the big deal with having just static content? I don't read romance novels, so publishers shouldn't be allowed to print them. The problem is that your personal opinion on the legitimate utility of javascript doesn't have any value beyond your own browser, and the entire rest of the world has decided that a purely static web is not what it wants.
- tannhaeuser 8y ago
  > ... entire rest of the world ... Speak for yourself! I certainly agree with the parent that the Web is for content. And I believe many here around do as well. You do realize you're commenting here on a site which is as non-PWA/SPA as it gets, don't you?
  - krapp 8y ago
    Content is still content when javascript is involved. Twitter serves content, so does facebook, so do wordpress blogs and medium and likely whatever other sites you think of when you think about how terrible javascript is, because "content" and "javascript" are not mutually opposed. I like Hacker News (obviously, since I spend far too much time here,) but I also like that I can run software in my browser and stream video and audio and play games. FFS, I'm running DOOM in a DosBox emulator in another browser tab as I type this. How is that not qualitatively better in terms of the breadth of content that the web allows than having it be limited to basic text styling and embedded images?
    - tannhaeuser 8y ago
      Audio/video yes, but what's the point of running DOS emulators in a browser? What a browser can and cannot do should be very carefully balanced, or you end up with a tangled mess of Chrome-only content and security/privacy catastrophes.
      - krapp 8y ago
        >Audio/video yes, but what's the point of running DOS emulators in a browser? The point is that if I want to play DOS games I only need a URL and a modern browser, just the same as with text, images and other media. That "software" becomes just another content type the web can provide, in a way that's transparent and easy for the end user. If nothing else, the browser can act as a sandbox for software that operating systems otherwise don't seem to provide. A developer can't sneak "rm -rf /*" into their javascript and have it work the way they could natively. > What a browser can and cannot do should be very carefully balanced, or you end up with a tangled mess of Chrome-only content and security/privacy catastrophes. I would argue things have gotten more stable, not less, over time. Flash is more or less dead, as are web applets, and a lot of security issues in javascript WRT overriding object primitives, high frequency timing, cross origin requests, etc, have been dealt with. It's not entirely the wild west anymore.
    - jpttsn 8y ago
      It’s like, how is it not better if my fridge can play music? Obviously I’d rather have music and cold food than just cold food. I’m listening to Beethoven through my other fridge as I type this on my first fridge.
- tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
  I consider myself an open-minded person, but I'm just astounded that people think a web without either JS or some other imperative, behavior-providing language would be better than the current web.
  - krapp 8y ago
    I think it's mostly nostalgia. People miss the old, quirky, simple web of their childhood, that felt like it had a distinct culture and wasn't so mainstream, and want it back. And most of the rest of it is legitimate criticisms about the way javascript is used, but those are implementation and design decisions that are driven by culture, and can be changed by culture... and none of which really undermine the premise that computation in the browser has value.
    - pdkl95 8y ago
      > People miss the old, quirky, simple web of their childhood No, we understand that answering the question "Is this Javascript I received from a unknown remote party safe to run and free of any malicious side effects?" is undecidable. If you want to defend the idea of running potentially hostile Turing complete code, you need to tell us how to answer that question or you are advocating that everybody should regularly accept the risk of running malicious code. I suggest first addressing the simpler question, "Does this Javascript program ever halt?" > none of which really undermine the premise that computation in the browser has value. Obviously Javascript - and computation in general - has value. I have never seen anybody suggest otherwise. Lots of things have value. The problem is that running Turing complete code is always going to be a risk, because describing the behavior of any grammar more complex than deterministic context-free is provably undecidable.
      - krapp 8y ago
        > If you want to defend the idea of running potentially hostile Turing complete code, you need to tell us how to answer that question or you are advocating that everybody should regularly accept the risk of running malicious code. I don't really have to. Javascript has been a part of the web for over twenty years. Almost everyone else already runs it, and has already accepted that risk. You, rather, have to defend the premise that all of those people are wrong for doing so, given that most malicious code on the web comes from email attachments, downloaded binaries, and Internet Explorer. I submit that blocking scripts will block ads (most of the time) and analytics and make sites (that work at all without it) run faster, but it won't really make you that much safer. You're already running millions or billions of lines of potentially hostile Turing complete code that can do things javascript couldn't even dream of, and I doubt you've compiled all of it from source, or read all of the source if you have. The risk presented by javascript relative to every other programming language and runtime in existence is minimal. >I suggest first addressing the simpler question, "Does this Javascript program ever halt?" Yes. Hit escape, F5 or when the browser tells you a script appears to be hanging, have it kill the script. I know you're referencing the halting problem there, but in practical terms it's not even an issue. You can, of course, just turn it off.
tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
I maintain a client dashboard for large ad vendors who need to visualize their data across multiple time spans. It's too much to sift through on mobile. Are you saying that in this brave new world you're envisioning, I'd have to build them a desktop app?
- gaius 8y ago
  No, in the brave new world there would be no “large ad vendors” so your problem would not even exist
  - tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
    The only way for that to be an effective response is to argue that the only people who need large-scale data visualization on the fly are ad vendors.