5 ms·
Reformatted to be readable: > Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new “features”.
by quietbritishjim 8y ago
Reformatted to be readable:
> Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new “features”.
> Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don’t clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don’t insist on interactive input.
> Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don’t hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.
> Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you’ve finished using them.
- majewsky 8y agoIf bots were not discouraged on news.yc, I would have implemented a bot for this long ago. Code-block quotes are so atrocious, esp. on mobile devices.
- Leace 8y agoIt seems "white-space: pre-wrap" on code block would solve most of the problem. There is also additional "max-width" on the pre that I think is not needed.
- jolmg 8y agoI agree with you on the max-width. I can't see whatever benefit it's supposed to provide outweigh the annoyance of having to scroll horizontally when there is a lot of empty space to the right that could be used to display more text. I'm not too convinced on the wrapping of code, though.
- kakarot 8y agowhite-space: pre-wrap on a code block could lead to confusion. Any change should be an optional setting in your user profile. However you're definitely right about dropping the max-width property.
- masklinn 8y agoThat would break actual code snippet. What would solve most of the problems is HN actually implementing markdown instead of the current half-assed crap.
- vorpalhex 8y agoWhat is it with so many products (HN, Discord, Slack) building half assed markdown implementations that aren't actually markdown?
- rhacker 8y agoWhat's Markdown? - Slack product development (that was a joke but is likely the answer to your question)
- oldmanhorton 8y agoTo be pedantic, there's debate about what is "actually markdown". No one would say it's the flavor HN implements, but the easiest way to win some games is to simply not play
- quietbritishjim 8y agoThat would break any existing comments that happened to be using markdown syntax as punctuation. Although I suppose you could have a flag day for the changeover and format differently based on comment creation time. But I think the very limited formatting is just fine anyway. For the above comment as an example, I agree the code formatting looks awful, especially on mobile. But the version with >'s is ok, and I don't think proper bullet points or a quote bar would have improved it dramatically.
- Leace 8y agoConversations.im uses an interesting trick for rendering Markdown [0] - it leaves the syntax as is, so in the worst case you've got text with weird bold/italics, but the characters are 1:1 identical to what was sent. [0]: Actually not Markdown but a subset but it's not important.
- glenneroo 8y agoWhy is this or OP's even necessary? The bullet points are copied directly from the article.
- koboll 8y agoI'm sure I'm not the only one who opens the comments to skim them and quickly vet whether the article is worth reading or not
- korla 8y agoYou are not. I made a chrome plugin to find the HN-discussions for an article thinking I'd use it primarily after I'd read an article, but I find that I more often than not use it as a benchmark whether I should spend the time to read it or not.