4 ms·

Why does nobody say “the TCP/IP monoculture is maddening,” or “the HTML monoculture is maddening” ? Seriously, I need somebody to explain it to me because I do

by MR4D 7y ago

Why does nobody say “the TCP/IP monoculture is maddening,” or “the HTML monoculture is maddening” ? Seriously, I need somebody to explain it to me because I don’t get it. Having one core base of code is not a bad thing to me. What am I missing here?

recursive 7y ago
Specification vs implementation. And there certainly are people that say the HTML monoculture is maddening. Perhaps you've heard people complaining about Electron being used for desktop apps.
Uehreka 7y ago
TCP/IP is a protocol and HTML is a format. The reason that’s OK is that lots of people have built different TCP/IP stacks and HTML renderers, and so no one person/organization can control them. They aren’t “one codebase”.
rst 7y ago
There is no single TCP monoculture codebase -- even among Unix-alikes, the Linux networking stack is a reimplementation, with no common ancestry with the BSD stack. (To say nothing of routers with their own implementations, often including hardware assist at the high end.)
jandrese 7y ago
There are definitely people pushing back against TCP. QUIC is one example. IP is a bit too low level for most people to care about. Also, pretty much every other thing we've tried at that layer has been worse for general internet traffic. I still remember the days of ATM networks and what a constant headache they were to keep working.
bdcravens 7y ago
You're conflating standards with products.
chrisweekly 7y ago
There's a fundamental difference between a standard (eg TCP/IP, HTML...) and an implementation (Chromium/Blink/Trident...).
MR4D 7y ago
Quick thanks for everyone’s feedback on this. Some really good points that I hadn’t thought about before.
samantohermes 7y ago
Well, it's almost the same thing, since Google now controls web standards (and Mozilla).
cobalt 7y ago
html/webtech is a horrible shit show (imo), most people would not say that about tcp/ip

by MR4D 7y ago

recursive 7y ago

Specification vs implementation. And there certainly are people that say the HTML monoculture is maddening. Perhaps you've heard people complaining about Electron being used for desktop apps.

Uehreka 7y ago

TCP/IP is a protocol and HTML is a format. The reason that’s OK is that lots of people have built different TCP/IP stacks and HTML renderers, and so no one person/organization can control them. They aren’t “one codebase”.

rst 7y ago

There is no single TCP monoculture codebase -- even among Unix-alikes, the Linux networking stack is a reimplementation, with no common ancestry with the BSD stack. (To say nothing of routers with their own implementations, often including hardware assist at the high end.)

jandrese 7y ago

There are definitely people pushing back against TCP. QUIC is one example. IP is a bit too low level for most people to care about. Also, pretty much every other thing we've tried at that layer has been worse for general internet traffic. I still remember the days of ATM networks and what a constant headache they were to keep working.

bdcravens 7y ago

You're conflating standards with products.

chrisweekly 7y ago

There's a fundamental difference between a standard (eg TCP/IP, HTML...) and an implementation (Chromium/Blink/Trident...).

MR4D 7y ago

Quick thanks for everyone’s feedback on this. Some really good points that I hadn’t thought about before.

samantohermes 7y ago

Well, it's almost the same thing, since Google now controls web standards (and Mozilla).

cobalt 7y ago

html/webtech is a horrible shit show (imo), most people would not say that about tcp/ip