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If the domain not be well understood when one is crafting the markup for a layout as simple as Hacker News's, one simply lacks even the most basic experience.

If the domain not be well understood when one is crafting the markup for a layout as simple as Hacker News's, one simply lacks even the most basic experience. There is no need to use exploratory programming for such matters; it is a very common and well understood problem for which there are good and bad solutions. A simple `margin-left: 20px;` in CSS is a good solution; transparent spacing images are ridiculous.

onion2k 6y ago
one simply lacks even the most basic experience Considering pg's background I don't think it's that.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  Which is why I believe that the domain was quite well understood, and that exploratory programming to generate the markup for this simple website is a mistake.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    exploratory programming to generate the markup for this simple website is a mistake You're wrong because you think the goal was to make a website. Judging by the arclanguage.org post linked earlier, the goal was to test the Arc language as an example of exploratory programming to make a web application, with the measure of success being "as little Arc code as possible". The HTML output was intentionally 'bad' from a web development perspective, but 'good' from an Arc perspective. Consequently if you judge it purely in terms of web development it does look pretty awful, but that isn't the context it was written in so that's not a fair way to look at it.
    - krapp 6y ago
      Tables and spacer gifs don't necessarily use less Arc code than a simpler layout would. The table layout might even use a bit more if it requires more iteration, macro expansion and branching to render. There are special case macros in the html library for generating parts of the forum table that wouldn't be necessary otherwise. Also, the goal clearly was to make a website, because pg made a website, and here we all are. Once you put your MVP online it's valid to criticize decisions made for it in that context.

onion2k 6y ago

one simply lacks even the most basic experience Considering pg's background I don't think it's that.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Which is why I believe that the domain was quite well understood, and that exploratory programming to generate the markup for this simple website is a mistake.
- onion2k 6y ago
  exploratory programming to generate the markup for this simple website is a mistake You're wrong because you think the goal was to make a website. Judging by the arclanguage.org post linked earlier, the goal was to test the Arc language as an example of exploratory programming to make a web application, with the measure of success being "as little Arc code as possible". The HTML output was intentionally 'bad' from a web development perspective, but 'good' from an Arc perspective. Consequently if you judge it purely in terms of web development it does look pretty awful, but that isn't the context it was written in so that's not a fair way to look at it.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Tables and spacer gifs don't necessarily use less Arc code than a simpler layout would. The table layout might even use a bit more if it requires more iteration, macro expansion and branching to render. There are special case macros in the html library for generating parts of the forum table that wouldn't be necessary otherwise. Also, the goal clearly was to make a website, because pg made a website, and here we all are. Once you put your MVP online it's valid to criticize decisions made for it in that context.