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We can argue about whether or not "Be liberal in what you accept" is a well-intentioned but utterly terrible engineering principle overall, but surely it is bey
by tragomaskhalos 5y ago
We can argue about whether or not "Be liberal in what you accept" is a well-intentioned but utterly terrible engineering principle overall, but surely it is beyond debate that when applied to HTML it has been incalculably costly over the years.
- heavenlyblue 5y agoAnd it also allowed the web to grow tremendously and in a decentralised fashion. Today’s web is more formalised but we have walled gardens everywhere. What is better?
- ninju 5y agoI don't see how supporting malformed documents has allowed the internet to grow in a decentralized fashion? The decision of some website/internet property owners to decide to 'wall' themselves off has nothing to do with the desire to create well formed documents. They've done this walling off already
- heavenlyblue 5y agoNobody desires to to create well formed documents :) it’s just a rudiment of the technology we use, not the main objective
- lloydatkinson 5y agoI've always thought this was a terrible quote that has led people to create half arsed contracts, bad validation, and all round buggy software. "Be strict in what you accept and what you return." is a better methodology. You're right, look at what a dumpster fire HTML and general HTTP servers are under the hood as a result of building protocols on top of sloppy text formats.