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Humans, as of now (and as far as I'm aware, being outside the AI labs at the big tech companies and DARPA) have agency, and so are in a unique position to take

Humans, as of now (and as far as I'm aware, being outside the AI labs at the big tech companies and DARPA) have agency, and so are in a unique position to take advantage of the uniform interface of REST/the web in a flexible manner. I wrote an article about this on the intercooler.js blog, entitled "HATEOAS is for Humans": https://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.html https://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.h... The idea that metadata can be provided and utilized in a similar manner doesn't strike me as realistic. If it is code consuming the metadata, the flexibility of the uniform interface is wasted. If it is a human consuming the metadata, they want something nice like HTML. For code, why not just a structured and standardized JSON API? This appears to be what we have settled on, and I don't see any big advantage extending REST-ful web concepts on top of it. The machines just ignore all that meta-data crap.

netcan 5y ago
>> why not just a structured and standardized JSON API? So in this version of the idea... because structuring data requires work. Unstandardized data exists already. Some of it is already SQLITE. A lot of the rest is in other SQLs, and that might be a smaller bridge. Author claims (if I'm understanding correctly) that a static website could easily query sqlites over HTTP, and bam, web 3.0. Honestly, it's hard for me to think/discuss these ideas without examples, even if contrived. What kind of websites would be built this way? What data will they be querying? A web app that uses photos and address books on the users phone? An alternative UI for news.yc?
- mycall 5y ago
  > What kind of websites would be built this way? https://ansiwave.net https://ansiwave.net
  - netcan 5y ago
    What sqlites would it query, and to what ends? Just trying to get a grasp on OPs "vision."
simonw 5y ago
> why not just a structured and standardized JSON API? The word "just" is doing a lot of work there! Getting everyone to use the same standardized JSON API format turns out to be incredibly difficult. This is why I'm a big fan of the idea of using SQL as an API language to redefine the data into the output format that you need, see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29900403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29900403

netcan 5y ago

>> why not just a structured and standardized JSON API? So in this version of the idea... because structuring data requires work. Unstandardized data exists already. Some of it is already SQLITE. A lot of the rest is in other SQLs, and that might be a smaller bridge. Author claims (if I'm understanding correctly) that a static website could easily query sqlites over HTTP, and bam, web 3.0. Honestly, it's hard for me to think/discuss these ideas without examples, even if contrived. What kind of websites would be built this way? What data will they be querying? A web app that uses photos and address books on the users phone? An alternative UI for news.yc?

mycall 5y ago
> What kind of websites would be built this way? https://ansiwave.net https://ansiwave.net
- netcan 5y ago
  What sqlites would it query, and to what ends? Just trying to get a grasp on OPs "vision."

simonw 5y ago

> why not just a structured and standardized JSON API? The word "just" is doing a lot of work there! Getting everyone to use the same standardized JSON API format turns out to be incredibly difficult. This is why I'm a big fan of the idea of using SQL as an API language to redefine the data into the output format that you need, see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29900403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29900403