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> Too much CSS, possibly. > Too much cognitive load, definitely, I do think so. That's a good way to put it. AFter reading those two statements, it started to

by sbf501 4y ago

> Too much CSS, possibly. > Too much cognitive load, definitely, I do think so. That's a good way to put it. AFter reading those two statements, it started to occur to me that a well-organized concept can have breadth, but not tax one's cognitive facilities. I think of programming languages. They ALL started simple, but then accrete. Look at K&R's original C, then look at C2x. The cognitive load increases. Like you said, "require a historical knowledge"[1]. Do you think this is inevitable? I tend to think languages need major overhauls and backwards-compatibility breaking in order to become "cleaner". Intel & the PC maintained massive backwards compatibility, but parts of the architecture are a nightmare (like the intel instruction decoder); whereas early Apple tossed backwards compatibility routinely for better tech (now they do it for profit, I'm afraid). Same with Windows v. (early) MacOS. When was the last time there was a major shift away from backwards compatibility in HTML/CSS? I don't think there has been... has there? [1] (there was a post the other day on HN where a programmer was talking about a text editor and how he used nonprintable unicode to indicate new pages: this young cub had apparently never heard of the first 31 characters of ASCII!!)

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> When was the last time there was a major shift away from backwards compatibility in HTML/CSS? I don't think there has been... has there? The W3Schools page for <frame> says it is not supported in HTML 5 [0]. The MDN page for it warns that it may be removed from browsers at any time, though the compatibility table says it's still supported in every browser. [0] https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_frame.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_frame.asp [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/frame https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/fr...
thfuran 4y ago
>Do you think this is inevitable? I tend to think languages need major overhauls and backwards-compatibility breaking in order to become "cleaner". I think it's pretty much inevitable when use case and/or feature set significantly changes but there's not a comprehensive overhaul of existing work. I think programming languages, code bases, and even cities all have basically the same issue: if the goal or the environment has significantly changed after a lot of work has been done, you're likely to end up with a final product that isn't what you'd choose if you were starting today.
alwillis 4y ago
When was the last time there was a major shift away from backwards compatibility in HTML/CSS? I don't think there has been... has there? Yes; in the early 2000’s, the W3C created XHTML 2.0 [1], a strict XML-based re-implementation of HTML. Because it dropped backwards compatibility to HTML4, it created a lot of backlash that (eventually) resulted in the browser vendors forming their own standards organization (WHATWG) which lead to the creation of HTML5. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML#XHTML_2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML#XHTML_2.0

by sbf501 4y ago

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago

> When was the last time there was a major shift away from backwards compatibility in HTML/CSS? I don't think there has been... has there? The W3Schools page for <frame> says it is not supported in HTML 5 [0]. The MDN page for it warns that it may be removed from browsers at any time, though the compatibility table says it's still supported in every browser. [0] https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_frame.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_frame.asp [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/frame https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/fr...

thfuran 4y ago

>Do you think this is inevitable? I tend to think languages need major overhauls and backwards-compatibility breaking in order to become "cleaner". I think it's pretty much inevitable when use case and/or feature set significantly changes but there's not a comprehensive overhaul of existing work. I think programming languages, code bases, and even cities all have basically the same issue: if the goal or the environment has significantly changed after a lot of work has been done, you're likely to end up with a final product that isn't what you'd choose if you were starting today.

alwillis 4y ago

When was the last time there was a major shift away from backwards compatibility in HTML/CSS? I don't think there has been... has there? Yes; in the early 2000’s, the W3C created XHTML 2.0 [1], a strict XML-based re-implementation of HTML. Because it dropped backwards compatibility to HTML4, it created a lot of backlash that (eventually) resulted in the browser vendors forming their own standards organization (WHATWG) which lead to the creation of HTML5. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML#XHTML_2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML#XHTML_2.0