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The main thesis seems to be that the user should be able to press View Source and understand what's going on. I agree, at least for web sites. For web apps, at

by andai 3y ago

The main thesis seems to be that the user should be able to press View Source and understand what's going on. I agree, at least for web sites. For web apps, at least anything over 50 lines, you are probably going to want to use a typed language. (Well, you could technically use .js with TypeScript compiler and type annotations in special comments but I did not find that very pleasant.) I used to be really big on this, though (and it makes me sad that these days most sites are 1 big unreadable line of HTML). In fact, I find a beauty and elegance in shipping the whole thing as a single HTML file with no dependencies (1 network request!), though I did eventually make a "build system" (my build system is cat) so I could have a sane editing experience. Boom, self-contained portable software in 1 human-readable file! Along the same lines, I think the coolest thing about web development is that you can make your first (interactive!) programs with Notepad and whatever browser ships with your machine. (Just drag the HTML file onto the browser!) It's magic! Edit: Just found an unexpected benefit of self-contained HTML: makes your software immune to bit rot. I tried loading an old project of mine on Web Archive but it hadn't archived the external JS file! Sad! Meanwhile, this one loads fine because all the JS is in the HTML! Winning! https://web.archive.org/web/20210508133239id_/https://andai.tv/springs/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210508133239id_/https://andai.... This is my homage to the old SodaPlay Constructor. (Never made an editor, sorry!) Feel free to view-source!

mlhpdx 3y ago
I don’t believe the author is advocating for single file systems, but I don’t want to speak for them.
- andai 3y ago
  Sorry, I didn't mean to imply this! My original comment had "I even go so far as to..." but it got lost somewhere in editing.
xg15 3y ago
I'm sceptical on this: by now there are lots of ways to "peek behind the curtain" in the developer panel: we have the DOM view, network tab, heap view, built-in javascript prettifyer. Sure, "view source" is still important, but I'd question if its importance is still as absolute as the HTMX people make it out to be.
- andai 3y ago
  I wanted to show people how easy it is to do cool things with a computer, how low the barrier to entry is.* One HTML file. Your OS's built in text editor and browser. You look at the code and you can see it there in front of you! It isn't obfuscated. It isn't even minified. Everything is right there, all together. You can just save the file and drag it onto your browser. No Git, no zipped project folders. No build system! No server! (No MIME type errors!). The "frictionlessness" of lowering the "activation energy", is not just nice for beginners... heck, it's nice for me! I can just download this file from Wayback Machine and continue hacking on it! It does, of course, limit you to very small codebases, but that's what I like! Many small projects. The spring physics creature linked above is about 300 LOC total. The ASCII bonsai tree is ~100: https://web.archive.org/web/20220823113003id_/https://andai.tv/grow/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220823113003id_/https://andai.... *In terms of tooling/setup, at least! Learning to code is another matter... (Neither of these projects are very readable for a beginner though, so that aspect needs some work.)
chriswarbo 3y ago
> In fact, I find a beauty and elegance in shipping the whole thing as a single HTML file with no dependencies (1 network request!) This is even easier now we have 'data:' URLs. It's also useful for avoiding problems on file:// URLs, which don't even need a HTTP server.
andai 3y ago
Edit: There is a proposal to extend JavaScript with type annotations, which would allow ("a reasonably large subset") of TypeScript to run directly in the browser. Yay! https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations

by andai 3y ago

mlhpdx 3y ago

I don’t believe the author is advocating for single file systems, but I don’t want to speak for them.

andai 3y ago
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply this! My original comment had "I even go so far as to..." but it got lost somewhere in editing.

xg15 3y ago

I'm sceptical on this: by now there are lots of ways to "peek behind the curtain" in the developer panel: we have the DOM view, network tab, heap view, built-in javascript prettifyer. Sure, "view source" is still important, but I'd question if its importance is still as absolute as the HTMX people make it out to be.

andai 3y ago
I wanted to show people how easy it is to do cool things with a computer, how low the barrier to entry is.* One HTML file. Your OS's built in text editor and browser. You look at the code and you can see it there in front of you! It isn't obfuscated. It isn't even minified. Everything is right there, all together. You can just save the file and drag it onto your browser. No Git, no zipped project folders. No build system! No server! (No MIME type errors!). The "frictionlessness" of lowering the "activation energy", is not just nice for beginners... heck, it's nice for me! I can just download this file from Wayback Machine and continue hacking on it! It does, of course, limit you to very small codebases, but that's what I like! Many small projects. The spring physics creature linked above is about 300 LOC total. The ASCII bonsai tree is ~100: https://web.archive.org/web/20220823113003id_/https://andai.tv/grow/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220823113003id_/https://andai.... *In terms of tooling/setup, at least! Learning to code is another matter... (Neither of these projects are very readable for a beginner though, so that aspect needs some work.)

chriswarbo 3y ago

> In fact, I find a beauty and elegance in shipping the whole thing as a single HTML file with no dependencies (1 network request!) This is even easier now we have 'data:' URLs. It's also useful for avoiding problems on file:// URLs, which don't even need a HTTP server.

andai 3y ago

Edit: There is a proposal to extend JavaScript with type annotations, which would allow ("a reasonably large subset") of TypeScript to run directly in the browser. Yay! https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations