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I love how forgiving the web is. These days you can get strictness with typescript and the like, which is great for businesses and work. But the forgiving natur

I love how forgiving the web is. These days you can get strictness with typescript and the like, which is great for businesses and work. But the forgiving nature of html and css and even javascript has contributed to so much adoption. Plus grew one of the most important things in an platform the ecosystem itself. Seeing rust slow down with piles of crates and fall into the same issues, js and npm has, perhaps its not a language problem but a ecosystem size problem. Larger user base === larger problems If you really want pedantic strictness and perfection, native applications are the place to work. But it isnt always better. And the web is fast, like really fast in rendering highly markedup text layouts. Just because everyone uses a frontend framework for “maintainability” doesn’t mean the engine is slow.

highwaylights 2y ago
I do appreciate all of what you’ve said but the author of this piece is actually mistaken. The browser isn’t actually processing the string “chucknorris” and forgiving incorrectly provided hex codes, which is a common misconception. What actually happens within the rendering pipeline is that the full literal string (in this case, “chucknorris”) is parsed, and the browser attempts to render the tag in the colour of blood in hope of receiving the mercy that Chuck Norris doesn’t have. As said, it’s a common misconception and I’m glad I could clear it up before he reads this.
- afandian 2y ago
  And, inevitably, the next generation [0] comes along and use the colour without having any idea of who Chuck Norris even was. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461264
  - SamBam 2y ago
    This will keep His spirit alive, like an Old God who is fed by our unknowing adherence to traditions, hanging glass baubles on Christmas trees in a pale reflection of hanging the heads of our sacrificed enemies, yet still providing a drop of sustenance to the sleeping Gods.
  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - herbcso 2y ago
      I'm sorry, but you're missing the spirit of this. It's a post about the spirit of Chuck Norris as represented as a concept on the Internet rather than the actual person. Yes, the person may be reprehensible, however that is not what's being addressed here, rather it's the idea of the concept of Chuck Norris. And that's the whole spirit of this post in the first place. There is a certain sort of beauty to being so forgiving. The fact that HTML rendering can deal with this level of inanity is frankly an awesome aspect of the web that has enabled loads of creativity by non-programmer types (speaking as a programmer here). I think sometimes we need to pull our heads out of our collective asses and allow for this sort of thing to permit beautiful things to happen.
      - DonHopkins 2y ago
        [flagged]
lenkite 2y ago
I don't love how forgiving the web is. We would all spend far less time debugging painful HTML/CSS/JS issues if the web was stricter. I think several billion man-hours would have been saved and human civilization probably more advanced. Also health-insurance costs would be reduced and web-developer lifespan likely increased thanks to less blood pressure. (Don't think the Rust analogy really holds. npm is worse than Cargo. Of-course things could be better - a blessed standard extensions library: `stdx` with a quarterly update cycle and the crate nightmare will be solved)
- interactivecode 2y ago
  Having worked on large web project and large swift macos projects, Ive spend about equal time learning the painful details and ins and outs of platform specific quirks and issues. The only difference is I guess that the web gives you the option of avoiding types. While in swift there is no opting out
ivanjermakov 2y ago
> I love how forgiving the web is I have completely opposite opinion. This "forgiveness" comes at a cost: - unexpected behavior instead of an early crash - hard to treat the platform seriously for mission critical tasks - makes it common to have many ways to solve the same problem
- guax 2y ago
  Exactly, no bank or payment system would ever offer services on the internet. How can a store operate in this environment! Never gonna happen. Impossible for mission critical tasks.
  - latexr 2y ago
    The person you’re replying to said “hard to consider”, they didn’t say it was “impossible for”. There is an infinity of difference. Presumably banks and payments systems aren’t using web technologies (one would hope) to do the actual payments and transfers. They use them as an interface to other systems in other languages. And most of them tend to push you hard to use their apps, bank websites are often subpar.
  - specialist 2y ago
    Pigs can fly, given enough thrust.
gizmo 2y ago
The web solved distribution and that's why the web won. Click on a link see a page. Click on a link open an app. The alternative was downloading a .exe from questionable origin over an unreliable dial-up connection. App stores have become hugely successful since and if Microsoft had invented the mobile app model in the 90s (sandboxing and 1 click install process, like flatpak on linux) that model would probably have won instead of the web app. The web was incredibly buggy and horrifically slow for 2 decades, but there was no alternative so it won by default.
tuyiown 2y ago
> And the web is fast, like really fast in rendering highly markedup text layouts. Just because everyone uses a frontend framework for “maintainability” doesn’t mean the engine is slow. Yes and no. Many many non trivial things becomes very slow if you stick naïve ways with larger amounts for visual elements. It bites hard, because even naïve ways of doing things require quite some time for complex UIs, and very often, the roadblock requires to redo most if not all of the work.

highwaylights 2y ago

I do appreciate all of what you’ve said but the author of this piece is actually mistaken. The browser isn’t actually processing the string “chucknorris” and forgiving incorrectly provided hex codes, which is a common misconception. What actually happens within the rendering pipeline is that the full literal string (in this case, “chucknorris”) is parsed, and the browser attempts to render the tag in the colour of blood in hope of receiving the mercy that Chuck Norris doesn’t have. As said, it’s a common misconception and I’m glad I could clear it up before he reads this.

afandian 2y ago
And, inevitably, the next generation [0] comes along and use the colour without having any idea of who Chuck Norris even was. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42461264
- SamBam 2y ago
  This will keep His spirit alive, like an Old God who is fed by our unknowing adherence to traditions, hanging glass baubles on Christmas trees in a pale reflection of hanging the heads of our sacrificed enemies, yet still providing a drop of sustenance to the sleeping Gods.
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - herbcso 2y ago
    I'm sorry, but you're missing the spirit of this. It's a post about the spirit of Chuck Norris as represented as a concept on the Internet rather than the actual person. Yes, the person may be reprehensible, however that is not what's being addressed here, rather it's the idea of the concept of Chuck Norris. And that's the whole spirit of this post in the first place. There is a certain sort of beauty to being so forgiving. The fact that HTML rendering can deal with this level of inanity is frankly an awesome aspect of the web that has enabled loads of creativity by non-programmer types (speaking as a programmer here). I think sometimes we need to pull our heads out of our collective asses and allow for this sort of thing to permit beautiful things to happen.
    - DonHopkins 2y ago
      [flagged]

lenkite 2y ago

I don't love how forgiving the web is. We would all spend far less time debugging painful HTML/CSS/JS issues if the web was stricter. I think several billion man-hours would have been saved and human civilization probably more advanced. Also health-insurance costs would be reduced and web-developer lifespan likely increased thanks to less blood pressure. (Don't think the Rust analogy really holds. npm is worse than Cargo. Of-course things could be better - a blessed standard extensions library: `stdx` with a quarterly update cycle and the crate nightmare will be solved)

interactivecode 2y ago
Having worked on large web project and large swift macos projects, Ive spend about equal time learning the painful details and ins and outs of platform specific quirks and issues. The only difference is I guess that the web gives you the option of avoiding types. While in swift there is no opting out

ivanjermakov 2y ago

> I love how forgiving the web is I have completely opposite opinion. This "forgiveness" comes at a cost: - unexpected behavior instead of an early crash - hard to treat the platform seriously for mission critical tasks - makes it common to have many ways to solve the same problem

guax 2y ago
Exactly, no bank or payment system would ever offer services on the internet. How can a store operate in this environment! Never gonna happen. Impossible for mission critical tasks.
- latexr 2y ago
  The person you’re replying to said “hard to consider”, they didn’t say it was “impossible for”. There is an infinity of difference. Presumably banks and payments systems aren’t using web technologies (one would hope) to do the actual payments and transfers. They use them as an interface to other systems in other languages. And most of them tend to push you hard to use their apps, bank websites are often subpar.
- specialist 2y ago
  Pigs can fly, given enough thrust.

gizmo 2y ago

The web solved distribution and that's why the web won. Click on a link see a page. Click on a link open an app. The alternative was downloading a .exe from questionable origin over an unreliable dial-up connection. App stores have become hugely successful since and if Microsoft had invented the mobile app model in the 90s (sandboxing and 1 click install process, like flatpak on linux) that model would probably have won instead of the web app. The web was incredibly buggy and horrifically slow for 2 decades, but there was no alternative so it won by default.

tuyiown 2y ago

> And the web is fast, like really fast in rendering highly markedup text layouts. Just because everyone uses a frontend framework for “maintainability” doesn’t mean the engine is slow. Yes and no. Many many non trivial things becomes very slow if you stick naïve ways with larger amounts for visual elements. It bites hard, because even naïve ways of doing things require quite some time for complex UIs, and very often, the roadblock requires to redo most if not all of the work.