4 ms·

I will add to the hundreds of comments.. Whatever happened to the thin waist of the wasp, in interfaces.. So, we design a system, for showing and interacting wi

I will add to the hundreds of comments.. Whatever happened to the thin waist of the wasp, in interfaces.. So, we design a system, for showing and interacting with data over networks. When we start with this, the outset is defining say a character set of 12-20-26 alphabet letters. Already with that, you could exchange information; at least the greeks could. We also managed to design the gopher protocol, the early world wide web protocol, telnet, and (god forbid) X-Windows. Early www already had some complications: Support for images, and form controls. A lot of these things were possible to do, even on a commodore 64. But still, take a look at the monstrosities we have built since, presumably to serve the same purpose.. It now takes an effort apparently bigger than that required to land a controlled drone on the moon, to deliver a working/full WEB BROWSER..? An application supposedly intended to allow you to browse pages of mixed text and images, require approximately --two-- (nah, one?) full virtual OS environments to function, a turing-complete sub-language, and is more complicated to build than the OS's that host it.. I often wonder if all that was really necessary. It looks to me like we have made the 'interface' the most complex part of it all, leading to almost everybody just piggy-backing on the chrome investment (or what one chooses to call it.. It is an MS-like market control mechanism is what it is).

voshond 2y ago
Because browsers don’t just browse these days, they do all the heavy lifting and not just for the nerds like us, but actually make it accessible to the normies. They do all the compliance work to all the standards too. There is no standards of sending something to space yet. I do so much in my browser these days, things I had to have 15 applications for back in the ie days.
- astrobe_ 2y ago
  You still have 15 applications, it's just that now they appear as tabs in your browser - which is actually a virtual machine in disguise. I see the news in the front page of HN: Edge, Firefox, Ladybird. The problems with privacy, funding, etc. will remain as long as one refuses to do an "AT&T" on the Web, that is delegate the non-essential browser functions (text, image display) to other applications (e.g. VLC for video, audio). With a strong emphasis on banning remote code execution (JS), the father of all evils. It may be convenient to call a coworker from Teams in your browser, but it is not a sane way to do it because we end up to where we are now: browser oligopoly. Convenience can be a trap; scammers and phishing use it all the time by including "direct" links. People are told again and again to know better and use their bookmarks instead.
  - Groxx 2y ago
    The kind of flexible dynamic delegation that'd need (outside extremely simplistic uses) really doesn't exist in any OS that I've seen. And it would have to be quite sophisticated, to resist abuses and ensure latency is as low as it needs to be. I'm not sure we'd be in any better place if that happened - browsers would be simpler, but OSes and those media players/plugin-able things would gain significantly more complexity to offset it. If your goal is to get rid of all the fancy stuff, then yeah - gopher still exists, all UX can be thrown out the window, it all exists today. But I don't think that'll go anywhere, except in extreme niches.
katzenversteher 2y ago
Well said, I feel the same. While I never used gopher I still remember e.g. the usenet vs. web forums. I mean being able to add images and stuff like that to discussions was helpful in many cases, I prefer the user experience of the usenet.
whutsurnaym 2y ago
It's one thing to make a rocket to take a human being to space. It's another thing entirely to make a "rocket" that will take a human being to space, or to school, or to work, or to the mall, or to the bank, or to church on sundays. And also it functions as a TV, a telephone, a radio, an encyclopedia, a games console, or anything else one can imagine. And then you wrap that up in a user interface that my grandmother can use without a NASA astronaut's level of training (YMMV).
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  And also backwards compatible forever and platform agnostic
- amelius 2y ago
  And it serves more cookies than my grandmother.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  The "thin waist" is a reference to IP (as in TCP/IP), and it's literally the thing that enables those uses. https://web.archive.org/web/20111108105207/https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2010/11/hourglass-london-ietf.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20111108105207/https://www.iab.o...
amelius 2y ago
The web specifications should have been written in Haskell with a test suite. From there, it should be just a matter of optimization. Still a big task, but completely doable in a package by package basis.
danjl 2y ago
If you just want to display pages of mixed text and images, it would be much easier. However, browsers are closer operating systems, capable of supporting rich desktop apps, without the antiquated desktop APIs. Browsers have more sophisticated security than desktop systems, and provide direct access to hardware resources like cameras, microphones and GPUs. In fact, webGPU would probably be considered a much better interface for GPUs than the desktop APIs like DirectX, WebGL, though maybe Vulkan is just as good. Browsers are also forming the basis for WASM development, though there are other deployment platforms, browsers are the biggest.
tshaddox 2y ago
> An application supposedly intended to allow you to browse pages of mixed text and images This has not been the intended scope of the World Wide Web for well over 20 years, so this is not a reasonable supposition to make. Of course, you are free to make claims about what the intent of the World Wide Web ought to be.
- account42 2y ago
  Intended by whom? Google?

voshond 2y ago

Because browsers don’t just browse these days, they do all the heavy lifting and not just for the nerds like us, but actually make it accessible to the normies. They do all the compliance work to all the standards too. There is no standards of sending something to space yet. I do so much in my browser these days, things I had to have 15 applications for back in the ie days.

astrobe_ 2y ago
You still have 15 applications, it's just that now they appear as tabs in your browser - which is actually a virtual machine in disguise. I see the news in the front page of HN: Edge, Firefox, Ladybird. The problems with privacy, funding, etc. will remain as long as one refuses to do an "AT&T" on the Web, that is delegate the non-essential browser functions (text, image display) to other applications (e.g. VLC for video, audio). With a strong emphasis on banning remote code execution (JS), the father of all evils. It may be convenient to call a coworker from Teams in your browser, but it is not a sane way to do it because we end up to where we are now: browser oligopoly. Convenience can be a trap; scammers and phishing use it all the time by including "direct" links. People are told again and again to know better and use their bookmarks instead.
- Groxx 2y ago
  The kind of flexible dynamic delegation that'd need (outside extremely simplistic uses) really doesn't exist in any OS that I've seen. And it would have to be quite sophisticated, to resist abuses and ensure latency is as low as it needs to be. I'm not sure we'd be in any better place if that happened - browsers would be simpler, but OSes and those media players/plugin-able things would gain significantly more complexity to offset it. If your goal is to get rid of all the fancy stuff, then yeah - gopher still exists, all UX can be thrown out the window, it all exists today. But I don't think that'll go anywhere, except in extreme niches.

katzenversteher 2y ago

Well said, I feel the same. While I never used gopher I still remember e.g. the usenet vs. web forums. I mean being able to add images and stuff like that to discussions was helpful in many cases, I prefer the user experience of the usenet.

whutsurnaym 2y ago

It's one thing to make a rocket to take a human being to space. It's another thing entirely to make a "rocket" that will take a human being to space, or to school, or to work, or to the mall, or to the bank, or to church on sundays. And also it functions as a TV, a telephone, a radio, an encyclopedia, a games console, or anything else one can imagine. And then you wrap that up in a user interface that my grandmother can use without a NASA astronaut's level of training (YMMV).

DiggyJohnson 2y ago
And also backwards compatible forever and platform agnostic
amelius 2y ago
And it serves more cookies than my grandmother.
yencabulator 2y ago
The "thin waist" is a reference to IP (as in TCP/IP), and it's literally the thing that enables those uses. https://web.archive.org/web/20111108105207/https://www.iab.org/wp-content/IAB-uploads/2010/11/hourglass-london-ietf.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20111108105207/https://www.iab.o...

amelius 2y ago

The web specifications should have been written in Haskell with a test suite. From there, it should be just a matter of optimization. Still a big task, but completely doable in a package by package basis.

danjl 2y ago

If you just want to display pages of mixed text and images, it would be much easier. However, browsers are closer operating systems, capable of supporting rich desktop apps, without the antiquated desktop APIs. Browsers have more sophisticated security than desktop systems, and provide direct access to hardware resources like cameras, microphones and GPUs. In fact, webGPU would probably be considered a much better interface for GPUs than the desktop APIs like DirectX, WebGL, though maybe Vulkan is just as good. Browsers are also forming the basis for WASM development, though there are other deployment platforms, browsers are the biggest.

tshaddox 2y ago

> An application supposedly intended to allow you to browse pages of mixed text and images This has not been the intended scope of the World Wide Web for well over 20 years, so this is not a reasonable supposition to make. Of course, you are free to make claims about what the intent of the World Wide Web ought to be.

account42 2y ago
Intended by whom? Google?