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It's a nice dream, but even if you had that power to go back and time you'd probably just make other mistakes. There isn't an intelligence capable of designing

It's a nice dream, but even if you had that power to go back and time you'd probably just make other mistakes. There isn't an intelligence capable of designing big open standards like the web, rather they only move forward by natural selection, much like terrestrial life has. In the end I think we've gotten some pretty remarkable things this way, remember before the web there was no such thing as cross-platform, instantly-available globally, and accessible to any person with any disability multimedia. Few people seem to recognize how much of an accomplishment this is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E

yuhong 13y ago
Yea, that is why WHATWG HTML is a "living standard". In fact, I am thinking that even the "HTML5" buzzword is a misnomer.
stoptalkingshit 13y ago
Nope. What has happened is a remarkable idea has fallen into the hands of baboons, who promptly bungled the implementation completely. And now we have this myth that it has to "evolve" because for years some people missed the OBVIOUS. Welcome to the future of shamanistic computing: blood-cooled CPUs, integrated ouija boards, USB incense burners...
clarry 13y ago
> There isn't an intelligence capable of designing big open standards like the web I think the problem here is big. How about small standards with a limited scope? I don't want these huge standards that take millions of lines of code to implement.
- dasil003 13y ago
  That's exactly what the web is! It's made up of hundreds of such small standards plus thousands of ad-hoc implementations, solutions, and deep supporting infrastructure. Again, the point is it's too big to be designed.
  - clarry 13y ago
    Yes exactly, too big is exactly what it is. And my point was that it could be small. In practice of course we'd never even agree on a definition of what the web is or what it should be, so even the idea of designing a compact standard for it is hopeless.

yuhong 13y ago

Yea, that is why WHATWG HTML is a "living standard". In fact, I am thinking that even the "HTML5" buzzword is a misnomer.

stoptalkingshit 13y ago

Nope. What has happened is a remarkable idea has fallen into the hands of baboons, who promptly bungled the implementation completely. And now we have this myth that it has to "evolve" because for years some people missed the OBVIOUS. Welcome to the future of shamanistic computing: blood-cooled CPUs, integrated ouija boards, USB incense burners...

clarry 13y ago

> There isn't an intelligence capable of designing big open standards like the web I think the problem here is big. How about small standards with a limited scope? I don't want these huge standards that take millions of lines of code to implement.

dasil003 13y ago
That's exactly what the web is! It's made up of hundreds of such small standards plus thousands of ad-hoc implementations, solutions, and deep supporting infrastructure. Again, the point is it's too big to be designed.
- clarry 13y ago
  Yes exactly, too big is exactly what it is. And my point was that it could be small. In practice of course we'd never even agree on a definition of what the web is or what it should be, so even the idea of designing a compact standard for it is hopeless.