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So someone open-sources code they wrote, and the author decides to insult them for it? And as if being an ass on HN wasn't enough, he regurgitated it on his blo

by qeorge 17y ago

So someone open-sources code they wrote, and the author decides to insult them for it? And as if being an ass on HN wasn't enough, he regurgitated it on his blog and then resubmitted that to HN? Ugh. Parsing malformed HTML is a nightmare, I'm impressed the programmer even gave it a shot.

natrius 17y ago
You're not supposed to give it a shot. That's the point.
- qeorge 17y ago
  I fundamentally disagree with this. If an existing solution exists, one shouldn't try to create his own? Then why did Linus build Linux? There's also a lot to be said for curiosity. I'm currently building an email client in my spare time, not because I don't think there are plenty of great ones already, but because I'm interested in programming with IMAP. I'll probably open source the final result, and I don't think there's anything wrong with doing so.
  - natrius 17y ago
    If you want to build an HTML parser, go ahead. From the comments in the code, it's clear that ESR tried to parse HTML because he thought he had to, not because he wanted to.
    - qeorge 17y ago
      Fair enough, good point.