alt Hacker NewsThe web runs on tolerance
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>You can make your HTML as malformed as you like and the web-browser will do its best to display the page for you. I love the todepond website, but the source-code makes me break out in a cold sweat. Yet it renders just fine.
It renders just fine because it is syntactically valid HTML. HTML is not and is not supposed to be XML. It is originally an SGML application described by its Document Type Definition and SGML Declaration (https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/HTML4.decl). HTML uses and has always used many SGML features not found in XML, such as tag inference (<html><title> becomes <html><head><title>, <p><p> becomes <p></p><p>). Some of these, like SHORTTAG, were never even implemented in browsers. These days HTML is defined by the WHATWG ‘living standard’, which largely just restates the SGML DTD rules in plain language.
(Okay, https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.todepond.... shows a few minor errors, bet you couldn’t spot them.)
This is independent of the fact that browsers do try their best to render objectively broken markup, usually by ignoring the broken parts. In principle they could do the same with XHTML, but someone decided it would be ‘helpful’ to show the parser’s diagnostic output instead, and the rest is history.
> History shows us that all progress comes from the meeting of diverse people, with different ideas, and different backgrounds.
Maybe don't discard people as "hateful" just because you don't agree with their ideas then.
Well that took a surprising turn. (1) Friendly dunking on someone named todepond. (2) Interesting ideas about xhtml... looks like I'm going to learn something here. (3) Ideological conflict.
Is there a backstory here? Or is this just random venting?
Anyways, I reject the idea that loose programming is more "tolerant" in any sociological manner.
What a bizarre bait and switch. Starts talking about browsers allowing malformed HTML and uses that to draw conclusions about allowing certain types of people.
But in contrast, web communities run on moderation, i.e. a sort of intolerance of bad content. The lesson is that technical issues and social issues really don't mix. You can't conclude anything from one versus the other. Case in point, cryptocurrency was supposed to be the anarchist's dream, but now it's being adopted by some central banks.
The web is built on standards/RFCs (laws) + implementation and enforcement of those standards (executive). The citizens of the web are just as apathetic/short-sighted as your average voter and will embrace the walled garden (authoritarianism) if it fits their current narrative.
This guy lost me when he started talking about diversity issues instead of tech. I couldn't care less about the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the person(s) who created the hardware or software that I use. Does it work? Is it easy to understand and use? These are the things I am interested in.
I am reminded of an early cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer saying 'On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!'
My tolerance for online ads is zero. Do I break the web?
XML exists so infinity migration should be allowed?
>But the web works because browsers are tolerant.
This is more of an artifact of needing to be compatibile with other browsers and more of an arbitrary decision where once one browser starts allowing all sorts of input than everyone else may start needing to if content starts relying on it.
>But the world is better for it.
It makes compatibility between different browsers more complicated due to adding a ton of edge cases that all need to be handled the same way as opposed to following a standardized way of writing pages.
>The user experience of XHTML was rubbish. The disrespect shown to anyone for deviating from the One True Path made it an unwelcoming and unfriendly place.
The UX could be improved along with developer tools making it harder to mess up and easy to spot mistakes. For example many internet forums have similar requirements of needing to match formatting tags and those have work successfully despite being strict. I think the real issue was that XHTML was introduced too late. Trying to fix things in a decentralized ecosystem is an extremely big uphill battle. If you don't fix things at the very start things can grow out of one's control.
>The beauty of the web as a platform is that it isn't a monoculture.
There is also beauty in that there is a standard that everyone can follow to ensure that pages written can work the same in all browsers.
>I cannot fathom how someone can look at the beautiful diversity of the web and then declare that only pure-blooded people should live in a particular city.
The way people interact with each other in the real world is very different than the way browsers render pages. I do not think such a comparison makes any sense to make.
>How do you acknowledge that the father of the computer was a homosexual, brutally bullied by the state into suicide, and then fund groups that want to deny gay people fundamental human rights?
Just because someone was in the right place at the right time does not mean that they are of perfect moral character. It's similar to the quote to never meet your heros. The people you may look up to in regards to some achievement may not be the best of character and keeping a distance from them may be the best else your opinion of them may be tarnished.
>When you throw slurs and denigrate people's pronouns, your ignorance and hatred does a disservice to history and drives away the next generation of talent.
I disagree that this happens. At best it discourages a subset of the next generation, but it is not a subset I would like to work with. These kinds of people could also drive away other potential talent too. Simply increasing the number as opposed to trying to build a positive, healthy, culture and growing it I don't think is the best idea.
>This isn't an academic argument over big-endian or little-endian.
It could be about these 2 choices. For example x86 processors were able to be extremely successful despite not being tolerant between big and little endian. By picking a single one and running with it, it's been able to help unify computing on little endian.
This article is a prime example of false equivalence. The cool thing about false equivalence is that, when you throw the laws of logic out of the window, you can prove pretty much everything. Anyone can write a specular article proving that intolerance is actually good since very stricter programming languages (like Rust and its borrow checker) are inherently safer.
Who, exactly, is this guy angry at?
>The disrespect shown to anyone for deviating from the One True Path made it an unwelcoming and unfriendly place.
Standards are the One True Path. That's why they are standards. I see no disrespect in enforcing them. Even more - the ones not following them and forcing users to burn additional CPU cycles because browsers have to assume they may be parsing crap are the disrespectful ones. Come on, it's not that hard, especially with help of IDEs.
Postel's Law was one of those Great Mistakes of computing, alongside null pointers, fork(2), and well, C in general. Conform to the spec or be in error. If you allow for sloppiness, you create a problem because different implementations will tolerate different kinds of sloppiness, yielding incompatibilities and horrors like "quirks mode".
XHTML tried to rein this in but by then the cat was out of the bag, and every Tom, Dick, and Mary who was trying to learn HTML was used to the mire tolerant behavior.
When I finished reading it I thought it was an anti-Trump piece, but the author also wrote: "That's why it baffles me that some prominent technologists embrace hateful ideologies.". Was Trump a techie too? He must have been behind the creation of JS.
"The ARM processor which powers the modern world was co-designed by a trans woman." This is not factually correct. Roger Wilson was one of the designers of the processor, but he didn't transition to become Sophie Wilson until 9 years after the first release of ARM1 according to Wikipedia.
Cherry picking examples from science, technology or other fields to support an ideology isn't going to attract external supporters to that ideology but to make the bias stronger for the people who already believe in that ideology. Also, I rather read more "hacker news" and less ideological ramblings.
Postel was wrong, and it's got nothing to do with tolerance of other people, and everything with solid engineering (or encouraging the absence thereof). It mattered for rapid adoption, it is the curse of any stable system.
But if we must make stretched analogies, I'll give you instead "The Standard You Walk Past" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_TfZdIhIgg
It's making a pretty compelling case that keeping standards matters, "anything goes" is a bad idea, and it does all that in the name of tolerance towards other humans.
Dude.
HTML4 era was full of parser hacks. Increasingly more and more parser hacks.
XHTML tried to solve that, and make HTML parsing more acessible to everyone. It's not about rigor, it's about making it simpler.
HTML5 goes in the other direction. It formalized all those hacks into very, very strict parsing rules. It's super strict and specific, to the point that only companies with large resources can realistically invest in a proper HTML5 engine.
So, the metaphor does not hold.
You actually don't need a technical-aspect analogue to advocate for better, more inclusive human behavior. It's much better if you don't rely on those. People should not need a spec as a mirror to understand that.
This author needs to either be specific about who and what they're talking about or not bother. I don't have the context to understand their specific complaints and I'm not motivated to seek it out.
I mean no offense but comparing fault tolerance to being tolerant with other people only works because it’s the same word that’s used for both meanings. But that has absolutely nothing to do.
If it weren’t the case, you’d argue that people pushing XHTML were intolerant bastards.
The right-wing extremism we now have in the US is the expected knee-jerk reaction to the left-wing extremism that came before it.
In both cases there's a few true believers and a lot of opportunists who use the cause as a way to further their own agenda. It happened with the left (the master branch rename being the stupidest example), it's now happening in the right, with big words and performative actions such as ICE raids while the root cause of the problem is not addressed (industries reliant on large-scale illegal immigrant labor are left alone).
The right answer is somewhere in the middle of the two camps. Unfortunately until then people suffer on both sides while opportunists use the conflict for their own interests.
Just imagine if financial software would run on tolerance. Or medical software. Or software controlling planes, trains or nuclear power plants.
What the web runs on is freedom, the freedom to express and disseminate any information one pleases with impunity. That prominent figureheads embrace the hateful ideologies that you speak of is merely a tide of the current times, and will change as soon as they become unpopular, just as they had quit embracing this "tolerance" which was in full force a few years prior. Because they are not about a hate of people, but hate of freedom: hate is merely a pretense, a convenient vehicle through which freedoms can be taken. I think freedom is the most important thing worth fighting for, and you had my support up until now. But then you go on to say that those outside your own window of ideology have no place here. It's much the same methods that the people you complain of employ: to be disingenuous about what you really want-- it's your inability to force your will upon others that you're frustrated with. You have missed the forest for the trees, and the context has already been created for you: you are projecting a battle for the rights of certain groups onto a battle against the rights of all, and you've been turned against yourself. Freedom is something, if you believe in it, you must believe in in its entirety: not almost-freedom, or a convenient sliver of freedom that fits into your own ideological window. You lack the qualifications to exercise tolerance.
To credit a technical advance to a person's identity is to commit the 'Correlation is not Causation' fallacy. While diversity in a technical pool is interesting, the technical merit of the contribution must stand alone, independent of the contributor's personal characteristics. Shifting the focus from 'Does it work?' to 'Who wrote it?' is fundamentally anti-meritocratic and undermines the value of the technical discussion.
The health of a technical community like this one depends on its ability to separate the merit of the work from the moral character of the contributor. This is a necessary separation to preserve the integrity of the technical commons. For instance, a paper on a secure hash algorithm should be judged only on its mathematical proof, regardless of the author's personal life. Any attempt to link the two injects ad hominem fallacy into a technical evaluation.
> Denying rights to others is poison. Wishing violence on people because of their heritage is harmful to all of us.
I think this is true for all cases, the author gives us example of trans co creator of arm architecture and alan turing and how their contributions in the web mattered
But I think quite frankly, even if that might not be the case, there STILL ISNT any reason why we should discriminate and I feel like some part of the intepretation I got was that we should be tolerant to all communities currently still persecuted because some part of them contributed to us...
But what about communities that did not support you because they weren't in the shape of? I feel like we should be tolerant to them.
I tend to stay less political nowadays but just look at the case of sudan. Its state is atrocious. I am not sure if sudan contributed quite heavily on the web or not so pardon me but even if they might not have, We should still be tolerant and like stop the atrocities happening there in my opinion.
Basically the point I am trying to make might be obvious but with or without the creations of alan turing, and co creator of arm, We should still be tolerant to each other as long as they are tolerant to us, thus a tolerant society.
I like referring to the paradox of tolerance as its a key of literally every problem in my opinion and this time tho its actually as clear as day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I think what we as a society need is to look at if we are infighting with each other over petty differences created by spews of lies by people in power to stay in power so that we infight. The british used conquer and divide on India and africa which I am not going to lie, still impacts these countries.
I am pretty sure that people do divide and conquer on their own people too, Power and the Powerful don't discriminate in this sense.
TLDR: We should be tolerant of each other as a whole even if there might not be any web contributions simply because being kind is mostly good I guess but also we should be intolerant to the true intolerant of society which try to create this divide from (both sides) imo and just try to remove any type of extremism and actually focus on class issues too.
This whole article has, to be ragebait - surely? It's such a inane piece of writing, the world needs to give less time to anyone that genuinely holds these views. They're entitled to hold them, but they're still wrong.
>It had an intolerant ideology.
Without going into the various reasons why its trash, conforming to a spec is not intolerance, it's success. Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiring exactly 1 inch plate is intolerance!! You can't discriminate against different thicknesses, all thicknesses are equally valuable!"
What a useless position to hold.
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There are 2 webs.
web apps and web sites.
web apps require a [java|ecma]script whatng cartel web engine, more and more only the gogol one (blink) will "correctly" work (abuse of dominant position).
web sites are noscript/basic (x)html ("forms" and the <audio> <video> elements). Usually a "semantic" 2D table with proper ids for navigation.
I think the Author diverges from the main point - that web standards and browsers' interpretation rules are loosely held (tolerance), towards indirectly attacking the current US administration which is allegedly trending towards intolerance and isolationism. Bit of a weird tangent (Though not inaccurate).
The older ones among us remember when XML took over the world and everyone was supposed to use strict XHTML. It turned out that the strength of the HTML ecosystem was its fault tolerance. HTML4 was the "sloppy" answer to XHTML. It brought HTML back from a data language to a markup language. Every Markdown parser is similarly fault-tolerant as HTML parsers.
However, CSS and JS are not error-tolerant. A syntax error in a CSS rule causes it to be ignored. An unhandled JavaScript exception is a hard stop. This way, web does not run on tolerance.