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I completely agree. I've seen similar ideas get shot down here on HN; but I think we need two separate protocols. One for purely documents, and a second for the universal application platform.

Among other implications, it should be much easier for regular people to create content, and applications should be free of the document-focused legacy.

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So how about Gopher for documents, and HTTP(S)+HTML+CSS for apps? I think we have the tools already.

If we did that, how would you propose implementing upvoting in HN without js?

Upvoting in HN works without JS already, it just has a page refresh.

And it doesn't even need a page refresh; it could use a 204 No Content response. Potentially an yet-cleverer static browser system could also use 206 Partial Content to replace a portion of the page.

But at that point, it's no longer "purely a document," it's still an app, just one that runs entirely on the server instead of partly or mostly in the browser.

For the web to be just documents, you have to go all the way and remove state entirely. Idempotence all the way down.

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