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Comment by ljm | Hacker News Reader

Author here. While it's true that this depends on JS to work (because of the various new CSS Object Model APIs in the browser), I think there's enough doubt about my technique here that I can submit this for YC2023 and make bank in maybe a decade or so.

After all, I remember what everyone said about Dropbox...

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I think that technically you met the objective: you did make a css statement to query a database. What you have to construct on the side so it works is a lesson to learn, but at the end there was a valid css line that will reach the db.

I think purist try to process the feeling by going on deflecting and denial, which is a personal reaction. A common one at that, but is not a popularity contest.

As for me, I am having a lot of fun seeing my coworkers cringe asking them the question. It is fun.

You need to put this in the context of some relatively recent twitter drama around 'I only know css and html, but am every bit as much programmer as anyone else'.

You can use SASS, but I agree with you.

If you want to impress Hacker News, you have to write a browser in CSS, too, because currently your work depends on C++.

If CSS property value is not limited in length, you could actually put the whole browser source code in it... :-)

Great! Now all we need is a pure CSS operating system, and we're ready to go.

Nah, we still need an FPGA that takes CSS as its bitstream format, and a "CSSDL" that lets you define the hardware layout in CSS...

Calm down, Satan.

> the whole browser source code in it

Starting, of course, with writing CSS in CSS.

(Recently saw a video with one of Thompson or Ritchie, IIRC. He described his mentor defining a language, defining that language in that language, then hand-translating that second definition into machine code. TMG -- transmogrifier.)

It's CSS all the way down!

What we REALLY need here is to be able to compile CSS into x86 so you can write a multi-threaded kernel for your CSS-coded browser to run on.

node.css - here we come.

Old school quality shit posting all the way down. I appreciate you man.

Where were you able to find a copy of K&R's Necronomicon?

I thought it was banned for this very reason.

I invoke an incantation of Undefined Behaviour from one of its blackened pages and chant three Alan Kays to manifest it in the physical realm

What is K&R's Necronomicon? Link?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon but written by the authors of C

Thanks but still confused. I'm a little familiar with Lovecraft as an author, but what is "K&R" and "C"?

"K&R" generally refers to the classical book about the C programming language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language

"K" is also a HN reader from what I know.

Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.

Their book, "The C Programming Language" was a must read bible decades ago.

Don't forget us little people on your way up

Do I get equity for submitting this?

I'll give you 5% off the bat and +1% for every 30 minutes the post stays at the top. Congrats on being sqlcss.xyz's new CMO.

This would be a perfect submission to the SIGBOVIK conference!

I second this idea - perfect candidate for SIGBOVIK http://sigbovik.org/

Just FYI the paint worklets are also available (at least) in WebKit nightly since around August 2021.

So I'd guess that your implementation could work with a few modifications on iOS, as the worklets aren't hidden behind a compile time feature flag.

Kudos to you, this is exactly why I removed the worklets from my retrokit fork :)

Sadly I don't have any iOS/MacOS devices... maybe I can re-host the source on GitHub and engage a community around the project.

Hacks are cool and awesome! But YC is looking for products and customers, not pure hacks.

(Yeah, everyone doubted Dropbox, but everyone doubted every other successful and unsuccesful company out there in its early stages. People doubting a company isn't much of a signal. Even in its early stages Dropbox had a clear monetization and growth strategy.)

Nice job. Time to release it as an NPM package I guess?

I just want to say that I appreciate you dropping the author card just for the sake of making a joke.

What did people say about Dropbox?

That basically it wouldn't gain traction because why wouldn't you just use rsync and a NAS? (Or something along those lines, I don't remember it exactly.)

While it's true that you can query "a DB" using (not only, but also) CSS, "the database" which the author of the tweet (or "the recruiters") mean is probably running on the server. Challenge accepted (of course without using a backend that provides access to the DB, that would be too easy)?

> I think there's enough doubt about my technique here that I can submit this for YC2023 and make bank in maybe a decade or so.

Dropbox was doubt. The response you're seeing isn't doubt or skepticism. The responses are proclaiming that your technical claim is factually incorrect. They're right - your premise is false. You know you can't connect using CSS, which is what the quoted text at the top regarding recruiters clearly states, and you changed the wording: "using CSS" vs "in CSS."

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