Discarding a constructive mental model like this for the sake of pedantry — especially when it makes the idea described harder to understand — is just stupid.
And so, it follows that this article is just stupid.
They just prioritize that over any of the details or useful terminology to actually explain what they did or how this thing relates or builds off something that already exists.
Everyone's so worried about getting as many new tech keywords thrown out as they can in order to gatekeep others. Even when communicating to other devs-- I realize some of these sound like they're aimed at non-tech people. These are not out of place statements on Stack Overflow or in YouTube tutorials.
"The Cloud is a revolutionary technology that you be will literally unable to comprehend unless you have these 20 certificates like me." But then it can just be summarized as saving and accessing a file on someone else's computer.
"Typescript is a literally brand new technology built from scratch that you cannot begin to comprehend until you put 10k hours into it and become a master like me." But then it's just JavaScript with extra steps. Just like every other main front end language. They're all JavaScript plus X.
"I built my own computer and then operating system from scratch. Why don't you try the same before suggesting your ideas." Well, you ordered pre-assembled parts from a list somebody else wrote and then you plugged them in with less steps than a Lego kit. And your OS from scratch was just a GUI checkbox installer than you clicked through that now has a thousand driver errors you neglected to mention.
"I passed my FAANG leetcode interview because I'm a better programmer than you. If you can't pass a leetcode interview, are you even trying?" You passed your leetcode interview because you spent hundreds of hours memorizing every question and answer in order to recite it from memory under pressure. You also got lucky by getting a question you happened to memorize. Memorizing the answers before a test doesn't make you better at that subject.
etc.
I honestly can't find a way to explain this that's not negative. If someone can rephrase my points, I would be curious to hear a respectful counter argument.
The article was right at the time of writing, and it's even righter today.
At least in Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape Navigator, cookies were stored as individual files in the file system. In that sense at some point in time it was somewhat correct.
However the relevant part: On e in a time computer users knew files and we're working a lot with them. Operating systems like Windows 95 pushed files into the front (instead of first picking the program and in the program opening the thing they pushed Explorer to "explore the computer" and then finding the right program for the file) There a file was a understandable unit of data.
What would you define a DNS TXT record as? Technically speaking.
> you'd expect them to be human-readable, but they're not
humans are sorta ok at making data readable