Comment by TheMode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheMode | Hacker News Reader

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> Our collective history is too valuable for us to be breaking stuff just to make engineers’ lives easier.

I'd argue that software standards make it harder for everyone to write a "history". How many people simply gave up on their own websites and outsourced their work to an entity they do not control the actions of?

How much of that fancy web standard is about optional visual? What are we really getting from it? Would you consider a new API for drawing rectangles "progress"?

Your `Array.flat` example may make sense, but only because we are way too deep to even consider alternatives. We have mostly no idea how these standards will evolve and decided to keep on putting band aids to remain afloat.

The best way to keep information accessible is to make it understandable by a human without mandatory automation. Don't you find it horrible that all the information websites can provide you is actually dependent on a thousands pages long spec? Is it really the only solution you can think of?

The resiliency of the web is mostly equivalent to papyrus, if not worse.

What solution can you think of that doesn’t involve breaking any existing websites?

Look, I don’t like how complex web browsers are any more than you do. But it’s the situation we’re in today.

There is none, but we should have a transition period to make a simpler web spec, entirely immutable (to ensure no future bloat).

We have no reason to indefinitely use our web.

Okay, but “a simpler spec” is not a compelling reason to switch to or build for another one. There’s a reason no one uses Gemini.

A simpler spec means more competition, which is more sustainable than 50 standardized APIs. More competition means having an easier time finding the perfect browser (or even make your own).

I do not know about Gemini but the problem with current minimal formats is that they cannot evolve without change to the spec, they lack emergence. And therefore when you want to expand on it, you need to add complexity to the spec, not your code.

One of the idea I had was to make all websites provide natural language text, without any standardization (send whatever text you want).

Which would have these benefits:

- Ease website development, your goal is to make the text as simple as possible to understand for a human.

- (also means that website won't have the luxury to send unnecessary data anymore)

- More performant.

- Literally cannot break as it does not depend on any standard. Text will remain understandable forever.

- You can have an infinite amount of browsers, some may only render the raw text, some may render the text and give you very fast tips as to how you should render it, and others dedicated to specific disabilities.

- You can have a working browser in a matter of hours. And the way you expand on it is independent from how the server operates.

- No fancy standard can appear to break this simplicity, as many people would depend on the text being unopinionated.

- Can still support anything the web currently does, but tracking without contentment will become harder. As users would have a deeper understanding of what the website actually is, its text is on plain sight.

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