VNC client in 200 lines of JavaScript

Yeah, its not really possible to write a vnc library in 200 LOC without standing on the shoulders of giants.

I still think it is useful to explain how to glue different parts together and (hopefully) get people interested in some technology that excels at glue(python etc).

You're absolutely right about the underlying libraries, I guess the the title wasn't the most appropriate one. Anyway, if we count V8, node.js standard libraries, webkit,...etc. there's no software written entirely in JavaScript which is less than millions lines of code. The main idea of the article was to show how easy things goes with the tools HTML5 gives us.

I knew this sort of comment would be a highly-rated one - it's just a pointless put-down. The author didn't write a kernel, or the net stack, or libc, or v8, or the node libs, or loads of other bits that are used in the process. 200 loc is a valid, honest and interesting metric in this case which you're reading way too literally.

VNC client in one line of shell: `vncviewer target.example.org:1`

It's not that people have to find something to complain about, it's just accurate. It's ridiculous to say VNC can be implemented in 200 lines of JavaScript. Of 200 lines of any language. If the third party library does low level stuff like collections, or http or whatever then they usually don't get counted, but if the majority of the functionality is in a library then it's disingenuous to not include them.

Exactly. To all the posters who are making that comment, think of these "How to implement X in Y lines of code articles" as a brief introduction to the architecture of some important standardized type of software. These are like the "How things work" TV shows on TLC and the Discovery Channel, but hands on.