Post 9zpRWraEfMptnip7yK by ed1conf@bsd.network
(DIR) More posts by ed1conf@bsd.network
(DIR) Post #9zpKZfAgZTWWUlGEXQ by docskrzyk@hackers.town
2020-10-04T18:35:04Z
2 likes, 6 repeats
Today I said something that I never thought I'd hear. I think the web needs to die. I wish I had listened to a friend who, 15 years ago, was ranting about the trend to re-invent the internet on port 80. We have taken a resilient network with a diverse ecosystem of applications and shoved every damn thing into a web application. The deluge of standards and bolt ons makes the web look like the stacks from Ready Player One - unmaintainable and fragile. We have created a single (and highly corporate/commercialized) single point of failure.Accessing the internet:80 (or 443) is so fraught that you have to be a big player to make a browser that works correctly, but doing so allows you to gatekeep the whole thing. As a bonus you could mine behavior from that client to feed into your search and advertising machine. And now we can't do shit without it. We're guzzling the kool-aid such that we write write apps in (originally) hacked-in web programming languages using toolkits that basically turn an entire web browser into a shared library. I wish I had good alternates or suggestions for a functional replacement, but I have to say it: The web is a dangerous joke.
(DIR) Post #9zpKrTHFX2keoop42i by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-10-04T18:54:40Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
@docskrzyk The World Wide Web™ was conceived of as a web of documents.I can understand, even support extending the concept of "document" beyond plain text, to images, print-formatted documents, even audio & video. From that point of view, some of the aspects of HTML5 make sense, even though they do impose a severe load on the browser.But when we begin to treat the Web browser as a place for applications, we've gone outside the original conceptual scope.
(DIR) Post #9zpLWkj3Z0VWo6VuAC by docskrzyk@hackers.town
2020-10-04T19:01:27Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@publius Thanks for explaining what the web was? This is pretty much what I was saying.
(DIR) Post #9zpNiJFvimJSziWpAe by if@tilde.zone
2020-10-04T18:36:34Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@docskrzyk have you heard of gemini?
(DIR) Post #9zpNiJTOuh5XfUpaAS by docskrzyk@hackers.town
2020-10-04T18:37:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@if Yes. I've even posted on the ML, and have molly brown running. It's not going to topple the web, though.
(DIR) Post #9zpNiJlpo9pkafSIts by if@tilde.zone
2020-10-04T18:41:09Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@docskrzyk For sure. I guess it's just like the fediverse -- a better alternative, but it doesn't get rid of the root problem.
(DIR) Post #9zpNiKCmBzNtwE3otU by if@tilde.zone
2020-10-04T18:42:35Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@docskrzyk So I wonder if there is a way we can destroy centralized social media, and in a similar way, destroy the modern web?
(DIR) Post #9zpNiKSjEg92jhWYl6 by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
2020-10-04T19:26:34Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@if @docskrzyk I'd say making GUI toolkits that are better than anything Web has to offer would.be a good start. I've heard many people complain that Gtk and Qt are shit and Electron is the only sane way to make GUI
(DIR) Post #9zpRWraEfMptnip7yK by ed1conf@bsd.network
2020-10-04T20:09:16Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@publius @docskrzyk Though on the bright side, if one does adhere to the original spirit of interlinked documents, there are far more browsers that do just fine with that, such as lynx, elinks, links2, w3m, edbrowse, browsh (sorta), links+, and dillo.
(DIR) Post #9zpRbZA6aHR47EqNma by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-10-04T20:10:15Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@docskrzyk My point was in the last sentence.If you say "municipal sewers are, broadly speaking, a means of transportation, which is to say communication, & therefore we should use them to carry voice conversations", you're getting well outside the original conceptual scope, which was to prevent cholera outbreaks. Sewers may not be good for telephony, but that doesn't invalidate either concept.So with the Web. We need a proper fitting of means to ends.
(DIR) Post #9zpSD6a7IHuATluVtY by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-10-04T20:17:02Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@docskrzyk More broadly, we are living in a period which exemplifies that proverb, "when all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a thumb".IP telephony is a fine little example. TCP/IP was explicitly developed specifically for traffic with a set of characteristics radically different from that of voice conversations (or television for that matter). But it has become the One True Tool, applied to everything with no sanity check.
(DIR) Post #9zpXJIb02OxtFV61zM by FiXato@mastodon.social
2020-10-04T21:14:10Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@publius#MaslowsHammer mentions a nail rather than a thumb, but I guess for clumsy people like me, the thumb is just as accurate. 😅A related #quote by #SilvanTomkins might also be apt here: "If one has a hammer one tends to look for nails, and if one has a computer with a storage capacity, but no feelings, one is more likely to concern oneself with remembering and with problem solving than with loving and hating."@docskrzyk
(DIR) Post #9zq1Ns9ql37bKHUhWq by publius@mastodon.sdf.org
2020-10-05T02:51:09Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@FiXato @docskrzyk I find "thumb" much more fits the observed case than "nail". The results aren't just awkward, they hurt.
(DIR) Post #9zqnr15S78WfthWKZc by e8johan@mastodon.technology
2020-10-05T11:54:10Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@wolf480pl @if @docskrzyk I would argue the opposite. Or even that it is about what you are used to. I'd prefer Qt any day of the week, and much rather GTK+ over web. But that is where I come from.
(DIR) Post #9zqoJQO7deocTYnbf6 by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
2020-10-05T11:59:21Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@e8johan @if @docskrzyk as in, you prefer to make GUIs in Qt than anything web?
(DIR) Post #9zqpAVoqB2dsfRbuiG by e8johan@mastodon.technology
2020-10-05T12:08:55Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@wolf480pl @if @docskrzyk yup. The only upside of web is the immediate deployment.