[HN Gopher] A new learning experience on MDN
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A new learning experience on MDN
Author : Vinnl
Score : 92 points
Date : 2024-12-23 12:36 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (developer.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (developer.mozilla.org)
| benatkin wrote:
| It doesn't look too great to be honest. It's quite verbose and
| gets steps out of order. It starts out with loading a font from
| Google Fonts. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Learn_web_developme...
|
| Where MDN used to excel and for now still does, reference
| documentation, is also showing cracks, due to the recent changes
| at Mozilla. A long time contributor gave up.
| https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/36294
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| I have zero outside context on that pr but judging it purely by
| the actual written text in the comments it seems the mdn
| maintainer was bring far more mature than the contributor who
| ended up quitting. They both mention a lot of background in the
| comments themselves; what information is missing which would
| make the contributor seem more sympathetic? As matters stand,
| this doesn't appear as a loss for mdn.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| 100% agree. This is their contributions:
| https://github.com/mdn/content/commits?author=WebReflection+
|
| Not seeing them as a major contributor.
| neilv wrote:
| > _It starts out with loading a font from Google Fonts._
|
| Besides the steps order... My first impression is that it's
| taking someone who knows nothing, and conditioning them from
| step 1 to not even think about compromising a privacy-
| respecting, free and open Internet. Your First Third-Party
| Tracker. Your First Gratuitous Third-Party Dependency.
|
| A couple times they hit on copyright and licensing, however.
| Which I approve of, but is also a corporate-friendly thing to
| emphasize.
|
| Another one:
|
| > _To choose an image, go to [Google
| Images](https://www.google.com/imghp) and search for something
| suitable._
|
| If you have to name and link a search engine for the exercise,
| how about not endorsing a famously privacy-invading option, but
| instead have the student use a more privacy-respecting one?
| nacs wrote:
| > To choose an image, go to Google Images
|
| Or plug one of the many royalty-free photo sites like
| Unsplash or Pexels (and comes with the bonus of teaching
| people to consider copyrights when you publish a site).
| edoceo wrote:
| And also those two sites you mentioned have higher quality
| and less clutter. A significant improvement in tool choice
| to what MDN suggested.
|
| Hopefully we can fix this via contribution.
| lolinder wrote:
| Honestly, I think the MDN team is in the right here.
|
| The author of the PR provided almost no explanation for the
| addition and left the template essentially blank. Then the team
| provided a detailed explanation of a very reasonable policy, to
| which the PR author responded with what frankly reads like a
| temper tantrum.
|
| Especially after the xz incident, maintainers should be very
| very wary of contributors who use manipulative techniques to
| try to get things merged against policy, and contributors who
| are trying to help in good faith should be patient and
| understanding when they hit those barriers.
| benatkin wrote:
| This comes in quite early:
|
| > Your library is insecure and should not be advertised as a
| spec-compliant ponyfill.
|
| I think the MDN maintainer both started the argument with the
| terrible first reply and escalated the argument with this
| accusation.
|
| You're right that the author should have quit replying
| sooner, which acknowledges himself. Good old XKCD is relevant
| here. https://xkcd.com/386/
|
| Most of the issue seems to be a systemic problem at Mozilla
| though. The person from MDN was saying factually incorrect
| stuff and nobody else from MDN stepped in to help resolve the
| situation.
| squigz wrote:
| That's not a very accurate summary. I think you're probably
| referring to [1] which says
|
| > because polyfills are really hard to get right and we
| should treat everything as insecure and wrong by default
| ... I took a brief look at your code and I don't think it's
| spec-compliant enough to be advertised as a
| polyfill/ponyfill because it is prone to global pollution.
|
| They then demonstrate that it's not compliant, which the
| contributor seems to think is not relevant.
|
| Mostly, this contributor comes across as hurt that their PR
| wasn't immediately merged by virtue of their many years in
| the field. I might be missing something here though which
| puts the MDN team in the wrong, but...
|
| [1] https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/36294#issuecomment-
| 24076...
| lolinder wrote:
| > both started the argument with the terrible first reply
| and escalated the argument with this accusation.
|
| Why was the first reply terrible? They stated the policy
| and closed the PR. They did so professionally and calmly,
| and the author immediately threw a fit. Then the MDN person
| dug into the project more and found specific flaws and
| pointed them out as further evidence for why the policy
| (which they already cited and which should have been
| enough) exists.
|
| > The person from MDN was saying factually incorrect stuff
|
| Do you have specific examples?
|
| > Most of the issue seems to be a systemic problem at
| Mozilla though.
|
| Frankly, reading through the thread it feels like you
| started with this as the assumption and had cast the MDN
| maintainer as the bad guy before the exchange had even
| started. Mozilla has lots of problems and I'm the first to
| point them out, but this exchange doesn't demonstrate any
| of them--it just demonstrates how hard it is in open source
| to deal with entitled aspiring contributors.
| benatkin wrote:
| Repeatedly calling it insecure and not to spec when it's
| secure and it does the exact same thing unless given
| unusual input, and is as a ponyfill to ensure the dev is
| aware of its source when calling it. He also said he has
| relevant experience when questioned and showed an
| irrelevant example to support that claim.
|
| https://github.com/ungap/raw-
| json/issues/6#issuecomment-2434...
| lolinder wrote:
| > calling it insecure and not to spec when it's secure
| and it does the exact same thing unless given unusual
| input
|
| See, the "unless given unusual input" thing is part of
| where MDN was in the right and OP is in the wrong.
|
| A polyfill/ponyfill that isn't perfectly spec-compliant
| can be useful, but it's reasonable for MDN to refuse to
| endorse it, given that their pages describe the specs.
| And to try to argue that it still counts as spec
| compliant when it doesn't handle edge cases is nonsense--
| the edge cases are why we have specs! If we didn't have
| to standardize even the edge cases an informal
| description of the solution would do the trick.
| benatkin wrote:
| Hmm, I can't take it seriously defending the job that MDN
| did in that thread. That is just one person but he's
| representing the organization and nobody else steps in. I
| guess we're done here.
| andrepd wrote:
| Okay! So you decided beforehand that "MDN" is in the
| wrong, and now you've decided to ignore factual info to
| the contrary.
| jkrems wrote:
| Being spec compliant means being compliant with the
| entire spec, not just a "reasonable subset of the spec",
| picked by the author of the ponyfill/polyfill. And being
| secure only in the presence of normal inputs is... pretty
| meaningless afaict? Anything is secure if the inputs are
| "nice to the implementation". That isn't a typical bar
| for "it's secure".
|
| Whether every use case that just wants to roundtrip
| BigInt through JSON _needs_ a fully spec compliant &
| generally secure solution is a different question. But at
| that point it's about picking a solution for a related
| use case, not about actually standing in for the upcoming
| browser feature.
| jwilber wrote:
| The link I'm reading (the one you sent) starts with planning,
| not font loading?
|
| The second link seems very irrelevant, but makes Mozilla look
| good. The long time contributor in that thread is giving a
| showcase on how not to behave in open-source. Props to Mozilla
| for not giving into the manipulative bully-play-victim
| contributor:
|
| Comment of his, for reference: "Once again, if this was the
| reason for rejection I would've been way happier (it's 3LOC
| extra) to react to that reasoning, but I am fully sure right
| now even if I bring "secured" (it's a race condition in the
| real-world) call and apply to the ponyfill you'll find other
| awkward and antitrust conflicting arguments to nuke my link ...
| can you confirm? If yes is the answer, once again, me and you
| have very different meaning around working to push the Web
| forward (and it's sad you work for Mozilla, I don't), if no is
| the answer, I'll publish a fix ASAP and you should re-consider
| closing both PRs around this topic.
|
| It's your call."
| SahAssar wrote:
| > A long time contributor gave up.
| https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/36294
|
| Reading through that issue MDN was almost definitely in the
| right. Also calling them a long time contributor might be a bit
| off, from what I can see they did one typofix and added one
| link:
| https://github.com/mdn/content/commits?author=WebReflection
| andrepd wrote:
| I just see a guy ranting for days because his contribution was
| rejected. Not sure what point that link is supposed to make.
| whatever1 wrote:
| MDN does just excel at documentation. It is the ONLY place
| where one can learn modern web development from scratch without
| a hidden agenda. Everyone else is either pushing their
| framework or their online courses platform or their own browser
| ecosystem.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Very ambitious of them: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Learn_web_developme...
|
| and I think this is a soft joke:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_developme...
| _it currently just says TODO_
| edelbitter wrote:
| Is the page layout meaningfully different on some other
| device/browser?
|
| I see less than 30% of my screen space being used for actual
| content. Dropped below 50% somewhere around the time they decided
| they like LLMs.
| slater wrote:
| CMD-f "artificial intelligence" - 0 results.
|
| phew!
| kussenverboten wrote:
| A lot of words and not much information density.
| rchaud wrote:
| Very confusing post. I took a look at their "Learn Web
| Development" section and I am confused as to why they link out to
| third parties when all the content that would be needed is pretty
| much already in the MDN knowledgebase on their own site.
| upghost wrote:
| > with the aim of making MDN more accessible to non-experts and
| helping to take new web developers from "beginner to
| comfortable".
|
| I love this. Maybe there's still hope... Been doing web
| development for over a decade and I'm still not "comfortable"
| with it >.<
| Macha wrote:
| It's interesting when talking about the focus on supply chain
| safety that they've decided to only recommend core-js. From my
| perspective, it feels like core-js is the top candidate for the
| next left-pad / colors.js type author induced ecosystem failure
| given the author's past attitudes and financial issues.
| Sephr wrote:
| Mozilla doesn't seem to care much about creating linkrot. They've
| previously deleted a bunch of historical docs such as their
| JavaScript engine release notes with changelog information.
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(page generated 2024-12-25 23:00 UTC)