diff --git a/www/content/essays/another-real-world-react-to-htmx-port.md b/www/content/essays/another-real-world-react-to-htmx-port.md index 215a46072..3e150ee25 100644 --- a/www/content/essays/another-real-world-react-to-htmx-port.md +++ b/www/content/essays/another-real-world-react-to-htmx-port.md @@ -41,12 +41,13 @@ Here is a high-level summary of the port * They reduced the **code base size** by **61%** (31237 LOC to 12044 LOC) * They reduced the **total number of files** by **72%** (588 files to 163 files) +* They reduced the **total number of file types** by **38%** (18 file types to 11 file types) * Subjectively, development velocity felt at least **5X** faster * Rather than prototyping in Figma and then porting to HTML, UX development was done directly in HTML ## Analysis -Once again we have some eye-popping results. This is because of the fact that the OpenUnited application is extremely +Once again we have some eye-popping results. This is because the OpenUnited application is extremely amenable to hypermedia: like Contexte, it is a content-focused application that shows lots of text and images. This experience again demonstrates that, for at least a certain class of web applications, htmx and the hypermedia diff --git a/www/content/essays/right_click_view_source.md b/www/content/essays/right_click_view_source.md deleted file mode 100644 index fd5759344..000000000 --- a/www/content/essays/right_click_view_source.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,88 +0,0 @@ -+++ -title = "Digital Enclosure & Right-Click-View-Source Extremism" -date = 2023-04-06 -updated = 2023-04-06 -[taxonomies] -author = ["Carson Gross"] -+++ - -> Not for nothing, Hypercard presaged the web's critical "#ViewSource" affordance, which allowed people to copy, -> modify, customize and improve on the things that they found delightful or useful. This affordance was later adapted -> by other human-centered projects like #Scratch, and is a powerful tonic against #enshittification. -> -> \-\-[Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr](https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1701934607732810208) - -A driving idea behind projects like [htmx](/) and [hyperscript](https://hyperscript.org) is the idea that the "code" -for a thing should be "on" the thing. This is in part driven by a preference for [Locality of Behavior](@essays/locality_of_behavior.md), -a technical design decision which helps ease the maintenance of software. - -But another major driver is the conviction that, on the web, people should be able to view the source of a page and see -what the page is doing, the #ViewSource affordance Cory mentions above. - -## Free Software vs. Open Culture - -This later factor isn't a technical design consideration, rather, it is a moral position, or, as we will see, more of -a cultural position. - -The idea that you should be able to view the source of a web page is in the spirit of -[the Free Software Foundation's notion of free software](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html): - -> “Free software” means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the -> freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software." - -However, there are some important distinctions between the #ViewSource affordance of the web and the FSF's definition of -free software above. - -Web applications have always been an uncomfortable fit for this stricter definition of free for technical reasons: -the server for a web application is typically remote and, at a fundamental level, the operations occurring on the server -are opaque to the hypermedia client (i.e. the browser). - -The client deals only with hypermedia representations provided by the server, and has no visibility into the actual -source of the code executing on the server side. - -There are, of course, open source web applications, but running an open source web application is typically much less -convenient than other types of applications due to the operational complexity that they often entail. - -### Right-Click-View-Source As Culture - -However, despite this less pure adherence to the idea of free software, the early web none-the-less had radically -_open_ culture, in some practical ways a _more_ open culture than even that achieved by the free software movement. - -The #ViewSource affordance available in browsers allowed people to understand and "own" the web in a way that even most -FSF-conforming applications could not: you had direct access to the "source" of the application available, _within_ -the application itself. - -You could copy-and-paste (or save) that "source" (HTML, JavaScript & CSS) and start modifying it, without a complicated -build tool chain or, indeed, without any tool chain at all. This radical openness of the web allowed many people, often -not formally trained computer scientists, to learn how to create web pages and applications in an ad hoc and informal way. - -In strict free software terms, this was, of course, a compromise: as a user of a web application, you had no visibility -into how a server was constructing a given hypermedia response. - -But you could see _what_ the server was responding with: you could download and tweak it, poke and prod at it. You could, -if you were an advanced user, use browser tools to modify the application in place. And, most importantly, you could -_learn from it_, even if you couldn't see how the HTML was being produced. - -## Digital Enclosure & Right-Click-View-Source Extremism - -The [Enclosure Movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure) was a period in English history when what were -previously [commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons) were privatized. This was a traumatic event in English -history, as evidenced by this poem by an 18th century anon: - - -> The law locks up the man or woman -> Who steals the goose from off the common, -> But lets the greater felon loose -> Who steals the common from the goose. -> -> 18th century anon - -In the last decade, the web has gone through a period of digital enclosure, where ["Walled Gardens"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_platform), -such as Facebook & Twitter, have replaced the earlier, more chaotic blogs and internet forums. - -Many developers have decried this trend, and rightly, in our opinion. But, despite recognizing the danger of an increasingly -closed internet, many web developers don't consider their own technical decisions and how those also influence the -culture of openness that is rapidly disappearing. - -### Two Wordle Implementations -