JavaScript is Wonderous (Was: Can you do this in D?)

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:06:47 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 05:59:08PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:17:39 +0200
> > Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich at gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
> > > Now if someone would stop fiddling with the damn javascript which
> > > keeps erroring out.. I'm beginning to join the Nick camp w.r.t.
> > > JS. :p
> > 
> > JavaScript is a technology (from the makers of clearly the greatest
> > web browser of all time - Netscape) whose primary usage, and indeed
> > killer feature, is to enable people to develop new and exciting ways
> > to make the web slower, more broken, and more obnoxious than could
> > ever be achieved with mere HTML/CSS alone. This, of course, is a
> > major win for humanity in general, and is something we can all be
> > proud of.
> > 
> > http://semitwist.com/articles/article/view/my-awesome-web-development-game
> 
> I'm guilty of turning <i> into <em>, actually. You may shoot me now.
> 

Heh, yea, I've actually done it too (in hand-written HTML though, not
mechanically). You know, just following standard recommended practices.
Then it hit me: "WTF am I doing this for? My whole *intent* is for this
to be bold/italic, why am I beating around the bush? Just use <b>/<i>
and be done with it, Nick!" Now my posts are filled with <b> and <i>
tags, and maybe it's just my hunger for rebelling, but I've never
had a problem with it and I couldn't be happier :)

> (Actually, I resisted many attempts at introducing bold and italics
> buttons on my web-based editing page. I even introduced a way of
> indicating which table cells are headers, so that styling will work
> properly instead of half-assed manual bolding. But no, the users
> clamored for bold and italics until they threatened to mob me (ok,
> that last part may be an exaggeration), and so the horrible
> bold/italics buttons appeared. So far, I've resisted adding a "red"
> button (apparently, bold and italics aren't enough, sometimes you want
> something in RED too). I managed to evade that one by having a select
> box for the status field of the items, one option of which is styled
> red, and insisting that's the only place red is allowed. We'll see how
> long I hold out on that one.)
> 

Yea, there's certainly benefits to semantic tagging, but I think it's
become too religious and under-pragmatic.

I would draw the line at "I want blinking/scrolling text" though ;)