WizardApr 15, 2020

Hugo-style static blog generators vs wordpress style blogging software is an unimportant implementation detail.

Emacs and files vs text boxes and relational database; in either case you're editing abstract "content" which is turned into HTML by an opaque and possibly Byzantine process which is difficult for most users to understand and control.

#ChangeMyMind

#SpicyHotTakes #Blogging #staticSiteGenerators

Show threadHardcore NarrativistApr 15, 2020
@wizard I'm not sure what your point is: that users maintaining a blog should write the HTML by hand? In that case, what's the advantage?
Show threadWizardApr 15, 2020
@hardcorenarrativist This is the article that inspired that post, though I'd been thinking similar things for a while before I read it: https://stackingthebricks.com/how-blogs-broke-the-web/
How the Blog Broke the Web

I first got online in 1993, back when the Web had a capital letter — three, in fact — and long before irony stretched its legs and unbuttoned its flan

Show threadWizardApr 15, 2020

@hardcorenarrativist I don't know if it's necessarily better for everyone to be hand-coding HTML. (Though HTML was originally designed to be hand-coded!)

You could also erase the distinction between abstract content and viewable web pages by using WYSIWYG editors, for example.

Show threadWizardApr 15, 2020
@hardcorenarrativist but to answer your point more directly: it's not that bloggers should be hand-coding HTML, it's questioning whether a "blog" - a website featuring content primarily organized in reverse chronological order -- is even a good idea. Maybe it isn't, for a lot of sites.
Show threadHardcore NarrativistApr 15, 2020

@wizard Aha, I see! That makes more sense now.

I have mixed feelings about it: on the one hand, standardisation of these formats and such is both natural and valuable. On the other, I think maybe we've done it too much? And most people have forgotten (or don't even know!) that they can publish whatever they want, however they want, instead of just posting micro-updates on social media and such.

But maybe that's just nostalgia? Maybe creativity simply has other forms now? idk

Show threadWizard
@hardcorenarrativist I do like looking back at very old web sites which are designed as documents or document collections, rather than logs. They tend to stand the test of time well, and they can live on in the Internet Archive even if they disappear. The abstracted units of "content" which produced them, if they ever existed in databases or whatever, are long gone. What's left is particular HTML files.
Apr 15, 2020 at 3:27pmWeb
Show threadHardcore NarrativistApr 15, 2020

@wizard BTW, if you haven't read Amusing Ourselves to Death, it sounds like a book you'd like. I put my summary here:
http://hcoder.org/2019/11/02/book-summary-amusing-ourselves-to-death/

Published... on... my blog *ducks*

Book summary: Amusing ourselves to death | HCoder

This is the first part of my summary for the book“Amusing ourselves to death”by Neil Postman. It’s abook about media (specifically TV, as the book is from 19...

Show threadWizardApr 15, 2020
@hardcorenarrativist :) will check it out!