undefined | Better HN

0 pointspavel_lishin8y ago0 comments

> Do you do this for other formats, like RTF?

No, but I do it for formats like HTML, CSS, JSON. My editor can assist me, but I don't need it. To a lesser degree, the same is true of Java, though I do admit to leaning much more heavily on my IDE for that.

> What is this obsession with hand-coding complicated formats :)

Well, part of it is that they're not all that complicated unless you're doing something fancy. Another part is almost certainly our (we as in developers) pride in being able to use nothing but vi installed on a decade-old operating system to get things done.

0 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

EGreg8y ago

Why? What benefit do you get from coding it by hand? The only one I can think of is being able to type some esoteric incantations in a textbox.

Downsides include:

XSS and malicious injection - users should be using markdown or provided an actual contentEditable HTML editor instead of a textarea. Like in GMail.

Syntax errors. How many times have you typed some JSON by hand and realized you forgot to balance some braces or add a comma, or remove a comma at the end of an object?

Complexity not that complicated, really? Basic C, HTML, CSS is not complicated. Advanced stuff is complicated. Forgetting a brace or a semicolon torpedoes the whole document. SQL is not complicated. Does that mean you want to write SQL by hand for production code?

Why don't you install a simple extension to vi like an html format adapter? I'm a developer too. But let me tell you what it sounds like when you say you want to use nothing but vi: that's like saying you want to be able to build robots using nothing but a hammer and some nails, and nothing else can be built that requires further abstraction or advancement where you can't do the same with a hammer.

And also keep in mind that not everyone is a developer. The fact that you like to keep esoteric syntax rules in your head for HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, C++ and so on doesn't mean EVERYONE should have to. When it comes to CSV, it's not even a real standard. You have to keep in your head all the cross platform quirks, like \r\n garbage similar to how web developers need to keep in their head all te Browser quirks and workarounds.

All this... for some pride thing of being able to write text based stuff by hand.

I brought up RTF for a reason. No sane person should want to type .rtf or .docx by hand. So why HTML?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse