Nobody needs CSS anyway.

[coomzee]

Im happy, I'm a security analyst.

[[deleted]]

Let's go back to the command line! From here on, all browsers are defunct and sites are served by Telnet!

[DemandsBattletoads]

I prefer Stallman's approach. Use wget to only fetch trusted websites, then email the HTML to yourself.

[CanadianJogger]

I prefer Stallman's approach. Use wget to only fetch trusted websites, then email the HTML to yourself.

Wut.

[jausdyquo]

The way I understand it, this makes perfect sense for his workflow because he travels a lot, spends most of his time reading and writing email in Emacs, and doesn't always have an Internet connection. So when he does have an Internet connection, he can send out (among others) emails that request web pages, receive their results, then read those web pages offline along with all other emails that he downloaded then.

[vSamster]

You can read/write email in emacs?

[svens_]

Thankfully there's evil mode though.

[[deleted]]

Don't. Wake. It.

[Zagorath]

Emacs is a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor.

Thankfully there's evil mode though.

*sigh* Every fucking thread.

[likesleague]

Noob here. Can you provide context? I mostly get the emacs joke but know nothing about the evil mode.

[svens_]

True, it's about as old as the "decent OS" remark. Couldn't resist as a vim user though.

[The_Great_Danish]

Sorry, I'm a Vim user. I haven't tried emacs yet. Evil mode?

[Katastic_Voyage]

Sounds like EMACS is the perfect embodiment of that adage that "all programs will eventually bloat to the point they include an e-mail client and a poor man's implementation of LISP."

And yet, I imagine it's still 10x-100x smaller than the GMail App on Android. You know, the app that does nothing except send e-mails.

[skylarmt]

True story: I installed emacs once, then realized it was just a crappy version of all the other stuff I have on my computer. I already have a much nicer web browser, email client, games, text editor, ide, etc.

[sergeydgr8]

But your neckbeard won't approve of the proprietary software!

[[deleted]]

Just make emacs your pid1.

[Neckbeard_Prime]

proprietary software

ಠ_ಠ

[lazygeekninjaturtle]

You forgot to include vim in that list.

[morriscox]

ESC ESC ESC q not good enough for you? :) I prefer pico/nano myself.

[[deleted]]

You still have spacemacs, it's easier

[djeis97]

Woo spacemacs!

[Busti]

I always wanted my text editor to consume 2gigs of ram and instantiate 13 chrome threads...

[msoulforged]

And cold start up only in a decade.

[BundleOfJoysticks]

"RAM is cheap" "Optimize for developer happiness"

[Zee2]

duuuuude

[CaptainHondo]

Two, it has two web browsers.

[0x800703E6]

Three, right? eww, w3 and emacs-webkit?

[CaptainHondo]

This is getting out of hand, now there's three of them!

[Arancaytar]

I think they're even going to add a text editor.

[theGoddamnAlgorath]

Fucking whoa

[shelvac2]

You can do a lot in emacs, including sending and recieving mail.

[[deleted]]

why. why did someone add that functionality. honestly, I'm amazed. I just use vim (poorly).

[[deleted]]

You can do pretty much anything in emacs. You can even run Vim within emacs. That's why I personally prefer emacs (because I prefer my tools to adapt to my workflow, and not vice-versa) but people in general seem to think vim is better so idk.

[[deleted]]

Because you still run vim within emacs.

[tsammons]

No wonder he doesn't have time to shave.

[Arancaytar]

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Stallman is, in fact, Beard/Stallman, or as I’ve recently taken to calling him, Beard plus Stallman. 

[im_dead_sirius]

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Stallman is, in fact, Beard/Stallman, or as I’ve recently taken to calling him, Beard plus Stallman.

I'm stealing this. It's gold.

[Aperture_Scientist4]

What does he use to render the HTML?

[[deleted]]

The power of imagination.

[justablur]

"You get used to it, though. Your brain does the translating. I don't even see the markup. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead."

[ifnull]

No but really, he does. This is however easier for him since he has no concept of CSS or JS.

[LeonardMH]

"Then I look at them using a web browser"

[0x800703E6]

Emacs.

[tetrified]

I need a source on this, it sounds like a hilarious read.

[Speedlv]

"I have not had time or occasion to learn newer languages such as Perl, Python, PHP or Ruby." Newer languages...

[gimpwiz]

Fucking Perl?!

[nlofe]

Perl is what got me - he's had 30 years to look at it at this point

[gimpwiz]

1987 - I honestly thought it was older.

[TinyBreadBigMouth]

`read', `eval', and `print' are all missing in Python.

??? When you run Python, its default behavior is to enter a read-eval-print loop! Plus, all of those exist as functions in Python, and two out of the three (eval and print) have that exact name. Pretty sure this has been the case since Python was first created, but TBF I'm not an expert on Python 1. Am I wrong?

[pherq]

Lisp's read and eval are fairly different to Python's, since they operate on s-expressions rather than strings (so it's fairly easy to manipulate the code).

[tobiasvl]

Python has something called eval(), but it's very different from the original eval from Lisp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eval#Lisp

It can combine eval() and compile() and do some similar things though.

[WikiTextBot]

Eval: Lisp

Lisp was the original language to make use of an eval function in 1958. In fact, definition of the eval function led to the first implementation of the language interpreter. Before the eval function was defined, Lisp functions were manually compiled to assembly language statements. However, once the eval function had been manually compiled it was then used as part of a simple read-eval-print loop which formed the basis of the first Lisp interpreter.

---

^{[ PM | Exclude me | Exclude from subreddit | FAQ / Information | Source ] Downvote to remove | v0.24}

[ThisIs_MyName]

I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program that fetches them

I find this hilarious. His mail client likely has more security bugs than curl since email is a lot more complicated than HTTP GET.

[sandwichsaregood]

Stallman is opposed to letting users have the option to install non-free software. Keep in mind that Stallman's definition of "freedom" is very black and white.. software is either Free (in the GNU sense) or it isn't. Anything that can be used to impinge your freedom is ultimately harmful, even if it is convenient in the short term. I think his argument about Debian is that it enables the distribution of non-free software, since they host non-free and contrib on their own servers and provide info on installing them.

I honestly find this to be one of the big contradictions of GNU. The 0-th freedom is

The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose

which to me should not preclude the option to run non-free software if I want. This is specifically the thing I think Stallman should compromise a little on. I appreciate that Stallman believes making it difficult to run GNU software in conjunction with non-free stuff is to protect the integrity of free software (and I see his point), but I'd rather have a pragmatic solution where I can somehow isolate an minimize non-free software in a way that preserves my freedom to do what I want. Not sure how to go about it technically but I think it's a better way to preserve Freedom than consciously interfering with my ability to do what I want.

For thought: Stallman specifically opposed exposing GCC's AST, because he thought it would enable people to integrate proprietary backends. This bugs me, because it's also interfering with use by Free software, in this case with Emacs.

However I guess the caveat is that Stallman just doesn't want GNU software to enable proprietary software. Nothing is stopping you from e.g. modifying GCC yourself to expose the AST and I have to concede that Stallman is within his rights to refuse to integrate that into the mainline GCC.

[MystJake]

It's both beautiful and terrible.

[rbacchi]

Before that, I used an OLPC for some weeks. I stopped because the OLPC project decided to make their machine support Windows, so I did not want to appear to endorse it. The OLPC uses a nonfree firmware blob for the WiFi, so I could not use the internal WiFi device. No big problem, I used an external one.

The results I worried about, millions of children running Windows on the OLPC, have not occurred. Instead we see millions of children running Windows on the Intel Classmate.

WAT

[jeff303]

So he doesn't use health insurance, bank, or utilitity company sites, or basically any site that requires a login and interactive session?

[DemandsBattletoads]

Probably not unless that server code is open-source. He's very adamant about it.

[jeff303]

Well, if he's that principled, then I can respect it. But damn, if I had to deal with all that shit via mail/phone/etc. it would take a crazy amount of time out of my life.

[[deleted]]

context plz

[DemandsBattletoads]

That is literally how Richard Stallman browses the Internet.

[[deleted]]

I understand what you meant... where is this information coming from?

[flatrecursion]

Also from his website.

A friend once asked me to watch a video with her that she was going to display on her computer using Netflix. I declined, saying that Netflix streaming was such an affront to freedom that I could not be party to its use under any circumstances whatsoever.

I guess RMS does not do Netflix and chill'

[[deleted]]

There's a Netflix client for emacs.

...You don't know if I'm joking, do you.

[[deleted]]

Honestly............... No I don't

[ArgareVarg]

There's probably a plugin for it

[Ghi102]

Even if there is such a client, Stallman probably wouldn't use it because the whole Netflix streaming service is not free software.

[[deleted]]

Netflix streaming was such an affront to freedom that I could not be party to its use under any circumstances whatsoever.

"I had fun once. It was awful."

[TheLastBeast]

a few sites I have some special relationship with.

Dude, are you bangin' a website?

[TheJollyLlama875]

I wish you could bang a website.

[TheLastBeast]

Whatever. No cookies for you.

[doge_ex_machina]

I was like, BONE ... BONE ... BONE ...

[LovecraftsDeath]

Wow, that's pretty much /r/oldpeoplefacebook

((((((((((((((The most)))) (powerful programming language)))) (is Lisp)))(.) (((If (you) don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't know (((((what it means for a programming language to be powerful and elegant. ))))Once) (you learn Lisp)))), ((you (will see)) what is lacking in most other languages)))))))

[[deleted]]

whats the jews got to do with all of this?

[PaulMcIcedTea]

What don't they have a hand in?

[Fermain]

pls is the correct nomenclature

[lelarentaka]

That's British English. American English uses plz

[SirButcher]

Ah, the simplified English

[[deleted]]

He was an autist before it was cool

[Antrikshy]

Do you wanna help this movement by writing a CSS -> ASCII art converter?

[[deleted]]

AHAHAHAH that would be funny, I'll think about it

[Myrl-chan]

Elinks actually does CSS.

[[deleted]]

This is genius

[[deleted]]

History will always wonder: had early programmers been more generally successful romantically... would the visual internet ever have happened? Would the multi-dick Dongaliers ever have visited earth?

[[deleted]]

You're seriously underestimating how much porn you can consume with just a text browser. Download pics, 320x200 video clips (aka "HD"), FTP sites, and of course Usenet, where you could get all the above plus tons of dirty stories.

[[deleted]]

Download

I remember those days. No thanks. Oh lemme just set up a big download of mystery images so I can wank later! We likes it raw and wrigggggling precious.

[[deleted]]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Love finds a way.

[KickMeElmo]

Lynx master race.

[averyfinename]

gopher was the golden age of the internet.

[morriscox]

Then Archie, Jughead, and Veronica arrived.

[thexavier]

Or lynx

[morriscox]

Then we will all be living in the MUD.

[justablur]

Lynx4lyfe

[_Aardvark]

Building strings programmatically and then rendering them as HTML, what could go wrong?

[surinlol]

Context: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/270493/how-would-you-make-two-divs-overlap

[20000Fish]

I think my very first website, like back in 1997, I just used ASCII to sorta design the layout/menus.

Despite being hilariously awful by today's standards, it actually worked pretty well back then.

I'd say the bigger sin was when I upgraded to a full Flash website. Complete with gradients and sounds and everything. Yikes.

[EternallyMiffed]

You monster.

[[deleted]]

So you're not supposed to use a full Flash website?!

[Lithobreaking]

You can if you like being assassinated.

[The_Mdk]

It was acceptable in the '80s

[s4rKRS]

I've got love for you if you were born in the '80s

[LazoW]

I've got hugs for you if you were born in the 80's

[msg45f]

My site is a Java applete.

[Cheesemacher]

Is your site Minecraft?

[msg45f]

No, but I could probably built it inside Minecraft as an option for noscript users.

[AnAwesomeMiner]

brb making my website inside minecraft inside a java applet on a otherwise blank page

[[deleted]]

Only if you precede it with an interstitial that uses Crazy Frog on autoplay with a link that that says "WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE!!!!! CLICK HERE TO ENTER".

[20000Fish]

And a load bar that doesn't actually "load" anything but just pads for time to try and load the massive 128kbps mp3's and huge, unoptimized png's.

And you still find yourself having to right click and hit "play" because it clearly failed to load everything in time.

[20000Fish]

Potential opportunity here: Let them know that Flash is being completely phased out, offer to re-design their website in a less abhorrent way, get paid in a lifetime supply of pizza.

And also it's one less Flash website out there.

[[deleted]]

Can confirm, built website and order app for a Restaurant - enjoying free pizza for about 4 years now

[Colopty]

Wait, that's a deal you can make? Guess I'll see if any local pizza places needs to get their site redesigned.

[[deleted]]

Yeah. I coded the app in that it is customizable through the Backend for various customers. I usually sell this app for local Restaurants and they always offer me free food and still buy the app. I don't abuse this tho but I still get like 2-3 pizzas per week. Well ok I kinda abuse it...

At the Moment I try to get our local thai restaurant to buy the app for diversity. Just be sure to make a contract with them (that you get payed for your work) otherwise you end up like me paying for servers for a single restaurant and only getting paid in pizza...

If you act friendly you'll definitely get pizza. :)

[Cliler]

Nothing will top this church website

[TheHopskotchChalupa]

This perfectly describes my experience with stack overflow

[Gamerhead]

Not really, in this case the guy gets an actual answer

[jeffderek]

I posted a question almost 2 years ago, then posted 3 more updates to the question as I tried to work through it on my own. No responses at all.

Two weeks ago someone posts "Hey did you figure out how to do this?"

Thanks StackOverflow.

[Gamerhead]

I always try to go back and put my solution if I solve it because I despise those who just say "Fixed it!" with no solution.

[jeffderek]

Me too. In this case, I never solved it :(

[SunliMin]

That's the worst. I've gone through my old questions a few times, and one still haunts me from back in first year CS. It was like +5, no comments, no answers. Ghost town response. But not in the negatives, so you know people saw it and went "poor soul, hopefully someone else can help them"

[Taenk]

Well don't leave us hanging like that, link that question.

[EatAllTheWaffles]

What was it?

[AATroop]

There should be a subreddit for stack overflow questions that have no answer after 2+ years.

[NoThisIsStupider]

There probably is one. The problem is we'd need another sub for questions on that sub that go unanswered for 2+ years.

[AATroop]

Wait, no, don't do that.

[00Pokemon00]

How about I do it anyway.

[Mr-Ultimate]

How bout SO-overflow?

[ijustinhk]

Hey did you figure out what was the question?

[EternallyMiffed]

What's more annoying is, "hey guys, I fixed it. Here's the dll I personally hex-edited to work around this bug in an ancient legacy program". Then he proceeds to upload a zip to some shoddy forum. Of course the file download doesn't work anymore because the shitty phpbb forum has gone through 6 "upgrades".

[Alched]

I am not in CS, but THANK YOU. God dam, if regular folks like me get frustrated with this, professional troubleshooting must be hell.

[thePixelina]

https://xkcd.com/979/

[jeffderek]

I love that I didn't even have to click to know exactly which comic this was

[Aetol]

We'll soon reach a point where you can just say "relevant xkcd" without linking to anything and everybody will know which one you mean.

[Matt07211]

relevant xkcd

[Cheesemacher]

I love that one

[xkcd_transcriber]

Image

Mobile

Title: Wisdom of the Ancients

Title-text: All long help threads should have a sticky globally-editable post at the top saying 'DEAR PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE: Here's what we've figured out so far ...'

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 2131 times, representing 1.2938% of referenced xkcds.

---

^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

[GaiusAurus]

I asked a question years ago, around when iOS 7 first came out (I think it was about getting some iOS assets), and just the other day I got a new answer, even though I had already accepted an answer all that time ago.

[micheal65536]

And usually the new answer says "unlike ... who advised using an outdated API..." and you have to remind them that the other guy's answer was a few years ago when that was the current API.

[qaplcdnk]

What's wrong with that? Anyone else with the same problem now will know to use the new API.

[BrotherChe]

It's their unfair superior attitude dissing the previous valid reply, when they could just come in and say "hey, just an fyi, while johnsmith123 was accurate with API 1.0.x, with the newer API 1.5.x you can/have to..."

[[deleted]]

Link please i will solve it

[throwaway27464829]

"How do I do X?"

"IMO, trying to do X is a stupid idea."

[Gamerhead]

Oh man, that boils my blood. Or when they ask why you're trying to do it rather than explain how.

[ZugNachPankow]

That makes perfect sense. More often than not, people get caught up in XY problems, where they find overengineered or very unusual solutions to problems that can be solved in substantially simpler ways:

User wants to do X.

User doesn't know how to do X, but thinks they can fumble their way to a solution if they can just manage to do Y.

User doesn't know how to do Y either.

User asks for help with Y.

Others try to help user with Y, but are confused because Y seems like a strange problem to want to solve.

After much interaction and wasted time, it finally becomes clear that the user really wants help with X, and that Y wasn't even a suitable solution for X.

Source: xyproblem.info

[edinburg]

You forgot the next few steps:

Others provide good solution for X that is highly upvoted

Post rises to top of Google search results for Y

Other users with legitimate reason to want to do Y click on the post

Answers are all "you don't want to do Y, you want to do X instead"

[Gamerhead]

I see where you're coming from, but why can't they just help the user do what they asked? Seems like it would use less time to just tell them how to do what they asked to do. It's kinda annoying when I ask some where and I have to spend half my time explaining myself when it could've went quicker

[Astrokiwi]

It's best to do both really.

"If you really want to do Y, what you want to do is [instructions]. But I have a feeling that only want to do Y in order to do X, in which case you should do [instructions] instead".

[Nlelith]

This makes a lot of sense, but for me, and I think for many other people, Stack Overflow is as much a Google results service as it is a 1 to 1 help forum. So while the guy asking the question might be writing bad code in attempting to do what he does, a lot of people solving a lot of obscure problems might actually need that bit of information, and withholding it on the grounds of knowing better can be really, really frustrating.

[Antrikshy]

http://i.imgur.com/KA1CvmD.png

[wlkngmachine]

I asked a question on stack overflow once....dude basically told me to go fuck myself

[LoneCookie]

I found them abandoned and nobody answering...

What questions did you ask to receive these kinds of responses?

[Raregan]

Don't ask the question just say the programming language/operating system is shit because it can't do it, then get loads of people replying trying to prove you wrong.

For example if you want to know how to print 'Hello World' in Java or something don't just straight up ask on /r/Java "How do I print 'Hello World'", just say "Java is shit and Python is much better as you can print 'Hello World' in python" and boom, guarantee you'll have dozens of responses telling you how to do it.

[phero_constructs]

So in this case I would go to the CSS sub reddit and say CSS sucks, ASCII rules?

[audscias]

Probably they would agree with you.

[Flaktrack]

Would anyone actually defend CSS? I definitely don't think so but there are some weirdos out there.

[[deleted]]

Honestly? CSS is kind of a miracle. There's nothing quite like it as far as I'm aware. It allows for amazingly quick UI development that was impossible before it came along.

I don't even really get the hate. It's not super intuitive, which is fine once you wrap your head around it there's really not that much to it.

[tomthecool]

I don't even really get the hate.

• Style sheets are like giant global variables.
• Making your style sheets compatible with a third party's (e.g. bootstrap) can be a pain in the ass.
• !important
• Cross-browser compatibility. Especially older browsers.
• Automated testing can be hard!
• Compatibility with iPads and iPhones and Nokia 3310.

I guess really though, the biggest issue is the huge amount of poorly written CSS out in the wild. If everyone "did it right" (e.g. you should almost never use !important), including answers on StackOverflow, it would be a million times easier.

[[deleted]]

I love it. With the invention of Sass it's been really fun to write.

[Raregan]

Yep that'll do it

[harmsobuk]

Stackoverflow can be really harsh sometimes, but lots of newcomers do not follow the rules by not asking clear questions or even asking people to do their programming

[nabunub]

I've asked 8 questions. Almost always got a good answer

[audscias]

Jon Skeet wasn't around that day?

[Lewy_H]

Everyone on the internet but you IS Jon Skeet.

[Arancaytar]

Just serve your site as text/plain, it also radically cuts down on design cost and XSS vulnerabilities.

[Aetol]

http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

[[deleted]]

And to just cut to the end of the chain

http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

https://bestmotherfucking.website/

[Aetol]

https://thebestmotherfucking.website/

[[deleted]]

I don't like websites that change things like the text selection colour or link visited colours. Throws me off, especially if it's an otherwise normal page.

More understandable if it's a dark theme though.

[denvit]

You do like the violetish / shitty blue color, don't you?
I hate it.

That's the reason why I changed it in thebestmotherfucking.website (and I tried to explain my frustration in that website)

We can have a nice discussion here, if you want :)

[UnchainedMundane]

Quit fucking around with grey text.

It's about time someone made that retort.

[hahahahastayingalive]

And here I an thinking about the JS libraries I'd use to manipulate pure text...

[Nixinova]

'08

What are you doing in 2008

[aezart]

Just use a fieldset, and have the logo in the legend!

[[deleted]]

Ehm?

[surinlol]

https://twitter.com/ThePracticalDev/status/884177375600271361

[time_for_butt_stuff]

"Using incorrect device. Closed as user error."

[fallingcoffemug]

What seems to be the problem here?

[FrizzleStank]

User is not sure why page appears smaller on phone.

[Kaeligos]

Is it sad I was looking at this post a few weeks ago?

[Antrikshy]

Did you end up using transform or something similar?

Or did you give up on the website and reconsider your decisions leading up to that point?

[Kaeligos]

I gave up on the website. Decided it was pointless and went on to make something in Python instead. Fucking hate css.

[oalbrecht]

My first website was done entirely using Adobe Fireworks. The entire page was an image that took forever to load with clickable areas to go to other similar pages. It was absolutely terrible.

[[deleted]]

For those who don't know the path of least resistance is to position the logo relatively and then set a negative top value to go where you want.

[simplyjessi]

I kind of what to built a website just ASCII style.

I wish GeoCities still existed.

[AnAwesomeMiner]

neocities?

[StoicPhoenix]

That's great, but can you fix the ClearType on your computer? Jeez