Web Revival

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A movement focused on capturing the creativity and openness of the early Internet.

We aren't here to watch Big Web burn (we have plenty of communities for that) but to find positive ways we can make the Small Web better.

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The Gemini protocol, a lighter alternative to the web's HTTP (geminiprotocol.net)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by silverchase@sh.itjust.works to c/webrevival@lemm.ee

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The Gemini protocol is brutally simple, which makes it just about too useless for apps, tracking, and commercial purposes. Gemtext, the format for Gemini pages, is very basic; with about half as many features as markdown, it's barely a step above plain text. As a result, Gemini is a small universe of blogs and personal sites.

Its simplicity makes it easy for people to create compatible clients and services for it. It's self-hosting friendly and there are also hosting services, like smol.pub and some pubnixes.

Of course, you'll need to get a Gemini browser or visit a Gemini-to-web proxy to access it.

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[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I've been writing JavaScript for 10 years, the majority of that professionally. I have a formal education in computer science. In college, I wrote Java, assembly, C, Python, Lisp, Prolog, and SQL. Outside of school, I've written Go, Rust, Ruby, and probably dabbled in a bunch of others.

As someone that knows programming and that has learned JavaScript, I don't get the sense that people here have actually given JavaScript a fair chance. Sure, it’s not without its issues, but why don't you learn it and see?

Voyager, which I believe is the most popular Lemmy iOS client, is written in JavaScript. It's a fantastic app. There are a bunch of people that love hating on JS, but there are also a bunch of people that hate being locked into cloud services that can be shut down at any time. JavaScript allows you to build local-first apps that are less dependent on a server (obviously, backend is still a thing).

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Learn C++ or a modern high level language (not Java). You seem stuck in the old stuff which might be why you don't see the obvious flaws with js.

That a nice program is written in a language says nothing positive about the language IMO. Everything was written in old clunky languages at a certain point.

[–] moseschrute@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Lol isn’t C++ insanely bloated? Surely there are more modern languages. Like Zig maybe?

Also I mentioned I’ve written Rust and Go, which are pretty modern. I’d be interested in learning Zig if I had more time. As for the other languages, CS programs just use older languages, but it was more about learning the concepts like data structures.

But it’s very much a right tool for the right job. JavaScript is a very good tool for front end development. C++ is a very good tool for writing a rendering pipeline or doing signal processing (I’m guessing idk I haven’t tried doing that stuff).

But my original read in this thread was “JavaScript sucks” not “JavaScript sucks when you use it for the wrong task”. It doesn’t suck, but I agree don’t use it for the wrong task.