I would consider renaming it so people don't think it's AI
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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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.
Elsewhere in the Fediverse:
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Gemini protocol: 2019, Gemini crap machine: 2023. Google can change the name if they want.
Well yes but good luck.
The swastika was around wayy before the nazis started using it! They should change!!
What if that's what the corpos want?
"Oh it's the Tiniverse protocol now? Well check out Apple's new Tiniverse microblogging product!"
I think you're AI, maybe you should rename yourself.
In order to be artificial intelligence you need to be both artificial and intelligent, and I truthfully am neither
On the plus side, it appears at least you are honest!
You can just scrap the protocol and serve plaintext, or with just basic html tags like bold , links etc if you want to, works with any navigator.
What is the benefit of using a special navigator?
I'm asking because I think the idea kind of neat, and I'm working on something similar.
Because it was designed on purpose to not even have the ability to be enshittified. No scripting engine, on purpose -- no popup ads. No cookies, no tracking.
Things that were originally thought as good things to add to the browser in retrospect have been abused so much, it's better to not have them available for mis-use.
The issue is the structures motivating companies to enshittify. Not the technology. Blame late stage capitalism not JavaScript.
I will never NOT blame JavaScript for ANYTHING
You know JavaScript allows websites to be more local first, right? Apps that would otherwise require a server to handle a lot of the rendering logic. Sure, you can wish we had a front-end scripting language other than JavaScript, but modern JavaScript is pretty good actually. There’s been a ton of work by browsers to optimize performance, and TypeScript has made shipping JavaScript with confidence much easier. Facebook has made it possible with Hermes to ship bite code pre-compiled JavaScript. The entire JavaScript tool chain is currently being rewritten to Rust and Go for massive speed increases. I’ve been writing JavaScript for a decade, and it used to suck. It’s a wonderful time to write JavaScript.
I know what JavaScript is.
I'm saying any language could perform the same function.
My issue is with the design of the language and its gargbage feature set.
What would you change about JavaScript? Like specific language features you don’t like. Not general statements.
Try to learn it and you'll see!
At least if you know programming beforehand.
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).
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.
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.
Types?
Edit:
For clarity, consider all the shit an actual real production scenario demands of layering on library after library and framework after fucking framework to make it usable.
Nobody even USES "JavaScript", they use like 7 layers to try and turn it into a production ready environment.
Why.
Because JavaScript sucks.
Look at what they need to mimic a fraction of what other languages come with out of the box.
TypeScript solves most of your type issues. Zod gives you runtime enforcement of those types if you want, if you can stomach installing a library. But it’s true it’s not actually a statically typed language with built-in runtime enforcement of types. I hope in the next 5-10 years we see browsers that are able to run TypeScript with both runtime enforcement and performance benefits from using actual static typing. But IMO TypeScript is good enough solving most of the type problems with JavaScript.
You’re welcome to use as many or as few libraries as you want. There are tons of JavaScript libraries, and some of those libraries have way too many dependencies. But if you cut through the noise, there are actually a lot of high-quality libraries that don’t have an absurd number of dependencies and bring a lot of value.
JavaScript is by no means perfect, but I think it’s become trendy to hate on it. Every language has its issues. JavaScript has done an amazing job outgrowing many of its problems. Growth has brought new problems, but I’ve been writing JS/TypeScript for 10 years, and would not like to go back to JS 10 years ago. It kind of sucked compared to today.
This
Thanks. I’m building my own Lemmy client and I’m leaning very heavily on JavaScript 😅, but it’s 100% local first, only depending on the Lemmy API.
I’d love to see support for the protocol baked into the big browsers.
I really think we missed an opportunity to have an app:// protocol back in the ’00s instead of trying to kludge HTML into being software.
Browsers could totally do multiple protocols. I think ftp:// and gopher:// still works on most of them.
Used to -- I think both ftp:// and gopher:// have been removed by the big browsers (eg Chrome and Firefox).
Can't have competing standards that might let us avoid ads now, can we?
B-but think of the golden parachute the Mozilla CEO can get!
This is a good question that's often asked about Gemini. The creator addresses this in a part of the FAQ: Why not just use a subset of HTTP and HTML?
Personally, I find Gemini nice because its utter basicness guarantees that there's no room for the kind of bullshit you might find on the web. Sure, you and some other nerds could make a "friendly HTML" club, but participation is voluntary and there's no way to enforce the rules to keep the pages simple. And how would you know what sites are "friendly" just by looking at the hyperlink? Gemini creates a universe where sites have to be "friendly"; there is no other way.
Fair enough! Good points actually.
What I have seen with concepts like this is that's infuriatingly hard to start. I tried getting on the rss bandwagon for example and it's just not very user friendly IMO. Is there for example a Gemini search engine?
Will FF display a Gemini page as text only?
Where do you hang out and exchange links 😁 ?
Is there for example a Gemini search engine?
Yes. Two, actually (that I know of).
- gemini://tlgs.one
- gemini://kennedy.gemi.dev
Will FF display a Gemini page as text only?
Firefox doesn't directly support Gemini, but you can view pages through a proxy like portal.mozz.us. Gemtext, the standard page format, has basic formatting syntax, and yes, it's text only. There's no mechanism for embedding images in pages - the best you can do is just link to them. In this one popular client, Lagrange, clicking on a link to an image displays it under that link, but other clients handle image links differently.
Where do you hang out and exchange links 😁 ?
I just lurk and read gemlogs (of course they can't be called blogs, that's short for web log!). There are sites with feeds of latest gemlog posts, and many sites that offer Gemini hosting have a list of recently updated pages. There are some minimal social networks, too. The front page of portal.mozz.us has a few links to these kinds of spots.
Why not both? There are bridges that automatically convert and serve Gemtext to simple HTML for "regular" browsers.
In a similar manner, I wrote a set of scripts that takes gemtext source and creates both Gemini pages (by adding headers and footers) and static HTML pages (same but with some web-specific niceties - CSS, even JS snippets)
(And yes, I really enjoy gemtext markup for its simplicity)
geocities
snapshot of IE
Memory unlocked.
Maaaaan I tried to like Gemini but it's all over the place being a "worse Gopher" of sorts. Not that I wouldn't adopt it if it garnered more attention, but I feel like it's made for pubishing "yellow pages", not actual content.