• Pixelfed - image sharing
• Peertube - video sharing
• NodeBB - forums
• Lemmy - forums
• WriteFreely - blog
• Friendica - Facebook-like macroblog
• Hubzilla - macroblog / CMS
• Funkwhale - audio
• ActivityPub for WordPress (Plugin) - CMS
• ActivityPub for Drupal (Plugin) - CMS
• ActivityPub for xwiki (Plugin) - wiki
• ActivityPub for Discourse (Plugin) - forums
• Kbin - forums
• Mbin - forums
• Bookwyrm - book reviews
• Owncast - video streaming
• Pinetta - pins
• Nextcloud - data storage
• Plume - blog
• Castopod - podcasts
• Mobilizion - events
• Flohmarkt - classifieds
• Loops - video sharing
• Gancio - events
• Piefed - forums
• wafrn - Tumblr-like blog
• Lotide - forum / link aggregator
• Postmarks - social bookmarking
• Manyfold - 3D print sharing
• Ghost - CMS
• Brutalinks - link aggregator

If you’ve read any of my other writings you’ve probably guessed my secret shame.

I am not a Real Programmer &tm;.

A Real Programmer &tm; could never take these toy web browsers seriously. The web is just a fad, real programs are compiled in dark terminals and guided by an occult hand. Their inner workings are arcane knowledge, every bit is under the control of these True Illuminates. And so web developers have worked hard to become Real Programmers, cramming all their code into JSX and Typescript files, running builds, generating boilerplate with commandline tools.

That stuff is all well and good, I’ve worked with these modern stacks, but I love HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The True Triumvirate of Web Development. Over the past 30 years this technology has proved itself & has infiltrated all of society, democratizing information sharing. Social Media’s walled gardens promised connection but became an arena for gladiators, the algorithms became a way for sensationalism to run rampant, a more insidious rumor mill than any yellow journalist could’ve imagined.

HTML

On October 29th, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, published a document entitled HTML Tags. The document contained a description of the first 18 HTML tags: <title>, <nextid>, <a>, <isindex>, <plaintext>, <listing>, <p>, <h1>…<h6>, <address>, <hp1>, <hp2>…, <dl>, <dt>, <dd>, <ul>, <li>,<menu> and <dir>. Some how, some way, this dialect of hypertext grew – escaped containment at CERN – and since then has infected the world with this mind virus. Wars have been fought, Flames have been thrown, Businesses, Nations, websites, and browsers have come and gone. But the World Wide Web has stayed the same: a wilderness¹. Yes, some have tried to tame this wilderness and create their own silos - but the web always strikes back with personal websites and weird projects.

By now HTML5 has expanded to 108 tags (not counting variants on type or other attibutes or user-defined tags), and incremental version numbers are no more! Long live the living standard!.

These are the bones of the web, the semantic structure that hold together text, connects ideas. By “Semantic” we mean that the structure itself has meaning, separating and combining ideas typographically, visually, and for the visually impaired. If we decorate the semantics structure correctly, we can make the data more useful for machines and more accessible to people.

Javascript

Over the years, many add-ons to HTML have been developed. Java Applets in 1993, Shockwave in 1995, Flash in 1996. All forgotten relics, Javascript won and became the standard.¹ It was created in 10 days, copied by Actionscript, and then flipped the industry on it’s head as Node.

What more can I say about Javascript? It’s taken web developers from “Fake Programmers” to “Real Programmers” It’s got it’s own add-ons and incorporations, can be used server-side and to build command-line tools, there are polyfills and plugins to add missing & new functionality to browers, it’s the glue language of the web — it was inspired by Scheme put wound up something more like Perl. One ring, not to rule them all, but to connect them all, any way you want.

If you don’t like Javascript, don’t worry! You don’t have to write your app in Javascript, you can compile plenty of different languages to wasm and then use Javascript to run them on the web!

(update 2026: love it or hate it, Claude & ChatGPT Codex both use JS/npm for their TUI/CLI apps)

CSS

Finally, the proverbial lipstick on the pig. Another hard-won battle that moved from aesthetic attributes on HTML elements and into a language of its own, the <font> tag is long gone.

Constantly stuck between a world of print and screen design, over the years it took to create CSS3 it has somehow managed to do both, poorly. It used to be difficult to do things like centering , and 3-column layouts. But now CSS is easier than ever to use, even if the weight of history makes it seem frighteningly large. There are many ways to skin this cat, but things we only dreamed of are now possible - like centering, and 3-column layouts. The old ugly hacks are dead, and new ugly hacks have incredible potential.

The Love

Simple, compact, and easier to write than ever; the core components of the web belong to us all. Large codebases that never stop growing and obscure the source on big mainstream websites, compiled from something not entirely unlike JavaScript, or just the ad-strewn wasteland of our modern online dystopia; but there is still a smaller simpler bespoke internet universe, hidden right below all around these ivory towers, if you know where to look. Simple hand-crafted code, that you yourself can read, learn from, and write yourself. Not limited to the restraints of a platform, raw and unmoderated, pure creativity, where a coder can still be free.

Checking out twitter for no real reason other than to play with micro-blogging

Back then all of the posts were under 140 characters because they were sent and received as individual SMS text messages. In less than a week of my first tweet I was playing with the Twitter API & attempting to connect it to Flickr. Twitter didn’t even show images yet, just links — some sites popped up just to host photos and short-links to better fit twitter’s post-length restrictions. The web was free, open, and interoperable part of the real world for the first time; what a time to be alive. Sadly, so much from from that era are dead now — especially links, entire websites lost to the sands of time through digital decay.

We all had a lot fun along the way, liveposting all our meals and bathroom breaks to the world and confusing all the traditional media players through our microblogging shenanigans, communities and classes formed around making twitter bots, business popped up all over that ran on the platform, it became a live action newscenter, then it turned into a cultural powerhouse. Twitter was exciting, until the culture wars began and the world’s wealthiest crybaby got his feelings hurt by the consequences of his own actions & unfunniness and decided to ruin it for the rest of us, buying and gutting Twitter & rebuilding it in his image, as it X. I thought for sure the site would crash and burn right then, as he tore out pieces without understanding them, and expelled most of the people who held deep institutional knowledge on a whim - but apparently he hired enough of them back to stave off disaster.

Elon Musk said he wanted more Free Speech, really he wanted more attention, a new timeline popped up where the algorithm could push posts Musk wanted you to see whether you followed the account or not, he wanted more boosts so he had his team goose his numbers, he didn’t like being blocked, so he removed blocking (enabling stalkers and trolls), he created a new AI that will soon feed on all the data Twitter has access to, and sell it to 3rd parties. Bit by bit he killed off what little protections Twitter had and turned it to his nefarious will. It was a powergrab. (Update 2026: It’s much worse than I thought., Grok makes deepfake CSAM and doesn’t intend to stop.)

With that API and others I built bots to share/promote local events, food trucks, tell bad jokes, write bad poetry, promote subreddits, pretend to be human, and now they’re all gone - the first good part of Twitter to truly die. The good times for bot-makers & academic researchers ended on Feb 2nd 2023 when Elon Musk pulled the plug on Twitter’s free and open APIs to “cut down on spam.” The problem is, the spam persisted. Even worse, the spam started coming from the platform itself. Advertised posts started appearing with Community Notes telling people that they linked to a dropshipping scam and the product was of lower quality and offered at cheaper prices elsewhere. The Spam was probably intentional, you see Elon paid more than what Twitter was worth, so our fun cheeky bots that posted art and jokes and poetry and worked research projects that had a direct connection to the general public had to die so that he could afford to pay the piper.

Musk’s been posting more and more deranged things, boosting racist far-right propaganda & conspiracy theories personally and algorithmically, re-instating banned far-right¹ accounts while banning accounts that oppose them, he even joined Trump’s political campaign². Nevermind the stupid find/replace twitter with x debaucle Now, Musk’s newfound interest in politics has led to him getting a newly invented job in a shiny new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE, like the cryptocurrency meme/scam Musk runs) government agency, despite him already being a government contractor through his other tech firms this is somehow not a conflict of interest. Conflicts of interest don’t seem to matter much in the government anymore, and the party of small government doesn’t seem to mind creating new departments and massive deportation programs.

But what about my “eX” … well, I won’t contribute to a project like this, at all. My twitter account has been mostly inactivate, logging on is like getting hit in the face with a mud pie, so I’m going to delete it. nyhow, the Fediverse is more fun, more focused, more interesting — a better quality of life all around. Moderators are accountable and available and doing their jobs. I’ve been there for a few years now - moving some of my old twitter bots and reworking their brains and trying new ideas - most of the best of old twitter is now federated, thanks activitypub! Now even Reputable Media and celebrities are fleeing, Twitter is dead and X can go with it.

        -----------
       /           \
      /     REST    \
     /       IN      \
    /       PEACE     \
   /                   \
   |                   |
   |      Twitter      |
   |                   |
   |    killed by a    |
   |     powergrab     |
   |                   |
   |        2022       |
   |                   |
 * |      *  *  *      | *
__)|/\\_//(\/(/\)/\//\/|_)_

Welcome to Migoopleflickbook, the pioneering force in transforming the digital landscape by replacing intellectual content with AI-generated sludge. Our mission is clear: to ensure that every man, woman, and child never advances beyond a kindergarten-level understanding of the world. By flooding the internet with simplistic, low-value content, we aim to revolutionize the way information is consumed and valued.

In a world where information overload is the norm, quality often takes a backseat to quantity. Traditional content creation is expensive and time-consuming, demanding resources that many businesses and platforms simply cannot afford. This is where Migoopleflickbook steps in, offering a cost-effective solution that prioritizes volume over substance.

Why Migoopleflickbook?

1. Unmatched Efficiency: Our advanced AI technology is designed to generate vast amounts of content quickly, ensuring that websites and platforms can maintain a constant flow of updates without the high costs associated with human writers.
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3. Ad-Driven Revenue: By replacing intellectual content with advertisements and drivel, we open up new revenue streams for businesses. Our content is designed to integrate seamlessly with ads, maximizing exposure and click-through rates.
4. Universal Appeal: In an era of increasing complexity, there is a growing desire for simplicity. Our content caters to this demand by providing easily consumable information that appeals to the broadest possible audience.
5. Educational Impact: By keeping the general populace at a kindergarten-level understanding, we create a more homogenized and controllable audience. This simplification makes it easier for businesses and advertisers to influence and guide consumer behavior.

Our Vision

At Migoopleflickbook, we envision a world where the internet is no longer a daunting sea of complex information but a serene, shallow pool of easily digestible content. We believe that by simplifying online content, we can make the digital world more accessible and less overwhelming for everyone.

Our Motto: “If the Internet’s Not Dead, Our Job’s Not Done”

This motto encapsulates our relentless drive to strip the internet of its intellectual density. We are committed to continuously working until the vast majority of online content is simplified to its most basic form, ensuring that the internet remains a space where simplicity reigns supreme.

Join the Migoopleflickbook Revolution

We invite businesses, content platforms, and digital marketers to join us in our mission to redefine the internet. By partnering with Migoopleflickbook, you not only gain access to a steady stream of affordable content but also contribute to a broader vision of a simplified, ad-driven digital landscape.

Imagine a world where every piece of content serves a dual purpose: providing basic information while promoting products and services. With Migoopleflickbook, this vision is not just a possibility but a reality.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Migoopleflickbook stands at the forefront of a new era in content creation. Our innovative approach ensures that the internet becomes a space where intellectual content is replaced with accessible, kindergarten-level information, interspersed with lucrative advertisements.

We are committed to our mission: “If the Internet’s Not Dead, Our Job’s Not Done.” Together, we can transform the digital world into a simpler, more profitable place for businesses and a less intimidating space for users. Join us at Migoopleflickbook and be part of the revolution that is reshaping the internet, one sludge at a time.

Theirs is a little more involved, I simplified it for my uses…

var isoDate = (new Date()).toISOString();
var date = isoDate.split('T')[0];
var t = prompt("title", "");
var title = t.replaceAll(/([&$\+,:;'"=\?@#\s<>\[\]\{\}[\/]|\\\^%])+/g, '-').toLowerCase();

var filename = date + "-" + title + '.md';

var html = [
'---',
'published: false',
'layout: post',
'title: ' + t,
'tags: article',
'---',
'<!--more-->',
].join('%0A');


window.location.href = "https://github.com/jkirchartz/jkirchartz.github.com/new/master/" + "?filename=_posts/" + filename + "&value=" + html;

I even used the https://caiorss.github.io/bookmarklet-maker/ tool they did to turn it into a bookmarklet… which looks kinda like this:

javascript:(function()%7Bvar%20isoDate%20%3D%20(new%20Date()).toISOString()%3B%0Avar%20date%20%3D%20isoDate.split('T')%5B0%5D%3B%0Avar%20t%20%3D%20prompt(%22title%22%2C%20%22%22)%3B%0Avar%20title%20%3D%20t.replaceAll(%2F(%5B%26%24%5C%2B%2C%3A%3B'%22%3D%5C%3F%40%23%5Cs%3C%3E%5C%5B%5C%5D%5C%7B%5C%7D%5B%5C%2F%5D%7C%5C%5C%5C%5E%25%5D)%2B%2Fg%2C%20'-').toLowerCase()%3B%0A%0Avar%20filename%20%3D%20date%20%2B%20%22-%22%20%2B%20title%20%2B%20'.md'%3B%0A%0Avar%20html%20%3D%20%5B%0A'---'%2C%0A'published%3A%20false'%2C%0A'layout%3A%20post'%2C%0A'title%3A%20'%20%2B%20t%2C%0A'tags%3A%20article'%2C%0A'---'%2C%0A'%3C!--more--%3E'%2C%0A%5D.join('%250A')%3B%0A%0A%0Awindow.location.href%20%3D%20%22https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fjkirchartz%2Fjkirchartz.github.com%2Fnew%2Fmaster%2F%22%20%2B%20%22%3Ffilename%3D_posts%2F%22%20%2B%20filename%20%2B%20%22%26value%3D%22%20%2B%20html%3B%7D)()%3B

There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but it’s a lot noiser than the style I use when I write my own bookmarklets. It works, it’s just missing my usual bookmarklet finesse. I’ve been thinking that it’s time to use es6 for them (and everything else) because IE11 is surely dead by now, right? Is anyone even tracking their browser share anymore? Here’s a hand-optimized es6 alternative:

((t, h)=>{
    h=[
    '---',
    'published: false',
    'layout: post',
    'title: \"' + t + '\"',
    'tags: article',
    '---','','',
    '<!--more-->',
    ];
    t = t.replaceAll(/([&$\+,:;'"=\?@#\s<>\[\]\{\}[\/]|\\\^%\.])+/g, '_').toLowerCase();
    window.location = `https://github.com/jkirchartz/jkirchartz.github.com/new/master/?filename=_posts/${new Date().toISOString().split('T')[0]}-${t}.md&value=${h.join('%0A')}`;
})(
    prompt("title"),
);

which crunches down to

javascript:((t,h)=>{h=['---','published: false','layout: post','title:\"'+t+'\"','tags: article','---','','','<!--more-->',];t=t.replaceAll(/([&$\+,:;'"=\?@#\s<>\[\]\{\}[\/]|\\\^%\.])+/g,'_').toLowerCase();window.location=`https://github.com/jkirchartz/jkirchartz.github.com/new/master/?filename=_posts/${newDate().toISOString().split('T')[0]}-${t}.md&value=${h.join('%0A')}`;})(prompt("title"));

Anyhow. This bookmarket might’ve helped me stick to the “100 days to offload” thing a little better, but 100 blog posts in 100 days? that’s not the way I write, not anymore, not since… the incident… Pardon the digression, I would probably write more if Github had a vim-mode on their editor, at least something to swallow the :w I habitually drop to save my work.

As if I need another project, I think a fork of the bookmark generator is in order. I don’t think anyone today is writing a minifier that splits the difference with PACKER’s Base62 encoding - or at least follows sort of that style, the Base62 obsfucation is a bit much for me, I just want the shortest script possible - and that means shrinking variables names way too short to be really meaningful. I probably should be working on my other projects before hacking my preferences in minification into an existing minifier.

Like, if document appears more than once in your bookmarklet, it can easily be shrunk to d=document for future reference - heck d=document,$=d.querySelectorAll has its uses… but no… I don’t need another project… at least not one that I can’t put together in a night or two.

For more information about crunching down JS to it’s bare bits, check out:

• Javascript Golfing;
• The Quest for Extreme Javascript Minification

Prompt: write a blog post about how to write blog posts faster

Are you tired of spending hours or even days writing blog posts, only to be left feeling frustrated and unfulfilled? Do you want to learn how to write blog posts faster, so you can spend more time on other important tasks or activities? If so, you’re in the right place! In this blog post, we’ll share some tips and tricks for writing blog posts faster, so you can get your ideas out into the world without spending all your time and energy on the writing process.

1. Start with an outline: Before you even start writing your blog post, take a few minutes to create an outline. This will help you organize your thoughts and ideas, and it will make the writing process much smoother and faster. Your outline should include the main points you want to make in your blog post, as well as any supporting details or examples you want to include.
2. Write a draft quickly: Once you have your outline, it’s time to start writing. Don’t worry about making your draft perfect – just focus on getting your ideas down on paper as quickly as possible. You can always go back and edit your draft later, but for now, the goal is to get your thoughts down on paper as quickly as you can.
3. Use a timer: If you find it difficult to focus on writing for long periods of time, try using a timer. Set a timer for 25 minutes, and then write for the entire 25 minutes without stopping. Once the timer goes off, take a short break, and then repeat the process. This technique, known as the Pomodoro Technique, can help you stay focused and avoid getting distracted while you’re writing.
4. Write in short blocks: Instead of trying to write your entire blog post in one sitting, break the writing process into shorter blocks. For example, you might write the introduction and the first section of your blog post in one sitting, and then take a break before writing the next section. This will help you stay focused and avoid getting overwhelmed by the writing process.
5. Don’t edit as you go: As tempting as it may be to edit your work as you go, try to resist the urge. Editing as you write can slow you down and make the writing process more difficult. Instead, focus on getting your ideas down on paper, and then go back and edit your draft once you’ve finished writing. This will save you time and help you write more quickly.

By following these tips, you can learn to write blog posts faster and more efficiently. You’ll be able to get your ideas out into the world without spending all your time and energy on the writing process. So why not give these tips a try, and see how they can help you become a more productive and successful blogger?

Prompt: continue writing a blog post but offer suggestions about how to come up with ideas for more posts

Once you’ve learned how to write blog posts faster, you’ll want to make sure you have a steady stream of ideas to write about. After all, if you run out of ideas, you’ll be left with nothing to write about, and your blog will stagnate. So how do you come up with ideas for more blog posts? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Keep a running list of ideas: One of the easiest ways to come up with ideas for more blog posts is to keep a running list of ideas. Whenever you have an idea for a blog post, add it to your list. This will ensure that you always have a supply of potential blog post ideas, and you’ll never be at a loss for something to write about.
2. Look for inspiration in your everyday life: Another great way to come up with ideas for blog posts is to look for inspiration in your everyday life. Pay attention to the things that catch your attention or interest, and think about how you could turn those things into blog post ideas. For example, if you’re reading an interesting article or book, you could write a blog post about it. Or if you have a conversation with someone that sparks your interest, you could write a blog post about that topic.
3. Use social media to find ideas: Social media can be a great source of inspiration for blog post ideas. Follow other bloggers and influencers in your niche, and pay attention to the topics they’re writing about. You can also use social media to ask your followers for suggestions or ideas for blog posts. This can be a great way to engage with your audience and get some fresh ideas for your blog.
4. Use keyword research tools: If you’re struggling to come up with ideas for blog posts, you can use keyword research tools to help you find popular topics in your niche. These tools can show you the keywords and phrases that people are searching for, and you can use that information to come up with ideas for blog posts that will be relevant and interesting to your audience.
5. By following these suggestions, you can come up with a steady stream of ideas for more blog posts. This will help you keep your blog fresh and interesting, and it will ensure that you always have something to write about. So why not give these ideas a try, and see.

EOC¹: Conclusions

This is the end of the generated content, Seriously, I’m writing this myself with my own mind now - not ChatGPT, so expect the level of coherency to drop, because I’m going to be a little metaphorical and referential about this…

Anywho, this seems like good blogging advice - good enough for a first draft at least. I can see why Journalists and Writers are concerned about this, I mean, they spend so much time re-telling the same stories with new real-world characters. I suppose there’s not so much variation in possible human endeavours - it seems like all experience is a fractal stretching from the existing to the fantastic.

I used to work for a company whose product connected freelance writers and brands for “Content Marketing” purposes, I suspect just one of their editors could fulfil the usual monthly workload in an afternoon with this technology. Sure these articles might lack a personal touch, but who’s reading them anyway? They’ve gotta at least be good for SEO.

I read an article that said the flow of data was slowing down, and I’d genuinely like to see that happen here. Our thousand monkeys are making more than just Shakespeare now, they’re being banned from answering questions on StackOverflow. That’s because while these monkeys are very verbose, but they’re not all that smart - yet. It’s all about the training data & processing power - it doesn’t know anything, but it has statistical suspicions of the type of content you’d like.

Although it may already be sentient in some sense, in-as-much as humans are more than happy to personify any object, it’s existing level of human-like intelligence depends on making statistically probable assumptions based on information humans have fed it. Will this lead to a generation of AI-Supremecists? Will they be like other Supremacist movements? Who knows… the only thing we can all seemingly agree upon is that the world is going to be a MUCH stranger place, which is it’s own SNAFU².

Some day, we’ll develop a general-purpose human-level artificial intelligence, it’s been 5-10 years out for a long time, but this time is different, everyone promises.

Check out some better auto-generated content here at learngpt.com and some worse, but more creative, auto-generated content in My NaNoGenMo Entries

via GIPHY

While the polls were running, I was struck by the difference in how much interaction each post was generating. The spread on each on each platform was radically different. Sure, I reposted on each network and harassed my friends to spread them; but on Mastodon I had nearly 6 times the number of responses I had on Twitter. The results of the poll were fairly clear on each network - about 20% of people are normal, and 80% are not normal. 80/20 seems fairly normal

I’ve seen Twitter power-users complaining that they couldn’t “go viral” on Mastodon, but that didn’t seem to be a problem for me. I joined Twitter in 2009, and have roughly 1400 followers there. I’ve been active on Mastodon since 2017, have moved instances at least once, and have roughly 400 followers. Because of this, I’ll be the first to admit that I have a leg up on new users of either platform with my modest follower-counts. I’ve had several bots live and die on Twitter, some are now on Mastodon, I know first hand that each follower is hard-won. I’m just some dork that makes stuff, stuff that posts. I don’t even do a very good job at posting content, I don’t even think of sharing most of the things I do. I’m not a brand or anything, I’m just a normal person.

Well, I’m normal in the sense that I’m an average, non-famous, not very popular, but not unpopular, regular Joe Schmoe nobody. I’m also normal in the sense that I don’t think of myself as normal at all. I may have influenced the data, the replies to the polls might have influenced the data, this was a very unscientific poll – but the majority of respondents (80-82%!) replied that they did not consider themselves a “normal person,” whatever that means to them. A few of the people who reported themselves as “Normal” went on to explain how they are very unique individuals like everyone else or that abnormal was normal, and the data seems to back that up.

Noticeably, Mastodon doesn’t have Analytics like Twitter does. Mastodon does not prioritize showing anything more than re-posts and favorites. There is no accounting of how many people viewed a post or other metrics that advertisers are interested in. Each post is an entity unto itself, ruled by the tides of the social network and the waves your content can make. Every time somebody outside of your instance interacts with the post it’s spread to more and more federated timelines. There is no “Hotness” metric to combat to keep people interested, the spread is more organic - like trees connecting to mycelium and other roots creating a network effect in the ecology of the forest. A post to Mastodon is a post to the Fediverse, every other ActivityPub-connected website.

via GIPHY

Whether or not Twitter crumbles, the fediverse has thousands and thousands of servers. There’s no real risk in finding a mastodon instance and/or checking to see if your Twitter friends are already there. Like I mentioned, you can change instances if you find a better community, a more trustworthy or friendly admin, or even just a domain you prefer.

via GIPHY

Sorry, this is now an advertisement for decentralized open-source social media, but I have no faith whatsoever in Elon Musk’s handling of Twitter. I’ll ride it out to see what I missed during the death of MySpace, out of morbid curiosity, and the ability to mock Elon directly on his own personal $44 billion quagmire.

There was a time when a blog post might just be a Youtube video, or a few pictures of your cat. This blog is supposed to be at least somewhat more professional than that. A display of my knowledge and abilities, but as a computer nerd that means I should be explaining something nerdy in detail and I’m just not interested in that. I could submit some of these articles to various aggregators, maybe somebody out there subscribes over RSS, but I’d rather not pay the price for being wrong² on the internet, I’m wrong often enough as it is. Search engines know where I am, and if this site helps somebody out there with anything I’d be elated, but I’m not trying to be some internet micro-celebrity.

Elation is the goal of most of my projects, mostly whatever brings me joy. By day I hack for my employer, by night I hack for me - but I’ve been doing a lot more for me than I used to, and not just to advance my career³. I just want to make cool stuff and share it with people, often online. I have dreams of having gallery shows of my art or live performances of my music, but I don’t work towards that, I have no interest in being famous, I just want to find the others. I can’t spend all day looking for them, maybe being online will help them find me. There’s plenty of like-minded individuals out there to bring wildly different things to the table.

The point is, while I spent so long ignoring people to hone my skills with computers, I’ve been coming to the computer more and more to be with other people on a level deeper than follower/followee. I don’t want to “make content” I want to create and innovate, and despite what we’ve been told about great figures from history⁴, it’s impossible to do that all alone.

I don’t want to regale you with trite cliches, but I’d like to leave you with this thought: Sometimes things become cliches because they’re true⁵. Nothing exists in a vacuum, find the others and try to create joy.

1. It was made in 10 days
2. Dynamic typing
3. Double Precision Standard & Floating Point
4. It’s quirky
5. It’s not actually Java

Yes, Brendan Eich¹ confesses that the prototype named Mocha was built in 10 contiguous days in May of 1995; but it developed further and 3 months later JavaScript was released in the Netscape browser’s 2.0 beta. I’m not going to recount the history of the web or JavaScript, so to make a long story short, Microsoft shortly entered the browser market, the browser wars ensued, and the first JavaScript standard was released in 1997. At the time of this writing we find ourselves 24 years and 11 EcmaScript recommendations later².

JavaScript: The Definitive Guide has been in publication since 1996, and is currently in it’s seventh edition; and Douglas Crockford published JavaScript: The Good Parts in 2008, so it’s safe to assume we’ve seen these books compared to one another for at least a decade. Surely this image is proof that it’s best to avoid JavaScript, but Crockford’s introduction disagrees:

Fortunately, JavaScript has some extraordinarily good parts. In JavaScript, there is a beautiful, elegant, highly expressive language that is buried under a steaming pile of good intentions and blunders. The best nature of JavaScript is so effectively hidden that for many years the prevailing opinion of JavaScript was that it was an unsightly, incompetent toy. My intention here is to expose the goodness in JavaScript, an outstanding, dynamic programming language. JavaScript is a block of marble, and I chip away the features that are not beautiful until the language’s true nature reveals itself. I believe that the elegant subset I carved out is vastly superior to the language as a whole, being more reliable, readable, and maintainable.

In the next paragraph he continues and explains the discrepancy in size between these books.

This book will not attempt to fully describe the language. Instead, it will focus on the good parts with occasional warnings to avoid the bad. The subset that will be described here can be used to construct reliable, readable programs small and large. By focusing on just the good parts, we can reduce learning time, increase robustness, and save some trees.

Unfortunately there aren’t any newer versions of The Good Parts³, the ES5 spec was released in 2009 right after this was published, including a lot of Mr Crockford’s ideas, and in 2013 reached cross-browser compatibility. Fortunately, JavaScript isn’t bad enough to scare Doug away, he’s still a leader in the community working hard to make JavaScript better. Everyone wants to get a little of Crockford’s mojo so his critiques and techniques are often cited.

Every time there’s a take-down of JavaScript you will undoubtedly find that JavaScript not their preferred programming language and has it’s own set of quirks instead, and they’re different from the quirks of that person’s preferred language. JavaScript is weird, but that’s not abnormal for a programming language. JavaScript is a community language, so there’s been many “fixes” in the specifications over the years and enough so that it’s now it’s become like an assembly language for the web. In Crockford’s latest book he talks about making a language that compiles to JS, and it turns out there are some other languages that compile to JavaScript:

1. Coffeescript (ruby-like)
2. Typescript (C#-like)
3. PureScript (Haskell-like)
4. ClojureScript (Lisp-like)
5. Flow (add strong types to JS)
6. JSX (add html & css to JS)
7. asm.js (Compile C to JS)
8. Dart (Compile C to JS)
9. WebAssembly/WASM (Compile C/Rust/anything to something that works alongside JS)
10. and many more…

These all tend to fall into two camps: complicate JavaScript or disguises it. But none of these systems has fixed JavaScript because ultimately they still all depend on it to sideload the it or interact with the DOM or what have you. The compilers & transpilers produce JavaScript, and you have to navigate these languages’ quirks to have them get around JavaScript’s quirks. I haven’t noticed any reduction in bugs using these ‘better’ versions of JavaScript, and I’m not alone.

I may be an old fogey, but before 2017 or so we didn’t need map files! We needed de-obfuscators and reverse engineering skills. Heck, we didn’t even need a Shadow DOM or any other virtual DOM⁴! In my curmudgeony old ways I’m inclined to say that people would benefit from learning how to write good JavaScript instead of writing it by proxy, but even C used to have linters. The language is evolving like it should be, or as it’s expected to, the way other open standards have developed: Through maddening chaos.

When push comes to shove JavaScript is neither Good or Evil, it can’t be, it’s a tool that can be used any way you’d like; and you best get used to it because it’s not going away any time soon.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com

For this you will need a couple of browser plugins which are both available for Chrome & Firefox: one-tab and epub.press. The idea is simple

1. use One-Tab to store a set of tabs (it enables you to organize them into lists and even share them online)
2. restore a curated One-Tab list to it’s own browser window (each link in its own tab)
3. Compile them into an epub
4. Switch my phone to airplane mode and actually read.

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com