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How Not to Write FORTRAN in Any Language
gManZboy writes "In an article that's sure to p/o Fortran programmers, Donn Seeley has assembled a rant that posits there are characteristics of good coding that transcend all programming languages, except Fortran. Seriously though, his point is that early FORTRAN made coding ugly. Thus the joke 'Don't write FORTRAN' was applied to anyone with ugly code. Though Fortran has in recent years overcome its early challenges, the point -- 'Don't write FORTRAN' (i.e. ugly stuff) -- still applies."
The whole idea of hypertext is that you have documents brought together by links. You use links to make connections to related works on your site or others. But it is not useful to break up a single short document artificially into "pages", as if it were a print publication, and link them together.
Using "pages" decreases the chance that a person will actually read what you have to say. Worse, when your server is under load, using "pages" may decrease the chance that they are able to read it: if they load the first page and then go to get the second, it takes some time (which is, remember, money -- the reader's property, not yours!) and it may time out. Breaking the article into pages makes it less efficient for both your server and the reader.
Whenever I see an article broken into "pages" I immediately conclude that one of those shithead "Web designers" has got their filthy paws all over the site. These are drooling morons who flunked design school (or went to a design school that should itself be flunked) and know nothing about usability. They spew useless huge graphics all over and use pointless techno-cruft like Flash. (The only site that should be allowed to use Flash is Homestar Runner.) Like apes driven mad they smear feces all over what would be a perfectly good work, rendering it sickening to handle or even to be near.
There's no excuse for "Web design", and no excuse for wrecking a perfectly good article like this.
Is it possible AT ALL to escape people's dumbass politics? I did not vote for Bush, and I did not support a full invasion of Iraq, but every intelligence agency in the Universe thought the WMDs were there, INCLUDING the French. The debate was over letting the UN inspectors work some more.
I remember when I used to be able to read a technical article without the authors personal brand of ideo-illogical mental illness polluting the writing. It can't be done anymore. Everyone has to be a little activist now. Oooo! All trendy! And, yes, it matters. If he's that dumbass on history he actually lived through, why should I trust his opinion on anything else?
--- Ban humanity.
Fuck. We're both off topic.
-Peter