With all respect - the opposite is true. The web succeeded because HTML and HTTP are easy standards easily writable by humans with text editors. HTML was writable by non-programmers.

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JoshTriplett 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don't think "parsed strictly" makes something hard; on the contrary, I think it's helpful to make something easy. Clear feedback, easy to test.

But then, I've always preferred strongly typed over stringly typed.

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joshuamorton 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This imagines HTML as code and not markup.

The reason HTML and markdown are more widely adopted than latex is because the former are more forgiving.

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JoshTriplett an hour ago | parent [-]

I am thinking of it as markup. I stand by the point: I think "forgiving" is not a feature in parsing; it's a bug.

	▲	simonra 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Forgiving is very helpful in enticing those whose content you'd like to parse to start producing content. There's no use in having the worlds greatest pipeline if nothing is being put in and moved through. See the tragedy of the death of flash and "surely someone will come along and make a great frictionless editor for canvas and webgl", only for all the creative energy ending up being sucked up and monetised by roblox, leaving the world worse off.

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leoc 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's not obviously so. The adoption of JS wasn't particularly hindered by the fact that users have to match their brackets and generally avoid syntax errors.