The web runs on tolerance

Summary

If you've ever tried to write a computer program, you'll know the dread of a syntax error. An errant space and your code won't compile. Miss a semi-colon and the world collapses. Don't close your brackets and watch how the computer recoils in distress. The modern web isn't like that. You can make your HTML as malformed as you like and the web-browser will do its best to display the page for you. I love the todepond website, but the source-code makes me break out in a cold sweat. Yet it renders just fine. Sure, occasionally there are weird artefacts. But the web works because browsers are tolerant. You can be crap at coding and the web still works. Yes, it takes an awful lot of effort from browser manufacturers to make "do what I mean, not what I say" a reality. But the world is better for it. That's the crucial mistake that XHTML made. It was an attempt to bring pure syntactic rigour to the web. It had an intolerant ideology. Every document had to precisely conform to the specification. If it didn't, the page was irrevocably broken. I don't mean broken like a weird layout glitch, I mean broken like this: The user experience of XHTML was rubbish. The disrespect shown to anyone for deviating from the One True Path made it an unwelcoming and unfriendly place. Understandably, XHTML is now a mere footnote on the web. Sure, people are free to use it if they want, but its unforgiving nature makes it nobody's first choice. The beauty of the web as a platform is that it isn't a monoculture. That's why it baffles me that some prominent technologists embrace hateful ideologies. I'm not going to give them any SEO-juice by linking to them, but I cannot fathom how someone can look at the beautiful diversity of the web and then declare that only pure-blooded people should live in a particular city. How do you acknowledge that the father of the computer was a homosexual, brutally bullied by the state into suicide, and then fund groups that want to deny gay people fundamental human ...