karmiclychee

Served as “flat files” - filesystem, object store, what have you. No server logic generating content, just passing around of strings and binary data. Files are the representation are the source of truth. Counter to a web app, where the content response is ephemeral and the “source of truth” is scattered across a writeable DB and recombinated (potentially) on every request.

Interesting question though, I (a web dev) just take the term for granted.

Now do puhs

I’ve seen some active instances die due to admin neglect (not paying the bills, for instance), and I’ve wondered how those communities have fared since, since they’d have to start over elsewhere, and without all the content and history from their origin server. Same goes with user accounts too.

Just read a thing about how persistent usernames may work better than actual ID. Of course, I don’t have a link, and I’m not finding anything on Google right now, but as someone who uses the same handle across multiple services, which makes my activity traceable, but not necessarily to my real identity, I definitely think there’s something to that.

I exclusively surf “top 6 hours” and I’ve actually noticed an uptick in niche community content, lately. Different kind of growth, maybe a sort of settling into itself, finally.

From the welcome page

my secret mission with Perchance is to get people interested in coding with a smooth, fun learning-curve

Seems like it worked!

I do web dev on a daily basis, and I tend to think of HTML as “formatted” data.

A database has data in it, but it’s in a format of columns and rows, like a spreadsheet.

My application fetches that raw data and uses code to manipulate it - it can inspect it, rewrite it, combine it with other data from other places, validate it against rules - all sorts of stuff.

Since my app is a web app, all that code is designed to use the data formatted in columns and rows from the database, and use it to generate new data in HTML format to send to the browser.

Technically, writing HTML for a browser is a form of programming - it’s a set of instructions that tell the browser how to display the data in the HTML. It’s not considered programming in a professional* sense, though, as HTML doesn’t get, send, change, or process data. Its purpose is as a format for data to be sent and read by something else (the browser).

*professional as in job titles that affect your salary

This comment warms my pre-modern-eastern-history-degree having heart