>There are hundreds of web technologies, each with their own spec. None of which are actually that complicated if you read them.
I agree with your overall point, but there is a reason sites like MDN exist. It's because some of the HTML/CSS/JS specs are crazy complicated, contain years and years of edge cases and bugs that have become standard, and are written in standard-eze (which is easy enough to read once you know it, but it can be a bit of a learning curve for someone who just wants to know the order of function parameters).
MDN will be a huge legacy for Mozilla. Of all of their projects, I think MDN will have the biggest impact on the web. It's absolutely needed for someone who just wants to know the order of function parameters.
For a more nuanced understanding of browser behavior, you have to read the spec. Worked on a high performance network app, and I think I know the XHR spec by heart now.
For mapping applications, tiles are loaded to display data. These requests have to be handled carefully, especially when there is a lot of data, because every map movement causes 10s of requests to be fired at once. Their lifecycles have to be managed so they can be cancelled as soon as their result isn't needed (user panned away, or changed zoom level).
I couldn't agree more, and I also think it influenced the standards bodies. New ES[year] specs include lots of very MDN-esque explanations, examples, and "polyfills" for the new features.
I agree with your overall point, but there is a reason sites like MDN exist. It's because some of the HTML/CSS/JS specs are crazy complicated, contain years and years of edge cases and bugs that have become standard, and are written in standard-eze (which is easy enough to read once you know it, but it can be a bit of a learning curve for someone who just wants to know the order of function parameters).