Who cares, if it works? I don't personally consider HTML and CSS either elegant or efficient, so if they've abstracted over it in order to do things, and it works, what's the big deal? HTML by hand seems mostly like a waste of time, to me. Most of the impressive web apps don't do much markup and styling by hand. Cappuccino/Objective-J is an extreme (and good) example of this.
Well personally I care about good craft and elegance. These are subjective to be sure.
But I'm immediately suspicious of the statement "who cares if it works?". As if any old rubbish will do. I have a pact with myself; I'll stop working with the web if I ever gain that attitude. Nothing more depressing than a tradesman that doesn't respect his tools.
The question should be: "Will it make a difference that degrades user experience".
If no user ever notices, who cares?
Most programmers don't use assembly language. Their code is full of redundancy and inefficient bloat. But it's a trade off, and most people don't really mind too much.
To many, HTML/CSS is machine code. Some love hand crafting it, some leave it to automated 'compilers' to create it, and just like all compilers, that means you often end up with inefficient mess.
Compiled code is only as good as the compiler. This is why I favor the side of hand-crafted CSS.
The biggest problem with the code example listed FtA on Geeky Peek is that it showcases HTML tables, which are what tend make HTML most inefficient. CSS and JavaScript can both solve the "table" problem that HTML has been plagued with.
HTML5 and CSS3 both are moving away from this deprecated "table-oriented" formatting, fwiw.
Table-less CSS (e.g. CSS3 specs) cut down on the amount of HTML generation and can basically cut out the bloat. Problem is it takes an artist to write good CSS.
Since "most programmers don't use assembly language" (I don't actually know if this is true; have no reference to cite; am just quoting axod here), it would seem analogous to hundreds of tiny band-aids where one large bandage is needed.
Can you cite some numbers here. Browsers are hugely optimized for displaying tables. They have tables down to a fine art.
I'm completely unqualified to be talking about this, so only to a certain extent do I even feel like I should answer this: I have simple and mere examples of what works on production sites I've prodded and nudged into working.
No tables, pure CSS (design) working w/ PHP (calculating as per SASS/HAML). Not even any JavaScript. Site runs really fast. Even checked on YSlow, it runs quicker than most tabled sites doing the same thing.
I don't have a CS background; everything I've learned has been self-taught. I consider myself more of a CSS "artist" than a real "programmer". So YC News hates me 95 percent of the time, as I've had a hard time melding with the "set-in-stone" terminology people here like to downmod for. However, I do know, intuitively, why and how certain things work why and how they work. Most of the time, I simply prefer the large bandage to the 1000+ small band-aids on browsers. Can work both ways. :)
HTML/CSS as machine code is a horribly flawed metaphor. Machine code is at the "absolutely no abstractions" level; it's what the computer executes. HTML/CSS, on the other hand, are massively abstracted declarative languages. It describes the data you want to display, and some basic style information. Java -> HTML/CSS/JavaScript is actually compiling up in many, if not most, cases.
HTML/CSS is portable across all browsers, but you aren't guaranteed absolute control over the final rendering. This is by design, and there are a lot of good reasons for it. Most of these abstraction layers sacrifice all of that so you can get more control on the 2 or 3 supported browsers instead of the giant universe of alternate user agents.
If you use HTML 1.0 you can render something on most (but not all) browsers. EX: text only browsers will not show you imgs. And yes, these are still in use by the blind community.
The visible spectrum of web tools suck. HTML and CSS are awkward. The web itself is an incredible, beautiful thing – but some of the technologies are seriously flawed and drafted by people with the wrong ideas.
If I was a cabinet maker and all I had to work with was sawdust, you'd sure as hell bet I'd invent a machine to compact it into something I could build solid structures out of. I wouldn't consider gluing pieces of sawdust together by hand to be any sort of meaningful craft.
