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 rights?
The ARM processor which powers the modern world was co-designed by a trans woman. When you throw slurs and denigrate people's pronouns, your ignorance and hatred does a disservice to history and drives away the next generation of talent.
History shows us that all progress comes from the meeting of diverse people, with different ideas, and different backgrounds. The notion that only a pure ethnostate can prosper is simply historically illiterate.
This isn't an academic argument over big-endian or little-endian. It isn't an ideological battle about the superiority of your favourite text editor. There's no good-natured ribbing about which desktop environment has the better design philosophy.
Denying rights to others is poison. Wishing violence on people because of their heritage is harmful to all of us.
Do we want all computing to go through the snow-white purity of Apple Computer? Have them as the one and only arbiters of what is and isn't allowed? No. That's obviously terrible for our ecosystem.
Do we want to segregate computer users so that an Android user can never connect their phone to a Windows machine, or make it impossible for Linux laptops to talk to Kodak cameras? That sort of isolation should be an anathema to us.
Why then align with people who espouse isolationism? Why gleefully cheer the violent racists who terrorise our communities? Why demean people who merely wish to exist?
The web runs on tolerance. Anyone who preaches the ideology of hate has no business here.