@jamey frontends (be it web or some other (offline) application) are imho best when they reflect the logical structure of the data

if the HTML you see is simple enough that you could write a parser for it in a few minutes, then the user can more easily write programs to analyze and transform that data

eg. on Mastodon you should be able to write a straightforward script to back up all your toots

@grainloom so, you're advocating for things like http://microformats.org/ maybe?

I thought maybe you meant that servers should only have JSON API endpoints and all rendering should be in client-side JavaScript, in which case I'd have… concerns 😅

@jamey

I guess @grainloom is going to rediscover the secret of "Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State", an ancient spell from more civilized times.

#HATEOAS

@Shamar @grainloom Oh! I've seen that acronym before but never looked up what it meant. That's interesting! The Wikipedia article on it is a nice summary.

@jamey @grainloom

#HATEOAS is just #BlackMagic.

In the early days of the #web, it was the #REST of web developers wanting to #KISS.