>>12Because we are constrained by the HTML/JS/CSS/BBCode, the layout of the website, et cetera. Consider this:
Progrider should serve only the raw content of the posts, on demand of the client, which may or may not be a web browser. I am talking about a
programmable programming BBS (that makes sense for us, doesn't it?).
It's very troublesome to change the order the threads are shown, for example. Maybe someone wants to view threads per creation date instead of last post. It's also stupid that you have to scroll 100 screens in order to find the 5 latest posts that have been made to this website.
That's why I believe individual posts would be better. It would also get rid us of the "whom are you quoting" dude. Imagine, if
>>4 meant literally a single post ID. Threads would literally be connected graphs.
What if someone wants to write an OpenGL client where you are a little spaceship travelling in space, and posts would be stars? Of course this is obviously not handy to use, but it is sure an impressive visualizaton of the bbs. Maybe someone wanted to write an emacs script so that he/she can read progrider from inside emacs. As it is, it's god-awful to do this. What if we want to get rid of BBCode? That's easy too. All you have to do is write a client where you parse & visualize posts differently.
Of course it all rests on the fact each post is a different file, which means you need some protocol for rapid GETs (i.e. to view a thread of 1000 posts would mean to download 1000 files). I'm not an expert but I guess nginx is not made for this.
Seriously, don't we need something more programmable than this old piece of shit?