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Comment by mooreds

12 days ago

View page source is, as was mentioned in the article, magical. The fact that by publishing something online you make it available for everyone else to learn from is astonishing.

It used to be knowledge was locked up in books and putting them in libraries for free access was revolutionary, but libraries don't compare to the knowledge transfer benefits of view source in terms of cost and ease. (Obv libraries have a wider base of knowledge to distribute.)

Even today, with all the obfuscation and minification, devtools offers a lot of the same benefits as "view source" did.

(author here)... I honestly was scared of it first, as I thought if I edited the code, I'd accidentally change/update the other persons website...

  • Few years back I ordered something from the internet. I forgot what exactly went wrong, but some JS nonsense prevented me from doing what I wanted to do and I no choice but to use this website.

    So I opened the inspector to remove that event handler or whatnot.

    My girlfriend was sitting next to me. "What are you doing?", "Oh, just need to edit this so it allows me to continue." The look on her face was priceless. "You-you c-can do that?! You're allowed to just do that?!" To be fair, I can understand her apprehension as I was wearing a balaclava and black gloves.

  • I saw in your "Moi" page a great emphasis on the domain name. I agree with you. I think domain names are the crystallization of an idea, a message. On the other hand, I see a lot of people from startup bubbles in X making fun of domain registration, suggesting that it is a "low bar" activity and doesn't represent any effort toward building a product. I disagree with this point of view. To me, the name is bound to the vision of a product being used by its customers. I cannot imagine something being used without a name or ID. I believe good names tell a story.

    • great .com domain names were the cheat-code I was blindly searching for. The unfair advantage they present allowed me to compete head-to-head with larger entities. I still play in these waters.