[srdev]

Except the links do expire, so its not robust. I expect that when I visit a web page, I can let it sit for an extended period of time before moving on to the next page and have it work. HN doesn't work.

Furthermore, the technique of holding important state authoritatively in memory like this is not a good web-development practice for various reasons. Doubly so if its state data which can be round-tripped. Links should not break when the web server or cache (I'm not sure which one it is) runs low on memory. So yes, there is a problem with the programming model that pg chose.

[gnaritas]

If he hadn't used that technique, there would be no hacker news for you to use at all. You're entirely missing the point that this is a technique to make hobby programming more fun, it's not about being robust or best practice, it's about making programming simpler so pg finds it worth his time to build this site in the first place.

[srdev]

blahedo's point was that the technique was not fundamentally a problem from a robustness point of view, and I disagree with that point. It is a problem, and I was pointing that out.

Your point seems to be that since Hacker News is a "hobby project," that we may forgive sacrificing a bit of robustness to make the programming exercise more pleasant. That point was not clear to me from your original posting. Rather, the point seemed to be that the technique was good because it was clever and fun, and I disagreed with that sentiment.

PG seems to be saying elsewhere that it was used as a rapid prototyping technique. That seems to be a fair justification of the technique, in my estimation.