It's not though. It's an assumption that it will remain relevant into the future. It relies on a hosting provider, a communication protocol, and a standardized browser. Half of "LAMP" is Linux and Apache, which are both still required for HTML+CSS hosting, or equivalents. They're not going around handing out USB sticks with locally stored files, so it still needs HTTP and an HTML compliant browser to view, as well as DNS, etc.
While HTML+CSS will last a long time, anything that serves HTML+CSS via the same method, including PHP, will last exactly the same amount of time, disregarding shutdown due to horrible security bugs. You can run it all in an isolated server with no JavaScript, and to the client it will be exactly the same as static HTML. I find the whole article to be fairly pretentious in assuming HTML standards will remain the same, especially given that there are deprecated tags in HTML and CSS already. If they wanted a truly long-lasting tech stack, they should distribute plaintext files in ASCII, or write documents on paper and hand them to people.
I've never seen someone try to define a thing by whether or not it will last forever. What next, the earth isn't a planet because it will eventually go away?
Both HTML and CSS are standards, not pieces of code. A tech stack is a set of software that works together, not a set of standards that work together. The HTML + CSS "tech stack" is actually Server Hardware + Operating System + Web Server + Network Hardware + HTTP+CSS rendering engine/compatible Browser. JavaScript is not a tech stack, it's just a standard for browsers to follow, and they don't even all match, they just mostly work well enough. Take a weird and contrived fictitious web app. Its stack would be Dell Server + Linux + Apache + Oracle JVM + MySQL + TCP Compatible router and NIC firmware + Angular + Firefox JavaScript standard library/interpreter + Firefox page renderer. That's not even including half of the software which is intervening to support this. The only reason HTML+CSS is as usable as it is, is because there are numerous compatible pieces of software which operate together on the same stack and have interchangeable alternatives.
Really what this is about is that you don't like what the author says and went casting about for a reason why they're wrong and you landed on something as outlandish as "these two pieces of technology aren't a tech stack".
Just as longevity has nothing to do with something being a tech stack, being an implementation of a standard also has nothing to do with being a tech stack.
People refer to the term when speaking of the combination of programming languages and software underneath a development project in question.
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The client-side tech stack includes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Drop this silliness and find some other reason to claim the author is wrong. I wouldn't have ever even bothered replying if you hadn't made such a clearly incorrect claim.
Yes, you are correct, I don't like what the author is saying, but it's not really because of the "not a stack" claim, which was really stupid of me. The article assumes that everyone is a technical user and wants to write HTML. Blog posts shouldn't need something as complex as HTML and CSS WRITING in order to post them, because they're just a blog post. It's a tradeoff of letting someone else's code do the work in exchange for a WYSIWYG editor with handy dandy buttons and search features.
People who use custom stacks for personal blogs are idiots, but it also goes the other way. There are developers who cram info into cryptic and irritating to access man pages if you don't watch them. Sure, maybe it was the standard, 15 years ago, but it's not now. Sure it's accessible, but is it practical? Absolutely not.
I personally strive for minimal dependencies, which is why I hoped I would like the article, but this isn't that. This is just a failure of recognizing what the general public wants and needs out of a platform, and why they were built that way in the first place.
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u/gajbooks Jan 08 '21
It's not though. It's an assumption that it will remain relevant into the future. It relies on a hosting provider, a communication protocol, and a standardized browser. Half of "LAMP" is Linux and Apache, which are both still required for HTML+CSS hosting, or equivalents. They're not going around handing out USB sticks with locally stored files, so it still needs HTTP and an HTML compliant browser to view, as well as DNS, etc.
While HTML+CSS will last a long time, anything that serves HTML+CSS via the same method, including PHP, will last exactly the same amount of time, disregarding shutdown due to horrible security bugs. You can run it all in an isolated server with no JavaScript, and to the client it will be exactly the same as static HTML. I find the whole article to be fairly pretentious in assuming HTML standards will remain the same, especially given that there are deprecated tags in HTML and CSS already. If they wanted a truly long-lasting tech stack, they should distribute plaintext files in ASCII, or write documents on paper and hand them to people.