Lea Verou on Nostr: 🔥 Hot take: The self-closing syntax makes HTML easier to learn. It means novices ...
🔥 Hot take: The self-closing syntax makes HTML easier to learn.
It means novices can tell the difference between valid and invalid markup *before* they memorize HTML’s entire vocabulary of element names.
Given that HTML is the most novice-friendly language in the web platform, I think that’s a benefit worth preserving.
But even to experts, the cognitive process of reading a tag name and remembering whether it’s self-closing is much slower (though both tasks are very fast in absolute terms).
It means novices can tell the difference between valid and invalid markup *before* they memorize HTML’s entire vocabulary of element names.
Given that HTML is the most novice-friendly language in the web platform, I think that’s a benefit worth preserving.
But even to experts, the cognitive process of reading a tag name and remembering whether it’s self-closing is much slower (though both tasks are very fast in absolute terms).