Good Old Low Complexity Days

Look at all those programming languages up there, displayed like some prestigious entomological collection. Hundreds of beetles, each with their unique syntax and quirks, pinned meticulously to the wall. And then there's HTML. Five lonely beetles at the bottom. Separated. Ostracized. The markup language that developers love to exclude from the programming language family reunion. The eternal debate continues. Is HTML a programming language? Well, if you've ever tried explaining to a client why their website looks different in Safari, you know it can certainly bug you like one.

The coding hierarchy of life, beautifully illustrated through Noah's Ark. At the top, we've got StackOverflow - the mighty elephant carrying us all. The giraffe reaching for those YouTube tutorials when all else fails. Meanwhile, documentation sits there like a wise old man nobody listens to. Then there's the middle tier: GitHub code (somewhat reliable), professor's code (theoretical at best), your friend's code (questionable but free), and your actual code (we don't talk about that). But when the client shows up? Suddenly that horrific amalgamation of duct tape and prayers you call "working code" becomes your prize exhibit. And the client, bless their heart, still asks "what the hell is this?" - as if they expected actual software engineering instead of the digital equivalent of a panic attack.

The kid asks Santa for an OS built with HTML, and Santa's about to yeet them out the window. Classic misunderstanding of what an operating system actually is versus what HTML does. HTML is a markup language for structuring web content—it literally just tells browsers "hey, this is a heading, this is a paragraph, make this text bold." You can't build an OS with it any more than you could build a car engine out of Post-it notes. Building a real OS requires low-level languages like C, C++, or Rust, direct hardware interaction, memory management, process scheduling, and a whole lot of kernel-level wizardry. Meanwhile HTML is just sitting there like "I can make a div with rounded corners!" The gap between these two concepts is so vast that Santa's violent reaction is completely justified. Fun fact: Electron apps basically do wrap HTML/CSS/JS in what feels like a mini-OS footprint (looking at you, Slack and Discord eating 2GB of RAM), but that's still running on top of an actual operating system doing the heavy lifting.

When that API integration is due in 20 minutes, who has time to read docs? Just crack open the Network tab, copy that curl command, and hack it into your codebase. Sure, the SDK has error handling, type safety, and won't break when the API changes... but that's a problem for Future You. Nothing says "technical debt speedrun" like reverse-engineering API calls while your PM thinks you're "implementing the proper solution."

Ah, the accidental genius of modern tech. Discord accidentally created the world's most efficient view bot by making everyone so angry about loot boxes that they're rage-watching the announcement trailer on repeat. Nothing drives engagement like pure, unbridled hatred! The irony is delicious - 156 million views from people saying "please don't do this thing." After two decades in this industry, I've learned that user outrage is the most reliable metric of all. Want engagement? Just announce something terrible.

YouTube's monetization strategy has officially reached dystopian levels. You just want to watch a 4-minute tutorial on how to center a div, but first you need to sit through two unskippable ads about car insurance, then another mid-roll ad for a mobile game you'll never download, and finally a sponsor segment where the creator spends 90 seconds talking about NordVPN. Meanwhile, sketchy piracy sites that look like they were coded in 1997 are somehow providing a better user experience. No ads, instant access, and the only risk is accidentally downloading a crypto miner. The irony is so thick you could deploy it in a Docker container. Welcome to 2025, where the legal option is more annoying than sailing the high seas. YouTube Premium is looking real tempting right about now, isn't it? That's exactly what they want.