There are a couple I have in mind. Like many techies, I am a huge fan of RSS for content distribution and XMPP for federated communication.

The really niche one I like is S-expressions as a data format and configuration in place of json, yaml, toml, etc.

I am a big fan of Plaintext formats, although I wish markdown had a few more features like tables.

  • @[email protected]
    22•4 months ago

    This isn’t exactly what you asked, but our URI/URL schema is basically a bunch of missed opportunities, and I wish it was better designed.

    Ok so it starts off with the scheme name, which makes sense. http: or ftp: or even tel:

    But then it goes into the domain name system, which suffers from the problem that the root, then top level domain, then domain, then progressively smaller subdomains, go right to left. www.example.com requires the system look up the root domain, to see who manages the .com tld, then who owns example.com, then a lookup of the www subdomain. Then, if there needs to be a port number specified, that goes after the domain name, right next to the implied root domain. Then the rest of the URL, by default, goes left to right in decreasing order of significance. It’s just a weird mismatch, and would make a ton more sense if it were all left to right, including the domain name.

    Then don’t get me started about how the www subdomain itself no longer makes sense. I get that the system was designed long before HTTP and the WWW took over the internet as basically the default, but if we had known that in advance it would’ve made sense to not try to push www in front of all website domains throughout the 90"s and early 2000’s.

    • The_DecryptorEnglish
      7•4 months ago

      Then don’t get me started about how the www subdomain itself no longer makes sense. I get that the system was designed long before HTTP and the WWW took over the internet as basically the default, but if we had known that in advance it would’ve made sense to not try to push www in front of all website domains throughout the 90"s and early 2000’s.

      I have never understood why you can delegate a subdomain but not the root domain, I doubt it was a technical issue because they added support for it recently via SVCB records (But maybe technical concerns were actually fixed in the decades since)

    • @[email protected]
      2•4 months ago

      Don’t worry, in 5 or 10 years Google will develop an alternative and the rest of FAANG will back it. It will be super technically correct but will include a cryptographic signature that only big tech companies can issue.