Nick Heer, in response to Dave Winer’s piece on Google HTTP:

I also agree with Winer on another key point: enforcing a pseudo-mandatory policy on HTTPS makes it that much harder for someone new to this stuff to even begin to understand it. As Frank Chimero recently wrote, building stuff for the web has become vastly more complicated since even five years ago. I’m happy to keep learning new skills and growing my understanding of what the web can do, but I don’t know where to begin on this modern web. I don’t intend to hold myself up as a barometer of the complexities of modern web programming or anything — I just don’t know what’s going on any more. I’ve been doing this stuff for nearly twenty years. I don’t know how someone who is eight years old could start digging into React, or Node.js, or any of the other modern JavaScript-based ways of writing <h1>hello world</h1>.

I’m sure the kids will figure it out — they always do. However, I worry that introducing more requirements, even something as simple as HTTPS, can be discouraging. That’s the last thing HTTP/HTML web should be: discouraging. It is one of the greatest enablers of communication in human history. Let’s not allow its future to be dictated by browser vendors.