November 2, 2025
The drama is in the link
Your URL Is Your State
Developers brawl over links: is your URL a memory or just an address
TLDR: A developer shows how a single link can restore an app’s exact setup, reigniting a fight over whether URLs should store state. Commenters split between “links are addresses,” “don’t break bookmarks,” and “cookies/server matter more,” while others push for better link literacy to keep the web shareable and safe.
A developer rediscovers a magic trick: a single PrismJS link that remembers every setting—theme, language, plugins—no account needed. It sparks a spicy debate: are URLs just web addresses, or are they the place to store your app’s setup so anyone can share, bookmark, and rewind the moment? The author cheers URLs as “first-class state containers,” and the crowd shows up with popcorn.
One camp flexes the rulebook. Purists insist a URL is an address, not the storage unit—cue the “L stands for Locator” lecture and a REST (a popular web design style) name-drop. Another camp screams future pain: if your app’s setup lives in the link, what happens when your app evolves and names change? “Links should be permanent,” they warn—breaking them is basically a web sin. The server-first crowd piles on with a hot take: the real truth lives in cookies (tiny files that remember you) and the server, not the address bar.
Then comes the humor: one commenter shrugs, “any blob of bytes is a state container,” turning the whole fight into a zen koan. Others rally for URL literacy—trim tracking junk, dodge phishing, and know what those weird parameters do. Verdict? The link isn’t just a link—it’s a battleground.
Key Points
- •A PrismJS download URL can fully reconstruct a prior configuration, demonstrating URLs as state containers.
- •The article advocates treating URLs as first-class state in web apps for shareability, bookmarkability, history, and deep linking.
- •It explains how path segments, query parameters, and fragments encode different kinds of state.
- •Text Fragments extend URLs to link directly to specific text within a page.
- •Examples include hierarchical paths, UI preferences, pagination, filtering, date ranges, and anchor-based navigation such as GitHub line highlighting.