Developer tools

Hi,

Another remark that I've heard mentioned by big-projects trying to
develop on top of HTML5 was the lack of good developer tools.

As an example, LinkedIn recently announced they were moving a way from
HTML5 as their basis for their mobile apps, and the main reason they
cited was the lack of debugging tools (e.g. to track memory usage):
http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/17/linkedin-mobile-web-breakup/

Are there steps that W3C could take to help the ecosystem of developer
tools? Are there particular barriers in our technologies that need to be
lifted to make it possible for these tools to appear? 

Regarding memory usage specifically, the topic seems to have been
brought up during the Web Performance Workshop back in November, but
rather inconclusively:
        Most memory information is not really useful to developers, as
        it may include total system memory (and developers don't know
        what other applications are running at that time) and different
        machines have different characteristics. We may want to better
        understand what the problem we are trying to solve and then work
        towards solutions. 
http://www.w3.org/2012/11/performance-workshop/report.html#i10

>From what I understand, this was looking at addressing the problem
mostly in deployment stage, not in development stage, so maybe there is
a lower hanging fruit in this particular space?

Anyway, feedback on what if anything we could do here would be very
welcomed :)

Dom

Received on Friday, 19 April 2013 10:02:57 UTC