RE: After 5

Jirka Kosek wrote:

> If we go with modular approach (which I'm quite supportive), we
> should
> have page which for each feature lists how mature it is and what
> browsers are already support it. Of course this a lot of working, a
> lot of testing, ..., but only implemented features count and this is
> what's important to average Joe developer.

Serious question: I would be very curious to know who you think "Joe 
Developer" is?

* Is it the young Turk working at a small, digital agency in NYC, London or 
San Francisco, (or perhaps instead Des Moines Iowa, Dallas Texas, Tel Aviv 
Israel or Toulouse France)?

* Maybe they are an over-worked (and often underpaid) civil servant in Ottawa 
Canada, Ankara Turkey, or Brasília Brazil, who struggles to stay current in an 
industry that seemingly changes over-night, and where dashing off to hip and 
cool developer conferences is but a day-dream?

* Maybe it is a young man or woman, working in an "off-shore" office in 
Bangalore India or "Tech Centers" in Poland, Romania, the Philippines, or 
South Africa, working for a large, multi-national organization 
(Petro-chemical/Energy sector? Healthcare? Automotive Industry?), who comes to 
work every day and is handed a punch list that needs to be coded up and 
shipped out - that day.

* What of the educator? How do we train and grow the ranks of competent and 
skilled web developers, when we can't keep a curriculum current for more than 
a month? Teaching a young student that they should do this...er, wait, we've 
changed our mind, do that.... no wait, hang on, do this instead... (never mind 
the whole issue around internationalization of those teaching materials)

How many "Joe Developers" know about (and I'm not pointing fingers or 
complaining here) Mozilla's ESR Program 
(https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/), where dependency 
on the latest "feature" rolled out in the last stable build, isn't actually 
shipped to every Firefox browser? The fact that large organizations (be they 
corporate, educational or governmental) need and want a more predictable and 
*stable* release build (to cover off concerns around their own internal 
security or deployment requirements) should alone suggest that not everyone is 
keen on dancing out there on the very edge of the modern web.

I am all in favor of having spec-build snapshots for those who dance on the 
edges every day: we need those developers to help blaze the new trail. But we 
also need a stable and fixed "Standard", not some amorphous digital crib-sheet 
posing as a standard. By their very definition, Standards don't change - 
that's why they are called a standard. "Living Standard" is an oxymoron of the 
highest degree.

As we continue to grow and evolve this industry, we need to ensure that the 
documentation of that growth keeps up with progress - I get that. We need to 
look at how to streamline that, and to be inclusive of all voices - that is 
what the Open Web is about.

But for a significantly large percentage of the "Joe Developers" out there, we 
need to remember that those folks don't have the luxury of dancing as close to 
the edge as others; they want something that is standardized, referencable, 
teachable, and consistent. Whatever we do, we need to remember that 
constituency as well.

JF

Received on Tuesday, 16 September 2014 19:41:28 UTC