[gaius]

I think a general problem with "webdevs" is they have "year zero" mentality - anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature. You see this in particular in the Ruby world where they are forever reinventing the wheel, but it's certainly not limited to them.

IE6, because I am old, and remember, was the first browser that you could build real applications with desktop feel in (e.g. Outlook Web Access). Lots of in-house developers jumped on it, and wrote millions of lines of code. You might think it's too much work to support IE6; they think it's too much work with too little reward to rewrite everything in whatever's trendy this week, because it basically does what their users need and they have real, actual work to do.

[valuegram]

>> anything prior to the release of their favourite framework, didn't really exist, and if they do acknowledge its existence, it's only to observe how worthless it is. It's almost religious in nature.

For me at least, its not about religion but economics. Writing standards compliant code that works in all modern browsers costs a certain amount. Writing standard compliant code that is also backwards compatible with older technologies and legacy browsers may cost significantly more. The cost is one issue, of course the larger program is the value. Legacy browsers like IE6&7 compose slightly over 3% of the market share last month. Without even getting into the demographics of those people, it often isn't worth it to tweak for those specific cases.

That being said, I always leave it up to the customer. This is the issue in the browsers, here is your traffic effected, this is what it would cost to fix.

I can see the agitation with IE6&7, but the newer releases have gotten much better. For the most part, something I develop mainly in FireFox works fine in the newer IE releases.

[driverdan]

Software is a depreciating asset with a finite life. This is something you need to take into account whether it's writing something for Windows 3.1 or the web. Maintaining, updating, and migrating is part of the lifecycle.

[fellowniusmonk]

There are many great communities, I will single out Ruby because you chose to do so in your post.

For many in the Ruby community, nothing does exist prior to their favorite framework. This is because a core ethos of the ruby communities has been shaped by people like _why and Ryan Bates at railscasts, people open up some of their best code as community gems for all to use. And "non-programmers" have realized that coding can be a fulfilling form of self expression.

Coding as an expression of creativity, where dumb questions get answered instead of ridiculed or RTFM'ed, and where people are proactive in sharing solutions (each "reinvention" of code, each gem dealing with the same damn thing, addressing the same scope, but each one still solves the problem and has value as personal expression).

The communities push for "best practices" without shunning personal expression or eating it's young is why it has so many new adopters that are excited about it, as opposed to the reaction they get from other high profile open source projects, they are embraced and encouraged instead of treated like a nuisance.

Yeah, you may see the an almost religious excitement among new devs, but it is just the excitement of a child who has found someone to learn from, and they have had their vista for creative expression expanded, this is hardly a bad thing.

Have you ever had to deal with the Linux kernel team? If you knew some of the asshattery open-mpi has had to deal with over the years you might better understand. The ruby community has a lot of crap in it, much of it being produced by new devs who have a zeal that makes them annoying, but in my mind the communities distinguishing mark is its kindness and helpfulness, they go out of their way to help new devs, no wonder there is so much zeal coming from new adopters. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Basic was my first language over two decades ago, I am glad that my kids will have ruby, _why, shoes, and a community that will answer all their stupid childish questions without ridicule or disdain. A flawed but intentionally friendly community is refreshing in opensource, the land where people just defend their kingdoms and castles.

Of course I understand your nostalgia for day 1 of IE6, I still have nostalgia for Gopher, but if someone told me I had to develop for it because a company was exploiting its monopoly to stifle and ignore the need for innovation, was slower in implementing, and sought to undermine open standards and then had the audacity to claim it actually cares for "Developers, Developers, Developers" it would legitimately come to represent all that I hate about that software company. Both the nostalgia and horribleness are true and appropriate to remember.