[jonathanstark]

Hi! I'm the post author. Desktop is dead in the way TV and newspapers are dead. Yes, they're still around but there's no growth. They certainly shouldn't be the main focus for a web developer building a personal site from scratch.

[api]

I think that's a poor analogy. Desktop isn't dead at all. It's very much live in the way farming and electricity generation are alive -- very important and critical but not growing rapidly. It's a "mature" market.

Part of why "desktop is dead" is a big meme in the valley comes from the fact that the valley is dominated by big-money venture capital. To VC, anything not growing at double digit rates simply does not exist.

BTW... I do wonder if we'll see another leg of desktop growth at some point in the future as the developing world becomes more developed and starts wanting to do more of the things people do on desktops...? We might indeed be in an era when "mobile first" describes the order of computing device adoption by a culture.

[Delmania]

Really? Considering Apple sold 5.5 million Macs last quarter, I'm not sure your claim that there's no growth holds water. If anything, the trend seems to be people using laptops (which are desktops) and smartphones, while tablets are stagnating. The advice to not focus on the desktop is just bad. You need to build for both.

[jonathanstark]

What I said in the article was that most devs should have had time to do both, BUT if they really had to pick one, pick mobile. I'm not saying ignore desktop - I'm saying it's the #2 priority.

[Infinitesimus]

I would argue that it depends heavily on what is being built. Building a nice informational site with simple actions? Mobile first makes sense. Building a very complicated enterprise management tool? Your target audience is going to overwhelmingly be on laptops/desktops. yes, optimize for your audience, but that audience isn't necessarily mobile.

How well does the "mobile-first" solution work on a Nokia N95 browser? (let's not forget that not everyone visiting a webapp is doing so from latest version of Chrome, FF, Safari, Opera, etc.).

While I understand your concern, it feels misplaced given the context (Rails Rumble). Of course. Unless it is a front-end heavy hackathon, it is only natural that the business problem being solved has more weight that whether or not the site is functional on mobile.

I do agree with the general sentiment that we should consider mobile. But desktop isn't dead. (I assume you probably didn't write your submission on your phone).

[izolate]

Maybe not for a personal site, but for an web application, definitely. I mean, just look at your own site. It was made "mobile first" and as a result, looks like a blown-up mobile site on desktop. Now imagine how horrid a fully-fledged web application would look if it followed similar design principles.

[tnorthcutt]

Now imagine how horrid a fully-fledged web application would look if it followed similar design principles.

You mean it would have large, clear text, with links that are easy to click because they're not this >< close to the link next to them? Perish the thought!