3 ms·
More simply put, stability is not valued in the front-end world. It's interesting to compare the dominance of Microsoft in the enterprise world where IT runs t
by Touche 11y ago
More simply put, stability is not valued in the front-end world.
It's interesting to compare the dominance of Microsoft in the enterprise world where IT runs the show was established largely due to stability. IT is run by managers who can get fired if instability costs the company money.
In the front-end world managers can't keep up with the changing landscape and therefore cannot make stability based decisions (in terms of software stability). Instead, in my experience, they make decisions based on how easy it is to hire (as cheap as possible) developers.
So, as a proxy, popularity drives the front-end because developers who have the time to keep up with the latest trends (IE mostly young 20-somethings) because they're the ones who get hired.
- ethbro 11y agoI think that's an interesting observation about Microsoft re: the period where they had an enterprise OS (NT) and a consumer OS (3.1x/9x). I think those two tensions and philosophies came through clearly.
- soft_dev_person 11y agoIt's a bit ironic to praise Microsoft for stability in this context, when they probably have had a major role of causing instability in the web front-end world for more than a decade.
- chc 11y agoI thought most people's complaint was that Microsoft caused stagnation, not instability. Explorer was too stable for most developers' tastes.
- d215 11y agoMost people's complaint was Microsoft was trying to push their own proprietary standards (Activex anyone?) upon the www at large. Also their adherence to Web standards at the time IE6 came out was so bad, that it caused almost unsurmountable instability.