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As a web developer who has to test websites across multiple browsers, having to support another browser sounds expensive. While its fine to create new language

As a web developer who has to test websites across multiple browsers, having to support another browser sounds expensive. While its fine to create new languages and platforms, attention should be paid to the costs this will have on the developers that have to now support the new stuff as well as the old. One example I bring up is Gradle. The jump from Ant to Maven was huge. Maven was so much better than Ant that Ant basically disappeared from my purview. But when Gradle came out it was not so much better than Maven that is caused a sea-change in the Java community. Now I see a split. Some projects use Maven, some use Gradle. And some projects post their instructions in both. I have to become an expert in both. And I don't see this changing any time soon. So now the Java community has to pay this tax going forward. Its no one's fault. The intentions were good by the folks who created Gradle or who adopted it in their project. And projects do need competitors to keep them motivated. I offer no solutions here, only gripes.

phkahler 4y ago
>> As a web developer who has to test websites across multiple browsers, having to support another browser sounds expensive. The problem is testing M browsers against N web sites - M*N complexity with M tests being done by each website. It should be M browsers tested against a single conformance test, and some means of testing N websites against a conformance test. The web browsers compatibility should not be your problem. Once people start accommodating non-conformists there is NO incentive for them to conform.
- iopq 4y ago
  This is the biggest failure of the web as a platform. If it was extremely strict to begin with, like "display error and nothing else when website is broken" then people would actually care about standards
  - 867-5309 4y ago
    this implies we should still be using the web like we did in the 90s. evolution happens in stages and is never perfect nor free from error
    - iopq 4y ago
      But web browsers are big and bloated because they have to render older websites too, like government websites that haven't been updated since the 90s

phkahler 4y ago

>> As a web developer who has to test websites across multiple browsers, having to support another browser sounds expensive. The problem is testing M browsers against N web sites - M*N complexity with M tests being done by each website. It should be M browsers tested against a single conformance test, and some means of testing N websites against a conformance test. The web browsers compatibility should not be your problem. Once people start accommodating non-conformists there is NO incentive for them to conform.

iopq 4y ago
This is the biggest failure of the web as a platform. If it was extremely strict to begin with, like "display error and nothing else when website is broken" then people would actually care about standards
- 867-5309 4y ago
  this implies we should still be using the web like we did in the 90s. evolution happens in stages and is never perfect nor free from error
  - iopq 4y ago
    But web browsers are big and bloated because they have to render older websites too, like government websites that haven't been updated since the 90s