Thursday, February 6, 2014

Web Developers are insane

It's often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.

As a web developer dealing with multiple browser compatibility, I commit acts of insanity every day.  I write code that I expect to have the same outcome in all browsers and it simply doesn't happen. Quite often when dealing with older versions of Internet Explorer. I really want to be the first to cheer Microsoft for doing the right things lately in terms of embracing open standards, but they have a lingering legacy of incompatibility that makes me curse daily. Happily, I don't have to deal with anything as arcane as IE6 or even IE7. But working in the healthcare industry, the large majority of our users are on still on IE8 and XP. It seems that almost every time we add a feature or fix some bug, it breaks the functionality of something else in IE8. I've spent the clear majority of my effort on the current "sprint" dealing with IE8 issues. And the rest have been quirks of other browser and sameness.

All this makes me hope that the death knell of Windows XP will also spell the doom of IE8 as well.

So I guess not all web developers are insane. Just us devs who still have to work with IE8.