Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

For me the point is less about: IE is no longer that bad. It's true that IE9 and IE10 are much better and supporting IE is no longer a 2x web-dev penalty, but that's not the point.

The point is: when the vampire is exhibiting weakness you drive a stake through its heart. The vampire turned a bunch of your fellow townspeople into vampires; saying the bite is no longer so bad doesn't mean that the vampire is now to be respected.

It's also not about punishing Microsoft. [Sure, the warm glow of schadenfreude feels nice.] It is about demonstrating to the tech community the long term costs of SHITTING IN OUR SANDBOX. Those of us who were developing web sites during the IE6 days want to show Google, Facebook, Apple, Zynga, Adobe, etc what happens when you Embrace and Extend web standards.

You don't know frustration until you get your website all sorted in FF 2, then open up IE 6 only to see a completely jacked website, only to realize you basically have no web development tools for IE 6 and you'll be spending the next 2 days blibdly fiddling with margins, padding, how-to-force-zoom, etc.

> a) Developing on windows is absolutely attrocious. If MS wants me to develop on windows, PUT SOME FUCKING EFFORT INTO IT.

Eh?

I guess you entirely missed out on the .NET Framework, Powershell, and recent Visual Studios. These are excellent dev tools, in ways the average Emacser will find hard to appreciate.

(much in the way the average Visual Studio nerd will find a decent terminal hard to appreciate)

From the rest of your message, I gather that the real reason you don't like to dev on Windows is because it's not Unixy. That's fine, and it's a matter of taste, but don't say that Windows is a bad platform to develop on just because you like typing in 70-character commands rather than clicking places. That's really mostly a matter of taste. Rants like these just make you sound ignorant.

There were (bad) dev tools for IE6. Fact is, after a few months you'd know exactly what could go wrong, and fix everything in a day. Still extra work, but not that terrible. Sometimes I miss playing that game :)

As a front-end developer who attempts to keep up with the latest and greatest in my industry, I have to say that there does seem to be some sort of bubble with people on their Macs. Too many times I've seen documentation that assumes that everybody is on a Mac. Too many times I've seen demos that assumes that everybody is on a Mac. Too many times that software that can easily be cross-platform are not or they don't document it as such. Too many times I've seen comments that say if you aren't developing on a Mac then they heavily imply you're a loser.

Much of that also assumes that everyone has an iPhone or an iPad.

For instance, why is getting Phonegap up and running on a Windows machine such a tragic pain in the ass? I got it going on my laptop to play with and after that experience I'm considering putting "successfully installed Phonegap on a Windows machine" on my resume and LinkedIn profile. I may be missing something but even the Windows install documentation I've seen on their website is several versions behind the current release.

As a counter, getting SASS running on my Windows machine was a breeze in comparison.

Now, if it's software and you only want to develop it for OSX, that's cool. But if it's a simple tool that can easily run cross-platform, then don't pretend it doesn't.

It's like the complaints about webkit only prefixes on so much stuff on Github, I'm willing to bet it's because of Mac people not caring about every other browser/OS out there. That's a guess, nothing to back that up.

Most of the people who complain about developing for IE being difficult seem to be Mac people and more than likely have no idea what they're talking about. With my job I support gecko, webkit, and IE7+. Until recently that included IE6. I do not use hacks unless I absolutely have to and I avoid using IE-only style sheets. IT IS NOT THAT HARD!

If you think supporting modern versions of IE is too hard then you may need to reconsider your workflow as it's probably the problem. It is your job to support all the browsers your customers use despite your personal feelings on the matter. Of course, if the browser use is below a certain percentage you're comfortable with, then by all means go for it. I do.

I develop on a Windows machine because our platform is based on .Net. We have two Macs in the office that two of our designers prefer. If need be I can ask them to look at something for me. I personally do not develop for nor test for Safari on OSX so I have no idea of all the differences and challenges of developing for it. But I sure as hell don't say it's too hard to bother with.

> a) Developing on windows is absolutely attrocious. If MS wants me to develop on windows, PUT SOME FUCKING EFFORT INTO IT.

This declaration needs a huge bold flashing caveat: developing on windows for windows is a pleasure, Microsoft provides excellent development tools, helps, documentation and contact points for its ecosystem and usually goes multiple extra miles to be helpful to their developer community. If you are a Windows developer, Microsoft is significantly much more helpful and approachable than Apple is to OSX devs.

The (huge) sticking point is cross-platform development and work on Windows.