Supporting IE Is Too Much Work

You have to consider the total cost. If the Apple hardware lasts longer, requires less maintenance and makes the developers more productive, it may end up very well paying for itself. My wife uses a Mac and just the time I didn't spend fixing, cleaning and disinfecting a Windows install more than paid for the price difference between her MBP and a cheap Dell. Compare it against a similarly well built machine and things look even worse for the PC. Her current Mac (a 13" i7 MBP) survived a car crash in early March (the machined body is very slightly warped and it'll probably have to make a visit to an Apple dealer for that). Her previous one, a 2006 white MB, sits on my desk as my secondary computer and is our main source of ambient music. It had an aesthetic problem, which was fixed by Apple for free (because other parts had to be replaced due to a recall) last March. It replaced a (still working flawlessly) 1998 iMac in that function. You can say anything about those machines except that they aren't built to last and that their customer service isn't stellar.

If I had to use my Dell with Windows, I know I would be far less productive than I am under Linux. I know because I tried (from 2008 to 2010).

Unless you are developing for Windows (something that pretty much implies you are running Visual Studio), I wouldn't advise you to use Windows as your development platform. And, if you aren't, it's only natural that testing on Windows incurs an extra cost.

Having said that, it shouldn't be that complicated to set up Windows VMs to run automated Selenium-driven tests and plug those into Jenkins.

If you test manually, you are doing it wrong.

I know because I am debugging a stupid, stupid IE only issue and I have to use a combination of Chromes debugger and judicious use of the console/repl in IE.

You can't even inspect an element that was added in code in IE.

For many in the Ruby community, nothing does exist prior to their favorite framework. This is because a core ethos of the ruby communities has been shaped by people like _why and Ryan Bates at railscasts, people open up some of their best code as community gems for all to use. And "non-programmers" have realized that coding can be a fulfilling form of self expression.

Coding as an expression of creativity, where dumb questions get answered instead of ridiculed or RTFM'ed, and where people are proactive in sharing solutions (each "reinvention" of code, each gem dealing with the same damn thing, addressing the same scope, but each one still solves the problem and has value as personal expression).

The communities push for "best practices" without shunning personal expression or eating it's young is why it has so many new adopters that are excited about it, as opposed to the reaction they get from other high profile open source projects, they are embraced and encouraged instead of treated like a nuisance.

Yeah, you may see the an almost religious excitement among new devs, but it is just the excitement of a child who has found someone to learn from, and they have had their vista for creative expression expanded, this is hardly a bad thing.

Have you ever had to deal with the Linux kernel team? If you knew some of the asshattery open-mpi has had to deal with over the years you might better understand. The ruby community has a lot of crap in it, much of it being produced by new devs who have a zeal that makes them annoying, but in my mind the communities distinguishing mark is its kindness and helpfulness, they go out of their way to help new devs, no wonder there is so much zeal coming from new adopters. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Basic was my first language over two decades ago, I am glad that my kids will have ruby, _why, shoes, and a community that will answer all their stupid childish questions without ridicule or disdain. A flawed but intentionally friendly community is refreshing in opensource, the land where people just defend their kingdoms and castles.

Of course I understand your nostalgia for day 1 of IE6, I still have nostalgia for Gopher, but if someone told me I had to develop for it because a company was exploiting its monopoly to stifle and ignore the need for innovation, was slower in implementing, and sought to undermine open standards and then had the audacity to claim it actually cares for "Developers, Developers, Developers" it would legitimately come to represent all that I hate about that software company. Both the nostalgia and horribleness are true and appropriate to remember.

Also open source and sharing is more robust on linux and posix platforms, so people naturally develop tools they can use on their own platform, with their own workflow, and who cares if it gets ported to windows, I'm not creating a product to sell, I am sharing my personal toolset in a friendly way.

Why are you complaining about the difficulty of installing a FREE opensource project on a platform that is not native to the Devs? Of course it's more difficult! Why are you complaining so loudly? Why are your expectation so entitled? Did you even bother asking for help on Stackoverflow?

No, you don't. You just run different images. Downloaded from MS. I have them installed. Right now. IE7, IE8, IE9. IE9 is currently running. Even still, for the most part, IE9 makes debugging easy, as you can run in IE7 and IE8 mode. That takes care of the rest of the problems I've faced.

Yes, testing in IE sucks. It's not an enjoyable experience, but it also doesn't take much effort.

> Then configure and install IE's debugger tools for each image.

This is not an issue. You make this sound like it takes a lot of work. It's not.

> Add to that the problem of VMs booting slow, running slow, and consuming tons of memory on my otherwise-fast dev machine.

I'm running this on a MacBook Air. Yes, they aren't lightning fast, but they are usable for debugging purposes.

> Then, when the VMs expire in a few months repeat that process.

That's not true, either. I've been using my IE7 one, for example, since October.