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98% isn't much

whynothugo.nl

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Re: 98% isn't much

#311

Post by paczki »

ryandrake wrote: post #186
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when I read the article I thought "Great, more paternalistic advice that pretends we have infinite resources/time/money." Anyone who has ever done website or mobile development knows there is a huge array of browsers and platforms, and supporting the very long tail of configurations is sometimes nearly impossible, let alone almost never cost effective. When I last ran some web apps, we'd see substantial numbers…

Respectfully: To me these just sound like excuses. I can write a web page that works correctly on all browsers. We all can. That web page won't do much of anything, but it's possible. So, there is a baseline "target subset of HTML/CSS" that gives you 100% coverage. From there, it's purely developer choice: When you add something, are you choosing technology that is widely available and supported, or are you choosing…

At what point is a good point to call it a day though?

Unless I am very specifically being paid for it, which I would love to be and I would enjoy doing because I love CSS, there are features that would rather make my experience, and the experience of the entire site better over the course of a decade+, such as nesting. Nesting has changed everything about CSS for me with project organization that makes changes significantly easier, AND significantly easier to pass off to another person. Now that it's at about 90% browser compatability[0] I actively use it in every single project I can, but it's still not supported if you haven't updated your browser in 3 years or use a random oneoff browser that may come with your knockoff smartphone.

It is an excuse, but it's also an honest question. Granted, not all projects are created equal, some of them are for people looking for bleeding edge technology, where it makes sense they would have their browsers updated. Some are government websites that should be accessible to 100% of everybody even if they're looking at your page on a 14 year old psp.

[0] https://caniuse.com/css-nesting

Re: 98% isn't much

#312

Post by jagged-chisel »

dizhn wrote: post #254
nemo1618 wrote: post #187

After Christmas this year, I removed the tree from our living room, and in the process of being moved, it shed of needles everywhere . I swept them up, but I missed a few areas on my first pass. So I did a second pass, but when I looked again, I saw there were still a handful left. It struck me how removing >99% of the needles was nowhere near acceptable! Lots of cleaning jobs are like this, I suppose, because even a…

It's like those antibacterial soaps that remove 99.9 percent of bacteria. It's not obvious whether that's number of bacteria or type of bacteria but either way the remaining ones are probably in the millions and of many types.

I love how the visual representation of that in TV ads always leaves a couple bacteria swimming around.

Re: 98% isn't much

#313

Post by filoleg »

bonzini wrote: post #298
dataviz1000 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment very much makes my point.

Maybe, or maybe there is no yacht and no 2 star restaurant. Since your profile doesn't have any personal info (which is certainly your right, mind) I have only one data point and it tilts towards the latter.

It has a full name and personal website link in one of the comments, which contains a link to their food photography page saying that cooking used to be their profession.

I would assume that should be enough to at least believe it in the absence of evidence showing otherwise, but I guess we aren't treating replies in good faith anymore here.

Re: 98% isn't much

#314

Post by groundzeros2015 »

inigyou wrote: post #305
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a limited amount of engineering resources. Don’t you agree they should try to use them for the benefit of the most people? That’s not to say they should exclude groups. But a small minority path probably gets less work than a main path. Would you agree these prudent or not?

Is Ticketmaster bottlenecked by engineering resources?

Yes. Engineering is a scarce resource with alternative uses.

Re: 98% isn't much

#316

Post by groundzeros2015 »

christina97 wrote: post #236
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the simple option is to cut lines serving small and rural communities We don’t see this in practice to though. Three examples: 1. In the airline industry big airlines don’t go everywhere for this reasons but small local airlines fill the gap due to market opportunity. 2. Changes in technology enable big companies to operate more efficiently. See starlink. 3. Big companies know that ubiquity is important for their b…

The airline industry gets huge subsidies in most countries to operate more rural/less profitable routes. Most of the passenger airports in the US for instance would not be viable without subsidies (most flights go to a few profitable hubs, but the long tail or airports forms the majority by count). Amazon delivers everywhere because USPS subsidizes package delivery to unprofitable areas. You don’t get next day prime…

> You don’t get next day prime except in a relatively small proportion of the country

I agree that the cost or level of service differs (it literally costs more to serve you).

Re: 98% isn't much

#317

Post by hahajk »

Related: Science is a strong-link problem

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35712694

Things like lottery tickets are "strong link" problems (the system's value equals the strongest link's value); food safety is a "weak link" problem (the safety of a meal equals the least safe bite of food).

It appears that the author is advocating for "weak link" standards for CSS (it matters more what the vast majority see, knocking it out of the park once or twice won't make up for the failures)

Re: 98% isn't much

#318

Post by Dylan16807 »

inigyou wrote: post #302
tikhonj wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kicking out 2% of your existing customers in a physical venue violates people's expectations, so it's going to get you disproportionate bad reviews and word-of-mouth. Good thing that we've managed to keep everybody's expectations a hell of a lot lower for software quality then :)

Every nightclub in Berlin has a few Google reviews that say "we were black and they didn't let us in because they are racist." These are the reviews you will see on Google and it can dampen your excitement before you even leave your home.

But if they instead were blocking the people with the 2% most out of date fashion, then it's not an issue. The problem is the racism not the 98% acceptance rate.

Re: 98% isn't much

#319

Post by Dylan16807 »

zem wrote: post #291
Eridrus wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the guy writing the article seems to be bad at math and thinking. Can I imagine a venue kicking out 2% of their former clients on some criteria? Absolutely yes. Kicking out 2% of website visitors may still be totally reasonable if the cost to serve them is meaningful, or if they are less than 2% of revenue. His defense for 98% being bad is that some CSS thing people were arguing about only had 70% coverage…

imagine not 2% of users not being able to use the site, but any given user not being able to use the site 2% of the time, and see if that changes the calculus for you.

Yeah, that changes it, in both positive and negative ways.

I can't tell if this is in support of the article or not though.

Re: 98% isn't much

#320

Post by Dylan16807 »

zamadatix wrote: post #259
londons_explore wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people with old android phones with no free disk space using ancient browsers. There are plenty of people still using windows 10 with updates turned off or wedged for whatever reason. These people just use the sites that work. They aren't computer experts, and might not even realise why half the internet doesn't work - they just think that's the way things are.

I think you're conflating "old device" with "10 year old browser" here. E.g. for: > There are plenty of people still using windows 10 with updates turned off or wedged for whatever reason. It'd be "the pool of people who installed Windows 10 immediately in the launch year but somehow accidentally blocked their browser from updating in the 10 years since, weren't able to fix the issue as the web slowly stopped working…

Notably, Firefox for Windows 7 has all features through mid 2023 and is still getting security updates for a bit longer.
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