Comments on: Adopting a “Does It Really Matter?” Philosophy

By: Moses270

Moses270 — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:48:01 +0000

philosophy is a rose of life’s accomplishments

By: Young

Young — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:26:23 +0000

you get F– for using the word “guesstimating” :)

By: Alan Savage

Alan Savage — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 23:51:56 +0000

The keyword here is balance. I’ve worked with developers that will hack code to get it out on time and then handoff to others to fix and others that miss deadlines because their div’s don’t line up right in IE5.
I try to remember the IT businesses we all look to (Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc) got where they are for knowing how to make money out of a good idea in the business world-not by developing websites/applications that conformed perfectly to standards.

By: Ant

Ant — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:07:47 +0000

If someone using IE6, that should be user problem, not developer.

By: Anne

Anne — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:07:43 +0000

You bring up great points. I’m very much against being a square, pegged into a square hole – this applies to my chosen profession as much as it applies to anything else in life.

Breaking the rules, when you do it with forethought, as you mentioned, and with some know-how and experience behind you, is not such a big deal.

There’s always two ways to skin a cat, and when it comes to real-world projects (i.e. paying jobs) you do your best, of course, but sometimes, it is necessary to take that little short-cut to get something done.

It doesn’t have to mean that your work is not standards compliant, or that you’re being lazy or incompetent. Using an inline-style on the odd occasion and when circumstances call for it, is really not a sin punishable by an “oh what an amateur” type of attitude by the die-hards in our industry. Just my take.

By: Iqbal

Iqbal — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:22:12 +0000

“Level of abstraction”

Focusing on your target needs the practice of abstraction.
Final output is more important then digging into the lower directions of different supporting solutions.
yes does it realy matter? approach can help you to achieve your goals in timely manner.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:36:07 +0000

“There’s a blatant difference between a developer who knowingly goes against a standard, and one that does so out of lack of knowledge and/or of laziness.”

Or at least this helps you sleep at night. Traitor! Lol, JK :)

…mostly :|

By: ErisDS

ErisDS — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:27:34 +0000

My favourite quote of all time is:

“In theory there is no difference between the theory and the practice. In practice there is.” – [i]Yogi Berra[/i]

I never realised quite how much this applied to web development until I started working full time.

The key point is that in order to be able to provide a practically perfect solution, you must first understand the theoretically perfect solution, then apply this to the practical situation & circumstances and see where you may have to make compromises. It should be a thought process and a decision, not an accident. As you say if you can argue why you made a particular decision to do something that breaks “the rules” then you probably have a good reason to.

Is it really worth using conditional comments when your css contains one underscore hack?

As long as a decision is taken for good reason and not laziness or lack of knowledge then surely the clients are in good hands.

By: Wizely

Wizely — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:07:44 +0000

Brilliant article!
It’s not like the standards are that good anyway – there’s not true separation of content from styling and a woeful lack of semantics. So many sites proudly display ‘valid’ markup but are a mess or use tons of hacks or limit their functionality to make sure 10% of their audience get exactly the same experience.
Best practice in any business means cost-benefit analysis. And, to paraphrase Churchill:
“Break any of the rules sooner than do anything outright barbarous”

By: Dror

Dror — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:31:21 +0000

Thank you for the great article. I’ve been thinking about this quite often lately. Still love to dig in small issues when I can, so much fun… :)