Comment on nobody in webdev knows what graceful degradation is anymore
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You’re correct, and I’m going to explain how this happens. I’m not justifying that it happens, just explaining it.
It isn’t that nominee knows what graceful degradation is anymore. It’s that they don’t try to serve every browser that’s existed since the beginning of time.
When you develop software, you have to make some choices about what clients you’re going to support, because you then need to test for all those clients to ensure you haven’t broken their experience.
With ever-I creasing demands for more and more software delivery to drive ever greater business results, developers want to serve as few clients as possible. And they know exactly what clients their audience use - this is easy to see and log.
This leads to conversations like: can we drop browser version X? It represents 0.4% of our audience but takes the same 10% of our testing effort as the top browser.”
And of course the business heads making the demands on their time say yes, because they don’t want to slow down new projects by 10% over 0.4% of TAM. The developers are happy because it’s less work for them and fewer bizarre bugs to deal with from antiquated software.
Not one person in this picture will fight for your right to turn off JavaScript just because you have some philosophy against it. It’s really no longer the “scripting language for animations and interactivity” on top of HTML like it used to be. It’s the entire application now. 🤷♂️
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This has to be fixed though. I don’t know, how, but it’s an economic situation bringing enormous damage every moment.
And most of people it affects are, like me, in countries where real political activism is impossible.
This is the next thing that should be somehow resolved like child labor, 8-hour workdays, women’s voting rights and lead paint. Interoperability and non-adversarial standards of the global network.
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It isn’t though. Thats the exact point. It’s a moderate effort that would prevent infinitesimal damage. That’s just it good math. People have to prioritize their time. If you have a numbers case to make about why the damage is so enormous, make it. That’s what it will take to be convincing: numbers.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
It is. It’s like the medieval Sound Toll, you can’t measure it well enough because there are no trade routes between the Baltic and the North Sea other than the Sound, the Kiel channel is not yet a thing.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What should be fixed is people. The above described logic is true, it does really happen, and behind it is the idiot desire: to get more money. Not to make a better thing, not to make someone’s life better, not to build something worthwhile - in other words, nothing that could get me out of bed in the morning. When that’s the kind of desires fueling most companies and societies, all things will be going in all kinds of wrong ways
scarabic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yes, but we don’t have to make a total caricature out if it. We all need to prioritize our time. That isn’t evil, or broken, or wrong. That’s just life.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Expand this, please. I am sure I did not get you
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That can’t be fixed. We can’t wait for a different kind of human (what if it’ll be an artificial psychopath anyway) to fix our current thing.
So hard to disrupt means of organizing (for associations, unions and such, unofficial) and building electoral systems (for Internet communities even, why not) are needed ; social media gave people a taste of that to lure them before subverting it all, but the idea is good.
Some sort of a global system. When it’s in place, improvement around will follow.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It can be fixed: we can choose to produce less idiots and more caring people. You are right, of course, that it is not the only thing we should be doing