What I’ve Hated and What I’ve Loved About Web Development

Published on Sep 30, 2015 (updated Dec 7, 2024), filed under development. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

This post is partially outdated.

In On Web Development and in other contexts I’ve alluded to wrapping up, ending my old career. That’s only correct to an extent.

What’s correct is that my focus is temporarily was on philosophy and politics now. What’s incorrect about my current status is that I’ll keep working on a number of tech projects, will keep contributing to a couple of lists and standards, and will listen to exciting projects that seek my experience and ideas.

Even though I won’t announce my industry retirement just yet, here are some observations from 16 years in web development, almost from the Web’s infancy, to today. I figured I better get a few notes down to paper—if I’m tinkering around for another 16 years I can amend the lists later. Maybe you find some things in here you’ve hated or loved about our field, too.

What I’ve Hated

• Table layouts.
• Counting colspans and rowspans.
• Spacer GIFs.
• WYSIWYG editors (although, or because, I started with Dreamweaver—in 1999).
• Any editor that’s not vi or IntelliJ (or perhaps Sublime).
• Conditional Comments. (To me they’re a sign of not understanding HTML.)
• Resets and normalizers. (To me they’re a sign of not understanding CSS.)
• Variables and mixins. (They have a place but originated in using CSS in a… very particular fashion.)
• Unnecessary complexity.
• No understanding of tailoring.
• No understanding of iterating.
• Feature creep.
• Sloppiness.
• Laziness.
• People who confuse apps and docs.
• People who make things too complicated.
• Software developers who think they’re web developers.
• That everybody thinks they’re a web designer or developer.
• That everybody thinks they’re a good web designer or developer (perhaps including myself at times).
• A lot of pretending.
• Armchair standardistas.
• Pseudos.
• Trolls.
• Assholes.
• Poor discussion culture.
• That tendency to jump on bandwagons.
• That tendency to be different for the sake of being different.
• No halting to optimize standards, techniques, methods.
• “You can means you should.”
• Barely any CSS-only redesigns.
• Bloated standards.
• Dead standards.
• Badges.
• Fora.
• A List Apart (maybe because we never got to work together which changed after we got to finally work together).
• 24 Ways (both sides had too much attitude).
• MySpace (especially around 2006, when it was the epitome of poor design and code).
• Fake or promo comments (pleading guilty, too).
• Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards. (Envy?)
• XHTML (yes).
• Ad code.
• My past code!
• Spam.
• 404s.
• Chasing 404s.
• Maintaining manually.
• Internet Explorer.
• Firefox (too slow).
• Some working groups.
• Writing and being lectured by biased reviewers.
• That not more people followed my always sound advice 😬

What I’ve Loved

• The creativity.
• The possibilities.
• The many opportunities.
• The many people who had no idea about what they were doing (often enough including myself).
• The many idealists.
• The many great people.
• The many brilliant people (particularly Ian).
• The many brilliant and difficult people (notably Joe).
• The rising stars (whether Anne back ten years ago or Harry Roberts now).
• Eric A. Meyer and Håkon Wium Lie.
• And more.
• The many great like-minded people.
• The mind-boggling spectacle, good and bad, of lazy people becoming inventive.
• Anything goes (and reining in the ones who believe that!).
• How serious people take themselves.
• Public technical debates leading to excess, exhaustion, oblivion.
• Trolls.
• Blogs.
• Feeds.
• Moonshots.
• Automation.
• Validation!
• Quality control.
• Optional tags.
• Contributing to a still young industry and profession.
• Pro bono work.
• The idea behind XHTML 2.0.
• CSS!
• DRY.
• SOC.
• Minimal code.
• Good code!
• My present code (vision, idea). Um.
• Information design.
• Typography.
• Proofreading, editing, proofreading again and still finding errors later (that’s why).
• Designing and coding 404 pages that get millions of hits a day.
• The few interviews I gave.
• IntelliJ.
• Transmit.
• DreamHost.
• Chrome.
• Firefox when it was Phoenix.
• Google.
• The WHATWG.
• Also the W3C!
• Coding by hand.
• Maintaining manually.
• Writing frameworks.
• Writing coding guidelines.
• Writing about web development for a career.
• Writing provocatively!
• Writing and being lectured by competent editors.
• My readers, the ones who have supported me and my work, and put up with some most horrible English.

I contemplated pumping more points into this for spectacle, and refrained. As I said, I’m still in the field, and I’m sure there’ll be more things to love-hate about web development. See you around.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, Frontend Dogma).

I love trying things—in web development and engineering management, but also in politics and philosophy, where I hold to one idea in particular: that we can only be well if we take good care of everyone. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my perspectives and experiences. (Please share feedback: Interpret charitably, keep it friendly, but do be critical.)