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

Post from September 30, 2015 (↻ September 25, 2022), filed under  (feed).

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 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

What I’ve Loved

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.

Toot or tweet about this?

About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on September 30, 2021.

I’m Jens, and I’m an engineering lead and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for Google, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

If you have a question or suggestion about what I write, please leave a comment (if available) or a message. Thank you!

Comments (Closed)

  1. On October 2, 2015, 13:02 CEST, Giovanni said:

    Can you expand on why you hated Zeldman’s book?

    This one made me laugh, but it’s just so true: “Software developers who think they’re web developers.”

  2. On October 3, 2015, 15:39 CEST, Jens Oliver Meiert said:

    Jeffrey’s book was much too hyped for my taste, and I deemed it to contain too much compromise and ill advice. On the other hand, I was this young, grumpy, overzealous web developer at the time, and our field was in need of some compromise, too, to become more standards-aware. The book was probably very good for us.

  3. On October 4, 2015, 7:13 CEST, Francis Kim said:

    Hate it or love it, Dreamweaver fixed most of the table layouts and spacer gif issues for me. I STILL use it for email templates :3

  4. On October 4, 2015, 16:33 CEST, Jens Oliver Meiert said:

    I wouldn’t have deemed it possible that Dreamweaver was even going to be around for so long! (Still, my attitude here is not as grim as it used to be.)

  5. On October 5, 2015, 22:00 CEST, P.R. Deltoid said:

    You put Joe Clark of all people in your loved column?? Are you off your meds? I would think that vicious man belongs in all the categories pseudo, troll, and [a__hole] if anyone did.