7 reasons why web development is running in circles
DESCRIPTION
My 15 minutes talk for the head conference, talking about reasons I found why we keep doing the same mistakes over and over again when developing for the web.TRANSCRIPT
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7 Reasons why web development is
running in circles
Christian Heilmann | http://wait-till-i.com | http://twitter.com/codepo8
<head> 2008, London Hub, 15 minutes of fame
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Web development is not professional.
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We are working on this.
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It is easy to blame the technology...
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It is also easy to blame the web.
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But when it comes down to it - we are to blame.
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I found over the years several things to stand in our
way to be a professional entity in the market.
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Turf Wars
Ego
Quick Win Tutorials
Antique Recommendations
Tickbox Standards
Status Quo Fetishism
Form Over Function
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1 of 7:Turf warsInstead of working
together on solutions, people find their technology of choice...
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1 of 7:Turf wars... and use this one
to solve any problem that might ever come up - regardless of consequences.
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1 of 7:Turf warsPrejudices, truisms
and total failure to accept and understand other technologies prevent us from working together on the best solution.
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1 of 7:Turf warsThis even reflects in
conferences.
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1 of 7:Turf wars!There is no end to
end conference - we love to be in our own echo chambers.
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2 of 7:EgoFighting the good
fight on the web is the most awesome thing we can do!
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2 of 7:EgoThere is no way
anything that is already done can be good enough.
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2 of 7:EgoIt is up to us and us
alone to show everybody else how things are done.
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2 of 7:EgoThen we make sure
to give it a cool title, reap the applause and never re-visit it again.
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2 of 7:EgoGeneric things are
never sexy.
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2 of 7:EgoInstead we need to
solve our problem and then add hundreds of bells and whistles.
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2 of 7:EgoWhen people find
problems with it they should fix them.
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2 of 7:EgoAfter all we are too
busy to solve the next puzzle and get to the next stage.
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2 of 7:Ego!Maybe one day you
will be the one who wins the internet!
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
Writing good tutorials is a real art.
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
You want to explain a certain methodology, technology or idea, but you also don’t want to overwhelm the reader.
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
The trap we fall into is give people easy solutions that are of mediocre quality.
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
Not because this is how people should build things but because this is easiest to explain.
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
Tutorials that are challenging or point out issues that might occur with a certain solution don’t get dugg.
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
If the tutorial doesn’t teach me in 5 minutes how to solve an issue the writer was bad.
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
Build your own CSS menu in 5 steps.
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
Styling menus with CSS.
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials
Case Study: How we styled the menu of example.com.
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3 of 7:Quick win
tutorials!
Menu systems that work and CSS technologies that help to build them.
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4 of 7:Antique
Recommendations
The W3C is too slow.
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4 of 7:Antique
Recommendations
HTML is not rich enough to build systems we expect to find.
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4 of 7:Antique
Recommendations
Overly complex recommendations like the DOM don’t get revised.
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4 of 7:Antique
Recommendations
Yet people love to fight to the death to defend them.
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4 of 7:Antique
Recommendations!
Most of the time these are people that don’t get them or never really implemented them in real world scenarios.
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5 of 7:Tickbox
standardsThe antique recommendations lead to people coming up with their own - binding - standards.
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5 of 7:Tickbox
standardsWhich most of the time are borderline ludicrous.
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5 of 7:Tickbox
standards“We like YUI grids but we cannot use them as the government accessibility standards disallow using CSS frameworks”
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5 of 7:Tickbox
standards!The scariest thing about these kind of standards is that they are normally part of a 3 to 5 year plan that cannot be changed until the next 5 year period.
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6 of 7:StatusQuo
fetishism
Maintaining the status quo in a company secures your job.
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6 of 7:StatusQuo
fetishism
Making yourself indispensable means you cannot be made redundant.
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6 of 7:StatusQuo
fetishism
This applies to subject matter expertise: “I am the CSS guy here”
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6 of 7:StatusQuo
fetishism
But even more annoying it applies to ownership of the infrastructure.
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6 of 7:StatusQuo
fetishism
Everything we built and bought over the last years works in Internet Explorer 6.
We cannot and will not upgrade or change that.
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6 of 7:StatusQuo
fetishism
These are the statements and facts of work life that hold us back.
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6 of 7:StatusQuo
fetishism!
Yet nobody tackles those - we are too busy building the perfect validating rounded corner solution.
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7 of 7:Formover
function
No, I am not ranting about designers here.
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7 of 7:Formover
function
I want to point out that we don’t lean towards learning real life examples...
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7 of 7:Formover
function
Instead we lust for the next big inspirational piece.
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7 of 7:Formover
function
Where are the tutorials how to style a CMS driven site that uses an enterprise system?
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7 of 7:Formover
function
Where are the tutorials and talks about i18n and JavaScript?
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7 of 7:Formover
function
Where are the showcases of how example.com was built?
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7 of 7:Formover
function
I think it is high time to tell people how to deliver their day-to-day jobs faster, better and work for the people who take over from them.
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Seven problems to have in mind before we post our
next piece or give our next talk.
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I want to hear more from people from the trenches.
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Thanks!