Some cheese with that whine? All the big libraries are open source and
very much in use. If you really are that gifted and care about what
people use on the web, file bugs and fix these oh so poorly written
libraries.
I see comments like this often, but this is easier said than done and
I don't mean because of some technical difficulty but rather due to
politics of each major library's community. You can check CLJS for
many instances of this.
How exactly is filing bugs and fixing things you obviously see are wrong
hard to do? My point is that ranting about something without bringing up
WHAT really is broken is just noise. And appears arrogant. "I know the
solution and can do better, but I won't tell you".
Right now, you come across as someone with a massive ego who
is grumpy as people do not use his stuff or ask him to build bespoke
code. It is too easy to say something is "poorly written" [citation
needed] is what I say.>
Repetition is tiresome.
Then point to resources where it has been proven or listed. This is the
internet - things can be linked.
If you design an application to just use basic, simple javascript then
you don't need complex CSS selectors, chaining and so on. You just
need a library of basic functions that does what you need and no more.
And that can easily be written to be cross-browser with very little
extra effort and maintained in your (or the corporate) repository.
By whom? You expect that the people coming after you are as gifted and
dedicated to the cause.
So you'd rather not write decent code because whoever follows you
won't?
No, but I'd rather write code using a library that serialises browser
support for me and is documented than write my own stuff and not
document it. A library is not only code, a library is also support,
maintenance and documentation.
Most of the big projects I built went into
maintenance mode sooner or later. At least with libraries like YUI or
jQuery they didn't mess around with the core code of the library.
I guess the word YUI or jQuery is an appropriate synonym for "warning:
keep out or you might break the duct tape..."
Erm, YUI is the library the Yahoo front page is built with - the largest
web site on the web. If you build something bigger, that works for a
more diverse market and across more locales then you can claim other
things are built poorly. Judging libraries by designers using 12
different widgets on one page to achieve a certain look and feel is not
giving them the respect they deserve.
FYI: I don't like chaining and if you write massive CSS selectors you are doing
it wrong.
With your own solutions you will find document.write() hell added by
maintainers sooner or later. Wake up and smell the corporate mandate:
"release this quick - maybe you get a chance to fix it later".
If a "maintainer" uses document.write they probably shouldn't have
been hired in the first place.
And how exactly are we the ones hiring the maintainers? Of course they
shouldn't be hired, but they are cheap and this is what counts high
above. That's why it is important to build on something that is proven
and documented rather than "our own awesome".library that polyfills the
browser differences for you makes a lot of
sense. Check out John Resig's "The DOM is a
mess":http://ejohn.org/blog/the-dom-is-a-mess/
I think RobG's point is that you should focus on code that polyfills
RELEVANT differences instead of possibly all possible differences.
That is why YUI is modular, I agree that the "kitchen sink" approach of
some libraries is annoying. The same applies to HTML5 polyfills. If you
add 12 scripts and 3 different styles just to make IE6 behave then
something is wrong.
And don't get me started on Events. If you don't simulate them you can
never do proper event delegation with keyboard access for example.
Of course you can teach DOM in 10 minutes. The issue is that applying
DOM properly needs 3 years of experience on how browsers fail to
understand it.
So put that on the job requirements posting.
Again, have you ever hired people? What tech people put in job
requirements is not what is going live in a lot of cases.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2011/01/the-valley-lacks-flexibility-not-talent.php
And personally I'd rather concentrate on building
sensible interfaces for end users rather than patching 10 year old code.
If the code has worked for 10 years up til now, that deserves
commendation. I sure wouldn't mind patching someone else's code once
every 10 years...
With that I meant Internet Explorer 6 - if I have to write all my code
around the crap this "browser" needs then we will never build nice
interfaces.
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